Ælfric, William Tyndale, RapGenius.

For those who haven’t already tumbled through the looking glass, RapGenius is a website which invites users to provide helpful annotations/goofy glosses for hip-hop lyric sheets. Last year, the site was gifted $15m by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, who vowed to help push this “thriving ecosystem of ideas” into new territories. At the time, the company promised to expand the site’s ambit to include “poetry, literature, the Bible, political speeches, legal text, science papers”. Somewhat commendably, it seems they’ve kicked things off with the biggest – and, perhaps, most contentious – target on their bucket list.

As Dummy note, RapGenius is in the process of annotating the entirety of the 1611 King James Bible. It’s certainly an important document: the iconic text remains the most widely used version of the Bible across the globe. As per your next parsing of Tyga’s ‘Rack City’, the RapGenius KJB will make use of text, audio, video and various other online ephemera to help explicate the text.

As you’d expect, the site’s hermeneutic approach is playful rather than authoritative – a peek at the page for Genesis 3 offerd a heady mix of serious exegesis, satirical readings and images like this. In a blog post, RapGenius have offered some historical context for the project:

 ??? BC: World created

??? BC: Adam and Eve get saucy

??? BC: Jacob beefs with an angel

??? BC: Great Flood

??? BC: Great Flood ends. God: “You know it’s all about the love, I don’t know why I’m being this aggressive”

0 AD: JESUUUUUS

1517 AD: Martin Luther nails diss track to a church door

2012 AD: Pusha T releases “Exodus 23:1”

2013 AD: THE RAP GENIUS BIBLE

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