The Entire Internet May Soon Be Annotated

Rap Genius is moving beyond music with a big infusion of capital

Annotating rap lyrics is just the beginning, says Andreessen: “There could be Law Genius. There could be Religion Genius. There could be Philosophy Genius.”Photo illustration by 731; Photographs by Ryan Anson/Bloomberg (Andreessen); Shutterstock (gold chain); Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect/Getty Images (hat);

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By Ira Boudway

November 2, 2012 at 2:11 AM UTC

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This article is part of the November 5, 2012 issue of businessweek.

When Marc Andreessen was building the first Web browser, Mosaic, in 1993, he planned to include an annotation function. “It was a very simple implementation,” says Andreessen. “I think that all I did was have the annotations show up at the end of the page.” His hope was to ultimately make it possible for people to add endless layers of argument and interpretation all over the Web, but he had to abandon the project. “We ran out of time,” he says. “I was barely sleeping as it was.”

Twenty years later, Andreessen believes his old idea has new life in the form of Rap Genius, a website where users post explanations of hip-hop lyrics. On Oct. 3 he said Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm he co-founded in 2009, would invest $15 million in the site. (Bloomberg LP is an Andreessen Horowitz investor.)