Posted 8:59 PM by Gene

I dedicate this entry to America's news hacks, particularly that breed that insists on overrating every pop-music act that comes down the splitting-headache pike: on GOOGLE, entering "rap genius" creates 104,000 hits, "rap brilliance" 23,100 hits, "hip-hop genius" 98,100 hits, and "hip-hop brilliance" 17,900. (By contrast, "Mozart genius" yields 62,900, and "Beethoven genius" 57,900.) Yes pop culture is disproportionately represented on the Web, and yes most of the hits have nothing to do with rap and genius combined, and evidently there's a rap act with Genius in its name, but enough of them do combine to demonstrate yet another example of the news hacks' intellectual slumming and whoring.