Wednesday, May 28, 2014

‘Rap Genius’ Co-Founder Resigns After Insensitive Annotations Regarding University of Santa Barbara Killer

 



 

By M Quintero-Moore
BACKLINE MAGAZINE
 
‘Rap Genius’ co-founder, Mahbod Moghadam, resigned today from the company and board of directors, according to a letter posted on the ‘Rap Genius’ site by its CEO/co-founder Tom Lehman.

Moghadam’s resignation follows an annotation he made regarding the Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. Rodger, 22, is the man who shot and killed six women near the University of Santa Barbara last Friday night before taking his own life.

According to Lehman, the controversial annotation posted on Rap Genius' News Genius site was done “in the hopes of helping people understand the psychology of people who do horrible things can help us to better understand our society and ourselves”. Lehman thinks, however, Moghadam fell short of that goal by making fun of a horrible situation. “All of which is contrary to everything we’re trying to accomplish at Rap Genius”. Lehman wrote.

The most offensive part of Moghadam's annotations, posted on Gawker.com, made reference to how some of Rodger’s statements were, “beautifully and artfully written”; and the assumption that Rodger’s sister must of have been “smokin' hot”, after he [Rodgers]wrote how angry he was when he’d hear her having sex with her boyfriend.

Moghadam attempted to defend himself by writing:

“I was fascinated by the fact that a text was associated with such a heartbreaking crime, especially since Elliot is talking about my neighborhood growing up I got carried away with making the annotations and making any comment about his sister was in horrible taste, thankfully the rap genius community edits out my poor judgement, I am very sorry for writing it”.

Rap Genius was founded in 2009 by Moghadam, Lehman and Ilan Zechory, all Yale graduates; and has raised some $16.8 million in financing. The company has been widely criticized for not having licenses for its content.

BACKLINE did request a comment from Rap Genius, but has not received one at post time.











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