The Co-Founder of Rap Genius Needs Someone to Pick Out His Shower Stool

Yesterday, the dudes from Rap Genius posted a job opening on CraigsList seeking a “Full Time Attaché (With Good Taste).” The ad is chock-full of bro humor, has an extended spiel about shower stools, and features goofy Instagram photos of the Rap Genius squad hanging out with famous rappers (text screencapped for posterity here). One of the pictures is also of RG co-founder Tom Lehman getting a haircut. Because this is the internet, someone saw the post and blogged about it, the link got sent around, and then everybody started making fun of the Rap Genius guys.

To be fair, it seems like the Williamsburg start-up could use some more help right about now. After taking a flabbergasting fifteen million dollar investment from Andreessen Horowitz, they and their loyal online community tasked themselves with the responsibility of not just explaining rap lyrics on the internet, but explaining many other things on the internet, including rock lyrics, news, and poetry. They need bodies doing stuff, and they need those bodies doing that stuff right now.

But still, we of the internet said. An attaché? Could you get any more clueless and start-uppy? Why didn’t they just call the job “Weed Pickup Monkey?” People’s main complaint with the site comes with the fact that its founders want it both ways: running a hip-hop site and carrying themselves as a start-up’s parody of hip-hop culture certainly helps to set them apart in the tech realm, the fact that they ooze disingenuousness is not lost upon many the hip-hop world. Even more frustrating is that the Rap Genius founders are smart—all of them went to Yale—and with their intelligence comes an acute awareness of their place within both worlds. And they just really don’t give a shit that people hate them. Still, one does get the sense that these guys are playing up the obnoxiousness and are actually fine people, if a little clueless in a privileged way.

While I’m of the opinion that one ruins a joke by explaining it and that that principle extends to rap lyrics, I don’t wish the Rap Geniuses any ill will—if nothing else, I regularly go to their site to look up rap lyrics because I know it won’t give my computer an insane porn virus. Baldly criticizing these guys for a silly CraigsList posting is really unfair, although the job description does make it seem like taking the job would enter you into a neverending life of frat pledgdom. On the other hand, they're going to pay someone $25 an hour where most places would just hire an intern and not pay them, so it's actually kind of admirable that they're gonna give someone almost $50k a year to pick up Snapple from CVS and do a bunch of other mindless bullshit.

Besides, we can’t forget that we’re talking about a site that was founded in the spirit of explaining things on the internet, so I called up RG co-founder Tom Lehman so he could Rap Genius his CraigsList posting to me. We talked about what’s going down with his website, why he needs an attaché, what a shower stool is, and why he needs one of those. I then decided to ask him a bunch of insane questions.

Noisey: What led to the decision to hire an attaché?
Tom Lehman, Rap Genius: Well there’s just a lot of stuff to do at Rap Genius, you know like the shower thing is a true story and there’s other shit going down. They are hiring very aggressively for programmers. But there is a lot of work to do that is not programing and it needs to be somebody who’s down for whatever. I don’t know if it is an attaché, it’s more of somebody who is just down for whatever. Attaché is actually just something that I said just to be cute. Then we just tried to change it to “Personal Assistant,” just because like who’s searching “attaché” with the accent mark?

What’s up with the Instagram of the haircut?
Yeah, I’m getting a haircut in that one. It could be anything. That picture is designed to show what my eyes are doing. What am I looking at? What’s going down… maybe even some weirder shit. Or maybe it could be a haircut. It could be anything.

Is haircutting experience a priority in this job?
It is to a degree to which you need to have good taste and confidence. Someone who is down to pick up the scissors and go to town is someone who has confidence in his taste or her taste. That is the most important thing besides the ability and desire to work really hard at any task. Even if you are just like doing some trivial shit like setting up some one’s desk or setting up an apartment or setting up a part of the new office. Taste comes in the picture. That’s why you’ve got to get the Instagram photos. The best part is getting all of these pictures of all these people’s palces. Because you get this email and this person is well-spoken and then you look at this person’s bedroom and it’s just a total IKEA dungeon disaster. And then you’re like, “I don’t want you to be setting shit up for Rap Genius.” So it’s really important with the taste. Hair dressing experience kind of feeds into that philosophy.

What is a shower stool?
You know what a shower stool is. Everyone uses a shower stool. We got ah… now I see that probably and this is what this person needs to do. I’m googling, Jesus Christ this is actually pretty interesting—a lot of these are hipster-looking wooden shower stools which I feel like is kind of probably a better look… I got a very medicinal-looking grandfathery shower stool. That is not, like, super chill. Not something that you would have at your vacation home or whatever. I should have gotten one of these wooden ones.

Now I’m googling too, and some of these are really nice looking. What do you actually need a shower stool for, though?
Well the shower stool is so…it’s partially just a mental thing because even if you’re fine it’s just thinking in your mind what happens, if I feel unstable, will I have a place to sit? Nominally it’s so you have a place to sit and brace yourself in the shower but it’s also like a confidence thing. Even if you’re basically fine it’s just nice to have it there, just so you don’t get nervous.

Does 50 Cent really use a Dell?
Oh wow, yeah, good call. I think it might have been one of his people’s or something like that. I wasn’t actually there that day, but if he does that’s pretty dark. But you know, I’m down. I used to have a Dell.

What’s your favorite porn website?
Favorite porn website. That’s a loaded question. I’m tempted to say all kinds of stuff here. What is the best website for porn? I mean my dream is that Rap Genius will be the hip-hop OkCupid and I hope that people can use it to achieve intimacy. From a pure titillation perspective on a one-time basis I don’t know if it can match any of the more traditional porn websites but longer term I think it’s more satisfying.

Which rapper do you think would make the prettiest woman?
You mean if he was a woman. I’m guessing it is has to be a male rapper? I mean Kitty Pryde makes a pretty cute woman, she is a female though.

No, male. Which male rapper do you think would be the prettiest in women’s clothing?
The only one I’ve seen in womens’ clothing is my co-founder Mahboo and he is a pretty good rapper.

What’s the best Instagram filter?
In the beginning I think X-Pro. There are a lot of fireworks there. But lately I just like keeping it chill with a more subtle nuance Rise or Valencia I think is better just keep it chill. But you will catch me doing the occasional Lo-Fi or whatever that one is called. The super-saturated one.

I’m a Nashville man myself.
Humm.

What is the most hip-hop Emoji?
The mischievous cat one. You know what I’m talking about.

I think the smoke one is pretty good. Chief Keef likes that one.
Interesting. I like that.

What is your favorite crime?
Loving Rap Genius. Is that a crime? If that’s a crime then throw me away. My favorite crime is probably—

Personally I’m a fan of mail fraud. My boss was telling me about this mail fraud scam that involved sports bets.
How do you do it?

You spend a year going to sports bars and meet people like 1000 who seem like they would bet on sports. Then you start sending them letters like I know who is going to win…
Yeah. But that’s just for sports. Is that even mail fraud?

It’s fraud. It’s fraud committed while using the mail.
Yeah well I think that one… I think that one is basically chill. That is a good one, though. Jesus. That would also work for, like, stocks.

Do you know where Tim Dog is?
Who?

Tim Dog.
Who is that?

He’s Tim Dog.
Who is that?

He a rapper who sort of started the East Coast/West Coast beef with a song called “Fuck Compton.” He’s from The Bronx. He was a con man and might have faked his own death, but he might just have died. I’m looking for him.
I should probably more know about that person.

If you could go to space what would you do there?
I would experience the feeling of falling, because that’s what it feels like in space. Yeah, dogg. It feels like you just are falling forever. And you are, so to speak. You are falling around the earth.

Did you know that no one has ever had sex in space?
Well, define sex.

Like, intercourse.
Well that is pretty weird. They’re probably on camera a lot of the time.

Drew Millard is still looking for Tim Dog. He's on Twitter - @drewmillard