Cole Swain was scrolling through his phone one morning before school last week when he received an alert from YouTube. It was 8:24 a.m. in Los Angeles, where Mr. Swain is a university student, and Kendrick Lamar had just released “Euphoria,” a highly anticipated diss track targeting Drake in the escalating showdown between the two rappers.
As Mr. Swain’s group chats and social media feeds blew up, he logged onto Genius, a website where users can transcribe and annotate lyrics to help explain their meaning. A volunteer editor for the site and a fan of Lamar’s, Mr. Swain was ready to dig into the track.
But Genius was apparently not ready for Mr. Swain and the crush of visitors. After nearly two weeks of silence after Drake’s diss record, Lamar’s response on April 30 drove swarms of traffic to Genius, causing it to crash temporarily just as fans were clamoring to pore over what the artist had to say.
“This is crazy,” Mr. Swain, a 19-year-old who is studying bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled thinking. “Everyone is scrambling to write the lyrics as much as everyone wants to read them.”
The feud between Lamar and Drake hit breakneck speed over the weekend, with both musicians trading songs packed with heavy punches. All the while on Genius, a small, collaborative corner of the internet built for those who love music, users like Mr. Swain worked furiously to deconstruct the songs as the hype around the releases exploded.
