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My hobby is to write lyrics on genius.com. I mostly listen to Hip Hop music. Sometimes I find it somewhat challenging to understand what they're saying because a lot of rappers do not enunciate the words properly.

For example, a question could be as following:

In this part of the song, did they say "bed" or "bad"?

Or:

In this other part of the song, did they say [slang term]. What does that mean?

So, can I make a post on english.stackexchange.com asking for clarification on lyrics?

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    It depends on the questions you are going to make. Personal interpretations of lyrics are off-topic here, but the current meaning and usage of slang terms, for instance, are on topic.
    – user 66974
    Commented Aug 18, 2020 at 18:07
  • Ok thank you for your answer. I have transcribed the lyrics of a song, except for one word because I can't distinguish what he's saying in the song. Perhaps it's slang term I'm not familiar with.
    – user352103
    Commented Aug 18, 2020 at 18:10

1 Answer 1

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EL&U is not a transcription service, bluntly, but in the past we have entertained questions which ask about phonological phenomena and accents that can be demonstrated in a clip, e.g.

So, a question like "did she say my bad or my bed at T2:43?" will be viewed askance, but one that asks "in what situations would bad and bed use the same vowel, because in this clip…" might be received more favorably—provided the other criteria of a good question (useful, demonstrates initial research effort) are also present. For simple transcription help, you might try asking in Chat.

As user121863 notes, lyrics as an artistic expression are subject to interpretation, and there often is no definitive way to answer why a certain word was chosen or why a matter was phrased a certain way, other than that it sounded good to the author. Additionally, the author is granted considerable artistic license; as in poetry, the words may depart from standard grammar, spelling, or pronunciation in all manner of ways, or simply be interesting-sounding nonsense.

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  • OK thank you for your anwer.
    – user352103
    Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 6:30

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