Rap Genius is a terrifically helpful website with the misfortune of being run by evasive wackball Yale dudes. Interviews with the crew rarely go beyond goofing around and bizarre outbursts—which is why this very un-TechCrunch podcast Q&A, that doesn't allow horse-shitting answers, is so nice to hear.

The hip hop-centric Combat Jack Show hosted the Rap Genius inner circle to talk Googleghazi. As usual, they start out with the dissembling clown routine—but Reggie Ossé (a.k.a. Combat Jack), isn't taking it: he repeatedly, calmly, tells them to just shut up and answer the fucking questions he's trying to ask. It works!

At around the 10 minute mark, Reggie gets the founders to talk about how exactly they fucked up their Google connection (and the aftermath).

At around 25 minutes, we get some straight talk about why the RG trio play up their indoor-sunglasses-douchebag personas.

At 31 minutes, everyone starts shouting about whether Rap Genius is, as they claim, the greatest site on the internet.

What we see, over the course of an hour, is a group of smart guys, insulated by VC prestige, who let media hamming and postured assholery overshadow the fact that they have the best lyrics website on the internet. If they just shut up and talk about that, it's fascinating.

It's a long interview, but worth at least skipping through, and certainly more illuminating than anything you'll see onstage at Disrupt—or anywhere else an interviewer lacks the guts to tell someone he sounds like an asshole. And it makes you wish every prominent tech figure would be interviewed by Combat Jack, who could not care less about what office your investor walked out of.

Photo: Getty