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Russia’s latest censorship target: a Genius annotation explaining a Kanye West lyric

Source: Genius RSC

Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, has blocked an annotation on Genius for a line from the track I Love It by Lil Pump and Kanye West that refers to drug use.

The blocked annotation explains the words “She take lines (Lines)”, according to the Russian-language Genius community’s Telegram channel.

A post in the Telegram channel Genius RSC called the move the first time Roskomnadzor has “gone international” — blocking annotations for tracks by foreign artists under the ban on mentioning drugs without the required labeling.

Genius RSC also noted that in 2022, Roskomnadzor blocked access to the entire Genius website, and that tracks flagged by the regulator were “manually scrubbed.”

The post’s authors say Genius’s administration — which belongs to the American media company MediaLab — reached an agreement with Roskomnadzor to block content by geolocation. The annotation for the line from I Love It is accessible to users located outside Russia.

Russia’s ban on mentioning drugs in media, books, music, and film without a special label has been in effect since March 2026. The label must accompany all works released in Russia after August 1, 1990. Even before the ban took effect, some artists had to replace their compositions on music streaming services with “clean versions” that do not raise concerns with Roskomnadzor.

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