Certainly google has a right to tweak their algorithms as they choose which leads to editorial choices but to manually override a serp to place a site in a position regardless of their behavior crosses a line.
I think Google manual overriding a serp in this case is the way to get the best possible search result. Being at the top of the page shouldn't be about how many links were bought, it should be about quality of content.
Rap Genius has the quality content. The fact that they have to rely on these link building techniques to rise above the trash shows a flaw in Google's approach to ranking.
