diff --git a/docs/plugins/lastgenre.rst b/docs/plugins/lastgenre.rst
index 69db32877..8db198151 100644
--- a/docs/plugins/lastgenre.rst
+++ b/docs/plugins/lastgenre.rst
@@ -47,6 +47,31 @@ be turned into coarser-grained ones that are present in the whitelist. This
 works using a `tree of nested genre names`_, represented using `YAML`_, where the
 leaves of the tree represent the most specific genres.
 
+The most common way to use this would be with a custom whitelist containing only
+a desired subset of genres. Consider for a example this minimal whitelist::
+
+    rock
+    heavy metal
+    pop
+    
+together with the default genre tree. Then an item that has its genre specified
+as *viking metal* would actually be tagged as *heavy metal* because neither
+*viking metal* nor its parent *black metal* are in the whitelist. It always
+tries to use the most specific genre that's available in the whitelist.
+
+The relevant subtree path in the default tree looks like this::
+
+    - rock:
+        - heavy metal:
+            - black metal:
+                - viking metal
+
+Considering that, it's not very useful to use the default whitelist (which
+contains about any genre contained in the tree) with canonicalization because
+nothing would ever be matched to a more generic node since all the specific
+subgenres are in the whitelist to begin with.
+
+
 .. _YAML: http://www.yaml.org/
 .. _tree of nested genre names: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/beetbox/beets/master/beetsplug/lastgenre/genres-tree.yaml