Nerdcore Rap In The Press

hammeredpeon writes "MC Plus+ and others talk about their nerdcore rap skills with Wired magazine." From the article: "While gangsta rap is seen as celebrating the violence and aggression that claimed two of its brightest stars, 'geeksta' rap is a hip-hop genre celebrating coding skills and school grades. Also dubbed 'nerdcore,' this branch of hip-hop is for geeks, by geeks. Geeksta rappers adopt the same combative verbal-assault stylings of their forerunners, but bust rhymes about elite script compiling and dope machine code. The term was first coined in 2000 by nerdy New York rapper MC Frontalot in a track of the same name. Nerdcore now refers to artists waxing lyrical about topics as disparate as engineering and Lord of the Rings."

Comments

Unifying rap popularity theorey

[ArmorFiend]

Rap is always about social mobility.

Geeks are cool. Why? Because their services are in demand and they can get good jobs.

Gangsta rap glorifies drug dealing. Why is it popular? Because drug dealing is seen as a means of social mobility for young poor black men. No wonder they're interested in it.

In both cases, rap celebrates social mobility.

Flame away, friends.

Terriable name

[SlayerofGods]

Why would you call your music Nerdcore or geeksta rap? I mean that just begs to be not taken seriously.
It's like a country/western singer calling their music 'Redneck rock' or pop calling it's self 'teen drivel'

whoa

[Philodoxx]

Who would have thought that MC Hawking could have spawned an entire genre?

Re:Y2Khai

[Jhan]

...and of course, every Slashdotter must like MCHawking :-)

Verse 1
Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.
Noah and his ark, Adam and his Eve,
straight up fairy stories even children don't believe.
I'm not saying there's no god, that's not for me to say,
all I'm saying is the Earth was not made in a day.

Chorus
Fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck the Creationists.

Site, downloads.

Re:Reminds me of...

[mbbac]

A remix of one of Frontalot's songs uses a loop of that ROTN song.

Actually

[I_redwolf]

Akrobatik - Internet MC's

http://www.akrobatik.com/audio/real/akrobatik-inte rnetmcs.ra

Pretty much sums up my whole feeling on this "phenomena" or "hiphop segment".

Re:MC Hawking's

[The Lynxpro]

"is a fucking quake master.
that is all"

I remember seeing *MC Hawking* on TechTV's *Unscrewed with Martin Sargent* last year. Made me laugh a great deal.

Unfortunately, while its creator is skilled, he has not taken advantage of the CD Baby agreement in place with iTunes and thus the *greatest hits* album is not available at the iTunes Music Store. I would have loved purchasing the tracks with my Pepsi/Mountain Dew or 7-Eleven Slurpee iTunes codes...

Re:Ok, shoot me.

[Anonymous Coward]

get ready, cuz this aint funny
i wont mod you up unless you paypal me cash money
i got more algorithms than pooh bear got honey
i cant stand these windows labs, yeah i sure prefer SunEE

i once heard a rap came from a slashbot
thought he was shit hot, but down he got shot
his intelligence is artificial, his ryhmes was all robbed
so i replaced his whole style with an itty bitty cron job

i write this shit for real straight out of U waterloo
this schools a pen for geeks, and my parole is nearly through
so many code assignments due this week, i started hacking in my sleep
my stack is too deep, using cycles like they cheap
my timing starts to creep as my DSP beeps
aint no comments, no indenting, man this C looks like butt
one last term then I'm through with being a fucking compeng code slut

-r

Re:oh goody

[glesga_kiss]

Rap is not music. It's spoken word/poetry. Dropping a breakbeat track behind it does NOT make it music.

Em, no. Yes, it's spoken word, but if the words are tied to the beat or the melody (as any decent stuff would, nothing you'd find in the charts), then it is music. It has rythym. It has flow. Just lacks melody in the lead vocal. You can't say that Michael Franti is not a musician (Spearhead, worth checking out, inteligent stuff).

If it's just a guy spewing garbage over an old record with a breakbeat sample, then yes, I agree, NOT music. But neither is most of the stuff coming from these sources.

Out of interest, would you say Gill Scott Heron wasn't a musician? It's a touch call, I'd say he borders on it, but also veers more to the poetry side than his more modern counterparts.

Re:Just plain sad.

[elliotCarte]

From one of my originals: ...
now i ain't all about being liked by the masses.
don't give a fuck if i got pimples and glasses.
i get straight As and skip all of my classes.
got an IQ that's as big as your ass is. ...