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Review: Nerdcore Hip-Hop Compilation CD Project
The best part is that this is all available freely as bittorrents. It'll take you many hours to wade through it all, but the gems in there make it worth the trip.
What I hear on these albums really runs a wide spectrum of music, both in terms of genre and production value. Some sound like a kid with his iMac and a mic. And there's others that sound just as produced as any mainstream studio release. Of course music is about more than how expensive of a mic you used: you'll hear "Good" songs in both groups.
Besides the fact that almost all of these tracks are 'Rap', if there is a unifying feature here it's that the songs are about nerdish things. You'll hear tracks reciting Pi, talking smack about operating systems, and games from Super Mario Bros to Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. Much of the Post Dre rap you've heard celebrates the 'Gangsta' lifestyle. Personally I find much of this very hard to take seriously. Likewise, much of the lyrics just get campy. It's like a Weird Al mad libs lyric, where the rapper tries to rhyme whatever techish things pop into mind. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
MC Hawking is a great example. His track essentially an MC Battle style rap that relies on the synthesizer voice gimmick. But damnit it actually works. The lyrics are tight and amusing. I wish the hook was stronger, but thats a track I'll enjoy listening to.
Monzy's 'So Much Drama in the PhD' works as well. 'I run gmake and gcc / and i ain't never called malloc without calling free'. The parts come together really well. He might not be the best rapper you've ever heard, but I really enjoy the track. But the lyrics are ultimately that of a novelty song. Very entertaining with a good beat, but very niche.
Ytcracker's "In My Time" is just a fantastic track. You'll be hard pressed not to tap your foot. His lyrics are less obvious then most anything else on the rest of the album. He might be referencing the Atari 2600 or downloading porn to a USB pen, but you could play this track outside a compilation like this and it works. He's probably my favorite on the set. I had to snag more of his stuff from his web site, and it was interesting to see that his work is actually progressing. Having mined the most extreme end of the tech/geek world, his last few songs are stronger for it.
Another common theme here is liberal use of samples. Almost everything has samples from somewhere. You'll here the sound of Mario catching a mushroom integrated into the beats of tracks, and countless game theme songs and sound effects split apart and remixed. Sometimes it's just a gimmick. Other times it works musically. In addition to liberal use of sampling, copyright issues are a common theme in many tracks as well. Sometimes it's subtle, flippant references to downloading movies. But in the case of "Fuck the MPAA"... well, not so much in the way of subtle ;) Don't get me wrong- I got little warm fuzzies hearing sounds that i haven't heard in years, back from my childhood. But after 70 odd tracks, the novelty fades.
On a somewhat related notes, Googling a few of these artists and you'll find another common theme- the remix. Many of these artists feature remixes on their own sites done by others. Doing this definitely shows that a compilation like this is only the tip of the nerdcore iceberg.
It's also worth noting that there are a number of tracks that kinda don't fit. Foreign language stuff. Stuff that falls more into the pop category than hip hop. Some of these tracks are allright, but they feel out of place in this compilation. Like the Rappy McRapper track 'Lick Your Own Butthole Dance'. It's purely goofy silly stuff. Not bad mind you, but it simply doesn't fit. That said, I must have listened to that butthole song 10 times. It's so stupid I love it.
I sort all my music using iTunes '5 Star' thingee. Anything I rate 1-2 stars, I never want to hear again. 17 tracks here fell into that category. Anything 4-5 stars is stuff that goes into my uber playlist. I currently have 1174 songs in this playlist. Of the 4 CDs of music here, 15 songs made it to that playlist. Thats better then most music I listen to.
My suggestion- just download it. Listen to a couple tracks at a time. Don't listen to 15 in a row or it'll break you. Listening to someone rap about Warcraft and followed by one about rolling D20s gets old when strung together. But the best tracks on here stand tall, taking "Nerdcore" away from being simply silly novelty tracks ready for morning zoo radio and campus CS labs, and instead showing that the so called "Nerdcore" lifestyle can be celebrated in at least as interesting way as "Gangsta". The best tracks here do just that. Finding them is fun. A number of artists here are doing just that.
But at the end of the day, sometimes you just need to find a bit of music that you can relate to. And when you hear 'join me in the basement cuz it's warcraft patch day / time for D&D a frontalittle mainstay' day, so it's time to play D&D.... well, thats my Tuesday too. There's something odd about hearing it rapped about.
I don't know, I wouldn't admit openly to listening to that. Like, I'd be OK with myself with it, but if someone told me they listened to nerdcore, I'd think "what a geek" :P
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
You would think that nerds, who are supposedly intelligent, would choose music with real musical value, stuff like Rush or Dream Theater, or other non-manufactured musical types, even jazz or classical.
I am Spartacus
like mc chris
http://www.mcchris.com
or rappy mcrapperson
http://www.rappymcrapperson.com
There are great non-rap geek songs in the world. My current favorite has to be "Code Monkey" http://www.jonathancoulton.com/lyrics/code-monkey
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I recently bought DDR Mario Mix for the Gamecube. While I'm not a fan of house/techno/trance/whatever music, I was impressed with the remix of some of the classic Mario songs. I'm waiting for one of these mixes to show up at the local dance club just to see how many people catch the underlying music:
"Dude, why do I have the sudden urge to jump on top of your head?"
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
You know, he raps about downloading music, and the dangers of cybering, and how Hot Topic is not Punk Rock.
I like his songs, he has a talent for crafting great pop tunes.
What does nerdcore need to bring it in the the mainstream?... MATERIAL ITEMS -- yes I'm referring to "bling". With the ultra-materialistic and ego-centric minds of the masses, having a piece of "bling" makes one feel special (just like everyone else). What will the nerdcore "bling" be? Diamond-studded pocket protectors? Gold-capped braces? Keyboards with hydraulics? Segways with rims?
In all reality, I don't think nerdcore is geared to ever become mainstream... which is good, because mainstream usually means "mindless crap to please the masses and get them to buy things".
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
My keyboard has a special key for songs (and other things) with such ratings. I call it the 'delete' key.
Seriously, why bother rating something you never want to hear again? Why not just delete it? It this an iTunes thing?
MC Frontalot's pretty good himself, and is the official rapper of PA: www.frontalot.com And no, I wasn't getting paid for that.
There are some OK tracks on this but not near enough Frontalot or Hawking.
Enigma
was nerdcore in the 70's/80's.
I'm just sayin'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I prefer Futuristic Sex Robotz.
http://www.futuristicsexrobotz.com/
I was an RA a few years back and we set up a murder mystery in the dorms. I wasn't in charge of setting it up but I was an actor. I was told to dress as a rapper. I had a wifebeater, an Adidas jacket, but couldn't find the bling... so a friend (who knew me all too well) took a can of mountain dew and the pop tops and made me my "bling" ...
I'm getting the torrent at 714B/s. Wow. You guys are all a bunch of leaches.
[Don't mod up people who post torrents in the comments. They are all on the page linked. Mod such posts as redundant.]
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I first got into nerdcore with ytcracker's 'Nerdrap Entertainment System'. Thought there would be others out there doing the same thing and it looks like I was right.
Props to yt and the rest for making rap I can actually stand listening to.
a moron user thing.
Now 1-2 star rating on something I don't want to here, but want to share with somepeople who may like it would make sense.
When I get enough, I burn a disk, then delete.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I personally don't like nerdcore. Aparently the reviewer doesn't really like it either, and I quote: "Listen to a couple tracks at a time. Don't listen to 15 in a row or it'll break you." Generally that is a sign you find something distasteful, and are tolerating it only for some other reason (want to feel like you fit in with the nerd crowd?)
Philosophy.
This website has better music even though some of it is sixty years old. These songs deal with incompetent managers and even the United States obsession with science and the military. It also helps that some of these people actually have signing talent.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Can't say I've ever even heard of nerdcore, but The Great Luke Ski was who I thought of first. He does comedy music including parodies (a la Weird Al), and quite a bit of it is "white boy rap". But the key thing is that the vast majority of it is related to things that typically interest nerds and/or geeks, including Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files, The Matrix, Simpsons, Futurama, etc. His 2002 album was even titled Uber Geek, and he recorded so many Star Trek and Star Wars related songs that he eventually ended up compiling all of them onto their own privately released CDs ("Trek-Wutchyalike" and "May The Farce Be With You").
"It'll take you many hours to wade through it all, but the gems in there make it worth the trip."
Wow, i really should learn to read things properly, at first glance i thought the above sentence said "I'll take you to my house...".
The musicians deserve credit too! My favourite is Finnish producer Tero who has done live PA's with nothing but 2 Commodore 64s!
Filk is a long-standing Hackish tradition, and Nerdcore is merely its latest incarnation.
Wow. I never thought the day would come where I'd miss folk music.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
who the hell had mixed in the voices ... :| the volume was broken ?
Thank God I'm to old to be this much of a nerd.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Because in any group of people there are the legits and the posers. A real geek is going to openly admit to listening to music with some musical merit like jazz, classic & progressive rock, or just about anything that rarely ever makes it onto billboard. But for the wannabe geeks, they need to proclaim this sort of thing in order to prove their geek cred. It's all about image and their way to garner respect from people.
Plus they're all middle class white boys from the burbs who don't know anything about bitchez, ho's, bling, benz, poppin' caps but couldn't buy enough Death Row records. So when they decided to be rappers the only thing they knew about rapping was geek stuff. I get this image of Michael Bolton from Office Space dressed up like Grandmaster Flash.
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
He's going to bust a... (whatever geek rappers bust into people)
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
Fingers to the keys to the code I be typing
I'll bash that script, like a process I be sniping
You're lamer than some h4x0r saying "Yo! Yo! Whatsup?!"
I wish that somebody would terminate ya with a kill -HUP.
I'm flying like Apache, you're slower than concrete.
You're built like a gnome, and I ain't talking 'bout no suite.
No shortcuts'll save you, your doom is complete
No Alt-F4'll help you, no Ctl-Alt-Delete
will stop this feat, you better believe it
this ain't no superstition,
I'll open all your ports and your hardrive repartition.
So, you say you're fighting for the nerdcore crown...
But I'd say that you're closer to a nerdcore clown.
Pack it in, save your ass, yo H4x getthefuckouttadodge!
You're a Beowulf unclustered, with its power cords dislodged.
You're too l4me for this g4me, wanna fl4me? It's all the s4me
Cuz you're an Apple 2c and I'm a mainframe.
You're inept! Can't even play dead, you play sick.
We couldn't pityyoumore if you were Visual Basic.
You like that kid? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!
It's a rout! I flout my stout clout with this cool cool cout
and I'm out.
What the language naturally suggests: hardcore nerdy, aka extremely nerdy. I've been using it since before I heard about this genre of rap.
Why rap anyway? Doesn't the word 'hardcore' in a musical context suggest heavy metal?
Much of the Post Dre rap you've heard celebrates the 'Gangsta' lifestyle
Alas, this is true. There is lots of other stuff out there, but it won't get much radio or club play, because Gangsta sells better.
In the words of KRS-One: "Hip hop is where it always was - underground." (sorry, quoted from memory, almost certainly without accuracy).
For some recent (well, OK, not that recent, but I don't keep up to date) non-Gangsta hip hop, check out Bomfunk MCs for some serious breaks and BBoy-centric music, "The Return Of The DJ" LPs and various other artists.. they aren't too hard to find if you know where to look (google for the above and surf - you'll find lots of stuff). And nowadays you can even buy some underground stuff in HMV and Virgin (ahhh, I remember the day when I asked for Public Enemy in Virgin juuust to see the puzzled looks)..
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
http://wee-unit.mserle.net/mp3s is one of my favorites. MC frontalot is one of the best, although spamtec is fun to listen to... and of course, monzy.com made 2 mp3s that are far more geekier than anything else out there, coding-wise!
Note: wikipedia has an okay-ish article on nerdcore with other links
Senator Ted Stevens is the kind of nerd who wishes he were a geek, doesn't have the brains. He does have the sucka MC mic on C-SPAN whenever he wants to throw down the jive, so he's an artificial-hip-hopper, nationwide.
--
make install -not war
before I knew what a nerd was we enjoyed listening to Kraftwerk. I guess that makes me old.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Not a single mention of MC Frontalot? Are you people nuts?!
http://frontalot.com/index.php
He's the most nerdcore!
http://www.haverford.edu.nyud.net:8090/physics-ast ro/songs/
Coral cached it so it doesn't get slashdotted.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
I wished all my favorite shows' torrents were slashdotted in that way.
Res publica non dominetur
I don't know, I wouldn't admit openly to listening to that.
From an RPG.net thread making up RPG Demotivator posters:
Gaming Humor.
(Credit goes to Opsimath on page 9. Posting AC since I copied it w/o permission.)
Unless you're NOT gay. Then it should be easy not to tap your foot.
LOL. Download volume1 and listen to "1337 G33K B3AT - 22 - Emulation Station.mp3". Rap done by pre-pubescent kids is hilarious sounding. The High pitched voices just cracks me up.
Nerds need brains. geeks do not.
how much brains do you need to argue why a wookie would use alight saber? or discuss who is better Superman or mighty mouse. Or think that there time they ahve been playing roleplaying games counts for something? Those are geek activities.
Geeks think up, design and build the toys that allow geeks to play.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow, my band does a song that would fit on there perfectly. It's called Geekstylin', and it's about my favorite D&D character. Also, I'm disappointed to learn of the lack of the Buck65 track "Making Love to your Hard Drive." Every slashdotter should hear that song, at least once. Effing hilarious.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
Wow - these might be the best seeded torrents ever.
Here's the post about it on beos news.
http://beosnews.com/?postid=137
Be sure to check out Wired in August.
If you haven't heard anything by Roosevelt Franklin, go get their album "Something's Gotta Give."
Les Horribles Cernettes are quite nerdcore in their own way. "I feel your attraction It's a strong interaction" seems quite the right words if you're the world's "one and only High Energy Rock Band".
Oh, and check the lyrics for liquid nitrogen too.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Read your post and explain it to me.
What are you trying to say, nerd? Abckwards, indeed.
--
make install -not war
I have some nerd bling. I got it from thinkgeek.com - It's a Binary Watch. Everyone should have one, cept the nerdcore peeps need to dangle it around on their necks. Big o' flashy LED's.
Damn it feels good to be a nerdsta
A real nerdsta-ass coda flips his bits right
A real nerdsta-ass coda never runs a windowz proc
Cuz real nerdsta-ass codas write code all night
# man tar
"Geeks think up, design and build the toys that allow geeks to play."
ah crap.
Nerds think up, design and build the toys that allow geeks to play.
"Abckwards" was intentional, albeit poor, humor.
My poorly illustrated point* was that nerds are generally smarter then geeks. Or at least in fields that take smarts.
My pore** example was indicating that what geeks are known for doesn't take a lot of smarts;However, it does take a lot of immagination and free time. Noth of which are good things.
*when people miss the point, it is ALWAYS the speakers fault.
** it was full of holes***
*** hence porous.****
**** over use of notes is an indicater that I've been reading too much Discworld~
~ By Terry Pratchet~~
~~ damn funny~~~
~~~Not like this post.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
without mentioning the aquabats? they are your average ordinary super-human, punishers of evil rock and roll band. and they were invateing nerdcore way before any of theese guys were around. www.theaquabats.com www.myspace.com/theaquabats
And while we're at it, perhaps you'd like to sail on back to the late 50s/early 60s and read what reviewers thought of rock and roll. It would be a surprising parallel to your viewpoints.
As you get older, tastes become more rigidly defined and the ability to adapt to "new" weakens. You're demonstrating that admirably.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
do bands like 'HORSE The Band' count as nerdy enough to satisfy you folks? they're more surrealist 8-bit screamcore, but there's some nice references to early videogames in there: well after I started playing around with computers, certainly, but they're definitely throwbacks to the 80s. their media page is here: http://www.asssnake.com/horsetheband/media.html and most of their radio-borne songs are to be found on their myspace page (sorry folks). if you like weird hardcore, they're good to listen to. my personal favourites are 'cutsman' and 'bunnies'.
:D
incidentally, thanks to all of those that pointed out MC Frontalot: very cool
http://xkcd.com/313/
T'ain't rap/hiphop... but Nerf Herder will always be the kings of Nerdcore to me :)
These goddamn trolls interrupting my flow. These niggas don't respek us with a +o. They gotta color spam and fake invite, bombing with asciis in yellow on white. Shit yeah. it's bright, you 12 year old kiddie. You ain't got pubes and you ain't seen titty. I'll jupe your chans and ban your ass. Don't message me with plz unban, your chance has passed! Other opers crappin up our relay net. Why haven't you delinked your 386 yet? ircd needs xeons and dual cpus. When it comes to irc hardware, you can't be a jew. Shit, nobody knows the trouble I've seen. On invites for websites with naked teens. Begs for ops and packet attacks. Shit from users who use vi, not emacs. Another long day of patrolling the IRC. Eating my doritos, and having a jerk, I chat with TheWalrus and #nanog faggots. All this niggas do is complain "the lag it's-- bad, chat is slow, and we're getting harassed." Shit, trolls, this k-line is your last. Once more and it's "G" and you're gone for good. Banned from the internet chatting neighbourhood. It's lonely at the top. Just me and CHANFIX. Day in and day out. Banning trolls with my linux. We give safe harbor to chatters world wide. From pedophiles to hacker thieves. Yeah, I won't lie: IRC is a cesspool of e-misfits. EazyCheezes and bagel-cutters like that nigga BitS. But at least we're the best. Disagree and you're gone. BRB, mom just told me gotta mow the lawn.
If you prefer rather twee nerd-pop, there's always Barcelona's 'I've Got The Password To Your Shell Account', mentioned here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd
Nerd, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to somebody who pursues intellectual interests at the expense of skills that are useful in a social setting, such as communication, fashion, or physical fitness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek
A geek (IPA: [gik]) is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination.
*without notes..damn
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
True dat! Frontalot is the greatest. Heck, that final paragraph referring to "Frontalittle" playing D they were inspired by Frontalot. They're like his own posse that he never involves himself with. Sort of like how David Lee Roth never really involved himself with Van Halen after he left them, but only if David was never a member in the first place. That's how Frotnalot works with Frontalittle. :-)
The Aquabats rock. Other nerd rockers I like are: Nerf Herder and Atom and His Package.
Click here or here.
Rap isn't about simplistic crap where lines are grouped together in equal length and in pairs where the last words rhyme. Thinking it is shows a total ignorance of where the real talent lies in the artform and honestly the reluctance to actually figure this out reeks of racism IMO.
A great rapper is like a great jazz drummer. The talent is in the rhythm and delivery, not in funny metaphors.
so what you're saying is, as long as the rhythm and delivery are there, the words are meaningless. nope, try again.
Maybe you mean something like: http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=10&hl=en&l r=&q=goldie+looking+chain&btnG=Search
And then consider some of the lyrics to "Half Man, Half Machine": http://www.lyricsdomain.com/7/goldie_lookin_chain/ half_man_half_machine.html
(Any song that mentions a ZX-81 is pretty frinkin nerdcore in my book!)
oh, and saying that "people who couldn't figure that out are racist" implies that rap music is a "black" thing, which is racist. just in case you couldn't figure that out.
If you haven't heard 8-Bit, there are a "robot gangsta rap" group from LA. They are pretty funny, rapping about video games and robots with a ton of cursing to play on the whole gangter rap thing, all set to video game beats. They wear these huge silver costumes when they perform, too. If you can find the song to the zelda tune, it is probably the best.
They also mixed that song "Hell Yes" for Beck.
i feel it's inappropriate to even mention nerdcore/hiphop without including eyedea and abilities. with countless references to schroedinger's cat, quantum mechanics, and other things that only slashdotters would rap(sing) about.
Some of it is inspired by trip-hop, others from 80s hip hop or 90s gangsta. A lot of it is really bad.
No need to get redundant on us, now.
Long live Weird Al!
-PM
With the decline of Urban being hip (see the other Slashdot post), and this compilation, it sounds like Geek is the new hip thing. So here's my idea for a new game. You play the life of a pro gamer. The game would just be like a random tournament of old-school games, like Asteroids, Pacman, Pong, Frogger etc. When you get an end game, you start again straight away, but with a score of zero. You get 2-3 minutes for each game, and the person at the end of 2-3 minutes with the highest score wins.
What kind of "nerd" RARs files in a torrent? Fucking noob.
All in all, it looks like far too many nerds think that the only way to make credible rap is by pretending to be a black gangster, which is sad.
Another problem was the volume. Why should I strain to hear your lyrics? Why would you want to hide them under your music in the first place? DELETED
50MB of music from nearly 400MB of torrents. Disappointing.
It's still white... :)
Big booty