I decided I wanted to say some things about the “nerdcore” genre since I just did a short tour with Adam WarRock and am performing with MC Frontalot tonight. I anticipate making some more new friends who like my music so hopefully I can frame my relationship with this genre early so there’s little confusion about how much I appreciate the nerdcore scene AND how I refuse to be limited by it now or moving forward.

The first, and most important thing, to take from this blog is that I am of the opinion that RAPPERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FUCKING NERDS. I overheard someone say the other night “I feel like nerds are people who know more about any given thing than most people…you could be a Star Wars nerd, or you could be a Patsy Cline nerd”, and I’m pretty much in agreement.

Ask a rapper who produced the Dr. Octogynocologyst album (Dan The Automator). Ask them where the hook for 99 Problems come from (Ice-T, if you didn’t know)…ask about the early history of NYC rap such as how and why it interesects with punk rock culture (CBGB’s and the like were the only clubs that would take a chance on urban black people having their own music nights) and you might be there for 2 hours. There’s a history so wildly varied, filled with trivia that everyone is expected to know. Fucking nerds. Then take it to the next level…you got hip hop cats that are complete footwear nerds (“yoooooooooo, is that that 83 Nike Jordan special reissue homie?! The one that only went through first pressing before they fixes the bottom left half of the swoosh?! DAMN SON!”*). Or knowing that the BMW has more flat screen panels off the assembly line than the Jaguar or whatever. Nerds.

*I do not know if this is a real shoe. Feel free to send me a more relevant example :)

It’s an extension of the idea that ALL musicians are, at their core, hapless nerds trying to be cool…but it’s sort of true. Add on to this the fact that since comic books are so urban (which comic was NOT set in a city? Exactly.) most early rappers spent their childhood collecting or at least being relatively intimate with the stories. MF Doom is an obvious example, but everyone from De La Soul to the Gravediggaz have made relatively obscure superhero references in their raps.

Rappers ARE nerds. Well…if they’re any good. ;)

Now, there’s another complicated element of course…while I demand rappers and rap fans to consider nerdcore as though it’s a salient element of the musical landscape - there’s a lot of complications with people who ONLY like nerdcore as well. This reminds me of the mid-90’s era of indie hip hop, too. Often there will be some negative feelings towards “non-nerdcore” rappers drawn along genre, content and (dare I say…) racial lines. It might not be obvious why it’s sort of racist to say “I like nerdcore but not other rap because it talks about video games and not b-tches and blunts”, but it is none the less. Even still, people will always gravitate towards the content that speaks to them - and that’s fine. Just ignore the rest, there is no battle between “nerdcore” and rap…nerdcore IS rap.

Hip hop has had a string of intense nerdiness running through it since ‘97 or ‘98, when more and more really intelligent MC’s started hitting the scene and running with it. Anticon, Weightless, Def Jux…these crews are full of nerds, sorry. Poli-sci nerds, rap nerds, philosophy nerds perhaps, but nerds all the same.

Sure, “Nerdcore” AT FIRST BLUSH seems to be largely about novelty songs until you start getting past the first layer realize that these cats are not Star Wars nerds, they are not comic book nerds or whatever…they are, essentially, RAP nerds and their understanding of “keeping it real” is so intense that their honesty allows them to ONLY write what they’re obsessive about while trying to KEEP IT FRESH. A notion many so-called rappers would be wise to adopt. They may know every word to every Del the Funkee Homosapien song, or the lyrics to every Wu-Tang side project out there…but they realize that HAS BEEN DONE and in the effort to keep it fresh branch out into topics that aren’t seen as historically “hip hop”. That’s a rather limiting view of hip hop and one I’m glad so many of my friends and hip hop heroes immediately dismissed many, many years ago.

My raps are not really nerdcore…but they’re nerdy. I wrote a song about a dystopian society that implemented Genetic Engineering on anyone who didn’t graduate high school for fuck’s sake. ”My memory is computed in hexadecimal notation, evasions of the principles of common conversation. Beware the creation to make humanities advances seem vacant”. FUCKING NERD. Here’s the thing - I wrote that before the word “nerdcore” even EXISTED…as did many other rappers in the “superscientifical” era of indie rap.

So now, as nerdcore artists make me feel at home thus allowing me to embrace not only my own material from the past but my ACTUAL obsession with things (such as Star Trek, which anyone who knows me knows I’m pretty obsessive about), I’m left with the feeling that I missed the boat. When nerdcore first started existing as a genre, I dismissed it as a “flavor of the week” term for describing a type of hip hop that was slightly off-center. Like “nerd hop”, “hippie hop” and so many others before it. I voluntarily ignored Frontalot’s existence and I didn’t watch “Nerdcore Rising” because I really didn’t care at the time.

Now, I’ve seen it - and it’s as relevant to indie hip hop artists as Rollins’ “Get in the Van” is to punk rock kids. Now, I completely get it. Front’s “sounds too much like a white guy” delivery instead reminds me of a combination of Del and Pharaohe Monche. My “it’s all novelty songs” attitude is replaced with “Hahahaha this is awesome a song about the d20 system!” It still needs to sound fresh to me…still needs to bang pretty hard, and I still need an MC with skills to deliver it and creative musicans to create it, but I grew up with the Atari, the NES, the ColecoVision and playing tabletop games with some of my friends while watching Star Trek like it was my job. Sure I did all those “cool things” that the so-called “mainstream” rappers talk about like having sex, smoking pot, drinking, partying and whatever…but in the end those things were fleeting elements of my life and while they were extremely important, it is these other interests that connect me with other people more deeply.

Adam WarRock comes up by buying a PA, calling comic shops and setting up shows there. Front goes on a small tour and does a documentary that essentially shows him failing at making music for a living, scared out of his mind. What’s the difference between that and a gaggle of immigrants and displaced workers chilling on the block fucking with record players until they can create an entire new song, then begging clubs to let them do it in there? So much of our shared experience as human beings can be attributed to the desire to create (music, people…whatever) so I get relatively irritated when people attempt to be divisive based on music.

Watching this phenomenon go from “really? Oh come on now!” to “wow, this is humbling and amazing isn’t it?” in my own head has been very inspiring to me, and I welcome any such changes in the future. Do you?