Review: Nerdcore Hip-Hop Compilation CD Project

'Nerdcore' is a tricky thing to nail down. Some of it is simply novelty niche tracks with cheesy lyrics, and gimmicky derivative music. Some of it is inspired by trip-hop, others from 80s hip hop or 90s gangsta. A lot of it is really bad. And some of it is actually really good. Witty, sharp lyrics. Entertaining beats and excellent production value. You can hear all of these things on Rhyme Torrents Nerdcore Compilation. Read on for my review.

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.

Hmm...

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

Post your favorite 'nerdcore' artists!

like mc chris
http://www.mcchris.com [mcchris.com]

or rappy mcrapperson
http://www.rappymcrapperson.com [rappymcrapperson.com]

Why rap??

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 [jonathancoulton.com]

-Rick

DDR Mario

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?"

How do they compare to MC Lars?

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.

bling

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".

rating system

Anything I rate 1-2 stars, I never want to hear again.

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?

More Frontalot and Hawking!

There are some OK tracks on this but not near enough Frontalot or Hawking.

Devo

was nerdcore in the 70's/80's.

I'm just sayin'

nerdcore

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.

Bah

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?)

Re:Bah

Yeah right, I'm sure CmdrTaco - founder and overlord of Slashdot - is just dying to be accepted as a true member of the 'nerd crowd' at Slashdot.

Bah...

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.

The Great Luke Ski!

Can't say I've ever even heard of nerdcore, but The Great Luke Ski [lukeski.com] 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 [lukeski.com], 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").

"I'll take you to my house..."

"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...".

Don't forget the nerdcore producers!

The musicians deserve credit too! My favourite is Finnish producer Tero [discogs.com] who has done live PA's with nothing but 2 Commodore 64s!

Thanks God...

Thank God I'm to old to be this much of a nerd.

No MC Plus+ mention?

He's going to bust a... (whatever geek rappers bust into people)

some bad nerdcore rap fer ya

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.

Post-Dre Gangsta

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)..

Stevens (R-Nerd)

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 [alternet.org] on C-SPAN whenever he wants to throw down the jive, so he's an artificial-hip-hopper, nationwide.

MC Frontalot

Not a single mention of MC Frontalot? Are you people nuts?!

http://frontalot.com/index.php [frontalot.com]

He's the most nerdcore!

Slashdot effect

I wished all my favorite shows' torrents were slashdotted in that way.

Why wasn't I consulted?!

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.

check out Hich-C's aka Sandwich Boy's other site

Here's the post about it on beos news.

http://beosnews.com/?postid=137 [beosnews.com]

Be sure to check out Wired in August.

Roosevelt Franklin

If you haven't heard anything by Roosevelt Franklin, go get their album "Something's Gotta Give."

In a different style

Les Horribles Cernettes [web.cern.ch] 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 [web.cern.ch] too.

how can you have an article on nerdcore

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

Just out of a mild curiosity...

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 [asssnake.com] 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'.

incidentally, thanks to all of those that pointed out MC Frontalot: very cool :D

im a hardcore raper u kno what im sayin

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.

non-rap

If you prefer rather twee nerd-pop, there's always Barcelona's 'I've Got The Password To Your Shell Account', mentioned here [kottke.org].

Redundancy.

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.

Geek the new Urban?

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.

RAR

What kind of "nerd" RARs files in a torrent? Fucking noob.

My twelve

1337 g33k b34t - Bill Gates Revolution
Beefy - Internet Celebrity
Beefy - Tub of Tabasco
Futuristic Sex Robotz - WoW
Incredibad - I Think I Might Have Killed The President
MC Hawking - Rock Out
MC Jeff Z - No Money
Monzy - Kill Dash Nine
Monzy - So Much Drama in the PhD
Myf - Top Secret
Rappy McRapperson - I'm a Gangsta
Sudden Death - Reign of Error

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.

Re:Geez

Or maybe geeks recognize those bands as the most overrated acts in the history of music.

Re:Geez

"I dunno, with (c)rap, it seems if you had enough equipment (sampling, drum machine, mixing) and write some rhymes...anyone can do it. Hell, I could probably do it....and if that's the case, it can't possibly be talent. Anybody can shout out phrases to a drum beat...what happened to people that can actually sing, play instruments, work in melodies and harmonies...?" Whenever I hear someone say something like this, the first thought that runs through my head is that they haven't heard any rap other than what they play on the radio. In fact, I used to think the same way. The way I like to explain it is this: if you want to hear good non-rap music, would you listen to the top 40 stations? Would you watch MTV? I know I wouldn't. So why apply the same standard to rap music? Sure the mainstream sucks, it's the mainstream, that's what's expected. But if people were to actually take the time to search I think they would see that there are many rappers and MC's out there that really are creating art, I consider a lot of rappers to be some of the best songwriters and producers that I've ever heard.

Re:Geez

Right... because drum machines & samplers aren't instruments and speaking in complex rythmical patterns is not a vocal skill.

There's a lot of lousy, uninspired rap out there but that doesn't mean the whole genre is devoid of artistic talent.

Re:Geez

But that would require social interaction!! On a serious note manufactured music is much easier for a lone artist to produce. And thats exactly what most of these artist are. Like MC Chris or MC Lars (mcchris.com and mclars.com). Occasionally they collaborate or bring in other people but for the most part it's just one guy sitting at his computer recording his voice and using loops to produce the background track.

Re:Geez

> 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.

Filk is a long-standing Hackish tradition, and Nerdcore is merely its latest incarnation.

But since you asked, how about blues?

Just One More Hack [colorado.edu], and then the author of the UPS debugger will put it on the 'net...

Well, I've written a debugger and it suits me just fine It'll chase away your problems, turn your water into wine
It's got so many features, in fact it's bloody clever,
If it can't solve your problem then your problem probably never
can be solved
so you might as well pack it on in,
coz it's the best debugger that there's ever been.

It's got everything you wanted, everything you desire.
It'll handle fancy structures, set your soul on fire,
It'll indirect through pointers, and catch a falling star,
and if you ask it nicely it'll pop off to the bar
and tell your friends
how to solve the problems they're in,
coz it's the best debugger that there's ever been.

If you've got a nasty problem and your data structure's bent
and your pointer's in a tangle with your structure elements,
If you're losing all your memory coz your allocator leaks
And your girl's getting nasty coz she's not seen you for weeks,
then stoke up Mark's debugger
you know it'll win,
coz it's the best debugger that there's ever been....

MP3 version available at: Just One More Hack [nosuch.com] - Mark Wheadon, ca. 1991-1992.

Re:Geez

What is art? What is style? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? What is good/bad music?

All these questions to be answered in our forthcoming slashdot discussion thread.

PS: I tend to post my wide-sweeping taste/art/style etc generalisations anonymously...

Re:Geez

Well, basically we want to have something to define us, too.

It's cool to have some music, some lyrics, some inside jokes that nobody "gets" but you. Find me a non-nerd who could appreciate something like "2B or not 2B, that is FF".

Same with music. And its lyrics, its style, the way it works.

Re:Geez

This is a joke right?

Music is an art. You dont have to be the best with a brush to make great are. Likewise, Skilled hands dont always make the most heartfelt pieces.

An artist needs to be proficient enough to express what they want, in the manner they truely envisioned because, thankfully, art is not defined by the strict confines of scientific/mathematical perfection.

Translation:

Dream Theater is the pizza topping equivalent of DUB CHEE.

Re:Geez

I see, it's not music you like, therefore it's not real. How closed minded.

Once I stiopped disliking music because of it's genre, I found a lot of really good stuff.

I think EmmnEmm is a fantastic story teller who has some music that really cuts to the painfull part of parenting.

Re:Awesome Rapper

The front is one of the top in this genre.

I've seen him live a few times, he puts on a good show with a band and all.

Re:Geez

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.

On the other hand, it's no surprise that a nerd who values intelligence above all else would fail to realize musical taste has nothing to do with intelligence.

Re:Geez

"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..."

"Yup, and do remember to try NOT to use the words "rap" and "music" in the same sentence, as that they are mutually exclusive terms, kind of like military intelligence."

Whew....lots of rapsters with mod points in here. Can't take a joke?

:-)

Re:Emulation Station

that's a 21-year-old woman. http://www.myspace.com/1gb [myspace.com]

Re:Meh...

Seconding the nod for FSR. It isn't just nerd rap; we're talking GANGSTER nerd rap. They've even got a song they're hoping to get added to the soundtrack for Snakes on a Plane.

Re:Geez

Also, get off my damn lawn!

Re:Don't steal the word nerdcore!

i, for one, welcome our new rapping nerd overlords. hey, somebody had to say it.

Re:racist? maybe not, but it's sure crap

so what you're saying is, as long as the rhythm and delivery are there, the words are meaningless. nope, try again.

Re:racist? maybe not, but it's sure crap

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.

Re:Nerf Herder

I agree.