In the RED eye....
When I'm not working on the things nerdcore-related I do have a day job and that day job takes place in the Chicago Loop. There's a free daily paper out here called the Red Eye which is published by the Chicago Tribune. Every day, walking through downtown I pass about 40,000 Red Eye boxes every day just like this one ------->
Its a great paper since 1. its free and 2. its light reading and mostly focuses on goofy stuff and short articles...perfect for killing a little down time at work. I read the paper a lot so its especially cool that they ran a story about the documentary the other day. Ok, it was really about Nerdcore in general but it mostly focused on the film. What's funny is that I don't actually have a copy of the peice since the day the paper runs the story is the day I was off work and not near one of the freaky paper boxes. The article was posted on-line though. Here's the whole thing:
Beats and Geeks
They are rebels and raconteurs who go by colorful names like Optimus Rhyme, YTCracker and MC Frontalot. The personalities behind the underground music movement nerdcore use
the technology they love to create music—about the technology they love. Now the "geeksta rap" movement may be poised to break into the mainstream.
Subjects such as "Star Wars" and Nintendo, along with a few others that you'd have to be an uber-nerd to understand. "It's an extension of geek fandom, and casual fans may not get it," Lamoureux told me.
In essence, nerdcore is geek hip-hop. Its origins can be traced back to the late '90s when young people with "cutting edge" technology like fast computers and Internet connections began experimenting and creating their own music. Before you knew it, there was a network of artists creating and releasing tracks over the Internet.
Lamoureux has met many of the characters who are part of the nerdcore movement, including female "ghetto-tech" rapper MC Router, the self-proclaimed First Lady of Nerdcore.
"She is a very interesting person," he said, "a hard-core, hard-living nerd."
Lamoureux said that when MC Router arrived for a screening of the documentary in Madison, Wis., she admitted to drinking some 40-ounce bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon. She was more than boisterous, flipping off an image of Nursehella, a rapper rival to Router.
"She went berserk," he said.
That's not the sort of action you'd expect from someone who raps about dealing with a computer virus, but there are feuds within the nerdcore community, Lamoureux said, although the equivalent of East Coast versus West Coast in nerdcore is Purdue versus Stanford universities. (Both have computer science departments with nerdcore crews.)
Lamoureux told me the feud ended amicably at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last year, when both crews met and decided to "bury the motherboard."
Despite its feuds and showdowns, I still wonder whether nerdcore can break through into mainstream music. Lamoureux said true nerdcore fanatics don't often buy CDs because they are accustomed to downloading music for free. This raises doubts about the profitability of the genre for most re cord labels.
Then again, video game TV channel G4 uses music of some nerdcore rappers for its programming, which may attract nerds and geeks with disposable incomes. And Lamoureux's documentary could spread the word "nerdcore" as well.
When asked whether he was a nerd or a geek, Lamoureux gave another option: "I'm more of a dork. Nerds and geeks have skills. Within the hierarchy you have geek, then nerd, and then dork on the bottom.
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So its an ok piece but it really could have used a photo and I swear, there is now way I used the phrase "bury the motherboard." I mean seriously, come on, give me a little credit.
Click here to check out the web version of the article which is totally identical to what I just posted above.
