Last Saturday I drove all the way down to Monterey to watch a show with my knuckleheads MC Frontalot and YTcracker, and their friend MC Lars

TH98 WHO ARE MC FRONTALOT AND MC LARS AND YTCRACKER

Well I will tell you

They are funny nerd rappers, like
[quote=Monterey Herald]Nerd rap
Three avatars of rap music's latest subgenre, Nerdcore, will perform Saturday night at Monterey Live
By MARC CABRERA
Herald Staff Writer
Posted: 11/20/2008 01:41:55 AM PST



In 1993, New York rappers M.O.P. asked fans "How 'Bout Some Hardcore," to which they responded in chorus "Yeah, we like it raw."

Fifteen years later, MC Frontalot, ytcracker and the Monterey Peninsula's own MC Lars are asking "How 'bout some Nerdcore?"

The avatars of rap music's latest subgenre, Nerdcore, will stop through Monterey early Saturday evening when the three aforementioned MCs perform at Monterey Live.

The show starts at 5:30 p.m., so nerdcore fans can get home in time to download the latest "Star Trek" movie trailer.

The term nerdcore was coined by MC Frontalot, real name Damien Hess, a San Francisco-based musician who started recording under the Frontalot stage name in the late 1990s.

Sporting a freshly shaved dome, nerd goggles, short-sleeve button-up and clashing tie, Frontalot's stage persona and lyrics are extreme examples of the genre's parody.

Peep the lyrics from the song that inspired a documentary, "Nerdcore Rising."

"Nerdcore used to be just a made-up word. What occurred?

MCs shied away from belief. Rest assured:

they sleep hard no longer. We deliver the hits

that give the kids with the spectacles spectacular fits!"

Ytcracker is the thug of the bunch, with credentials that include getting popped for hacking into the Web site of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

His style features fewer quirks than his counterparts, but it's still nerded out. In 2006, he released NerdRap Entertainment System, a nine-track album featuring songs composed from samples of classic Nintendo games, including Mega Man, Legend of Zelda and Dig Dug.

MC Lars, a Stevenson School grad who also completed undergrad and graduate studies at Stanford and Oxford universities, is less nerdcore and more post-punk laptop rap (there is a difference).

He's gained a following through his citation of classic works of literature, from "MacBeth" to "The Raven," in his lyrics as well as the modern rock radio hit "Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock."

The three lads talked to The Herald while on the road from Oregon heading to Oakland. They discussed nerdcore, groupies and the stereotypes that nerdcore artists and fans endure at the hands of media:

Q: What are you calling this tour?

Frontalot: The ultimate Automaton tour.

Q: What's the meaning behind the name?

F: That would be the last robot you'd run into in any given situation.

Q: Tell me a little bit about the scene you guys are promoting. What's unique about nerdcore?

F: It's called nerdcore hip-hop. It's a subgenre of hip-hop, mostly created by people who are nerdy instead of cool. You know how rappers are usually cool? We don't have to worry about that too much. We just do the things we're interested in without worrying about how it sounds.

ytcracker: I worry about how it sounds.

F: I mean, we don't worry about how it sounds in terms of impressing people with how cool I am or, you know, the fullness of my buttocks or my pectoral muscles. I don't know what cool kids are obsessed with. I never had a handle on it so I try to ignore it in my work.

Q: Lars, I know you've been on the post-punk laptop hip-hop steez. Do you also see yourself as a nerdcore artist. How do you fit in here?

Lars: I was on wikipedia.org, and I saw under the nerdcore article, they listed me as a nerdcore artist. Then, I realized, since I'm looking up nerdcore on Wikipedia, I said to myself I already am (a nerdcore artist) ...

If kids are going to be coming out to the show, I'll say I'm nerdcore, but I won't put it on a shirt or anything.

Q: ytcracker, how did you get tagged as the undisputed king of nerdcore?

yt: I'm just the king from being a bragging guy. I'm a digital gangster. I'll ruin people's lives if they cross me.

Lars: (asking ytcracker) Are you a famous hacker? Have you had problems with the law for hacking and stuff?

yt: Indeed I have, MC Lars.

Lars: Tell us about that.

yt: In 1999, I was convicted for hacking multiple government agencies and law enforcement agencies at my school. I spun that around and made rhymes about it and people started to listen to me. And I'm also a major spammer on the Internet. Unlike MC Frontalot, I do care about what people think. I'm cool.

Q: What kind of girls come out to your shows?

Frontalot: You might think there wouldn't be all that many, but it usually comes out to about 30 percent of the audience are women, but it's still a boy-heavy audience. There's a lot of lovely little nerd girls that like to consume rap in person.

yt: There's a lot of hot indie rock chicks that come to our shows.

Frontalot: Yeah, those are Lars' fans.

Lars: Basically, it's this fusion of worlds who come out. It's not just nerdy kids who play too much XBox, even though that's a large part of the demographic.

yt: Being a nerd is kind of cool now, so some chicks understand that's where the money is at. And even if you don't have any money, you can still front like you do.

Q: Is this all about thumbing your nose at mainstream hip-hop? How much shtick is this and how much is it flexing artistically?

Frontalot: One hundred percent flexing artistically. No aspect of parodying major hip-hop. No thumbing our nose at major hip-hop. We have nothing but respect for mainstream hip-hop. We're doing our own thing that comes out of us.

yt: It's sort of a head fake I guess, like quote-unquote regular rap. It's rapping about what you know. It's telling the stories of what we do. The media has more pushed a label on it. Part of it, I think MC Lars put it best, is if you tell somebody this is a nerdcore record, then you kind of know what to expect to hear on it. If somebody handed you a hardcore record, or a heavy metal record, or an industrial record, you know what to expect when you turn it on. Same thing with nerdcore. It's basically a way to communicate to the fans what they're going to hear on a record.

Lars: You know how KRS-ONE said, "Rap is something you do, hip-hop is something you live?" This is hip-hop, because we're just talking about our lives. It so happens we live in this different demographic. Being part of the nerdcore is something that flourished, and for me, it's something that ties into (what I already do), but really, at the end of the day, it's just hip-hop.

Q: Do you have to be white and from the suburbs to be into nerdcore. Do you get black or Latino kids at your shows?

yt: I get lots of black and Latino kids at my shows, but my sounds got more of an edge (to it). There are black nerdcore artists that are awesome. It blurs color lines. In general hip-hop and rap, there's a lot of white guys buying CDs.

You see a lot of white kids at the shows. But there's a lot of people that are into video games and are good at computers. It's proliferated so much in the mainstream that it's no one race that owns this stuff anymore. That's like reverse racism to imply that it's owned by white kids or whatever.[/quote]

ACT 1
So it's about a 1-hour drive from where I live to Monterey, which isn't that bad (plus the show started early so it was light on the way over there). I showed up, and was immediately accosted by this guy who worked at the club who didn't know anything but wanted to be in charge anyway. He called everyone "brother."

So he was like "hey brother, can I see your ID" so I gave it to him (I am 19) and he was like "well this is a 21+ show as far as I know (it was an all ages show) but I guess since you are on the guest list it's okay (me and Frontalot and YTcracker are tight like that) but don't drink any or we will throw you out brother"

So I was like "OK" and he was like "peace brother"

So then I chilled for a while and talked to some people there who were like, hella nerds, then I talked to MC Lars and he was real nice and told me to hit him up later with beats and ****. I actually didn't know until today that MC Lars is actually from Monterey, so maybe we will hit it off or something. Nullus.

I was thirsty so I went to the bar and I was like "hey can I have some bottled water" and they gave me some that was called "Fred" and shaped really weird, like whiskey or some kind of lotion:

So I was drinking it and wouldn't you know it that guy comes back and he's like "hey brother I told you not to drink alcohol" and I'm like "it's not alcohol it's water" and he's like "oh...well we don't allow any outside beverages brother" and I'm like "I got it from the bar" and he's like "really?" and I'm like "yeah" and he's like "seriously?" and I'm like "yeah really" and so he doesn't believe me so he goes off to the bar to check. And I'm like "MC Frontalot what's that guy's deal huh" and MC Frontalot is like "he's a douchebag" and then the guy comes back and he's like "sorry my bad" and I'm like "it's ok brother"

Then nerds started arriving and it was time for the show

YTcracker went first, and he had to play his beats off an iPod but MC Frontalot's drummer did live drums which was really cool. MC Frontalot's drummer is named Sturgis but his nerd name is The Sturgenius. MC Lars did hype man duties for YTcracker.

Here is a video:


After that MC Frontalot came and was hilarious as usual. Despite being a music-ruining rap artist, he has a ridiculously tight funk band to back him up (the keyboardist, who was named Gorloth the Merciless or something like that, was a stand in because their regular keyboardist had to leave after they crashed their trailer)

Here is a video of when they crashed their trailer on the freeway in some boring state that nobody has heard of

Watch out there's some swearing and neckbeard in this video

After that MC Lars came on. He does kind of a weird pop-punk style with really dated rapping but the energy was great and he had a funny as hell video show that went along with all the songs.

At the end they all sang a song together and it was very heartwarming

ACT 2
After the show, everyone was getting out of there pretty quick. MC Frontalot gave me some official MC Frontalot nerd glasses, which look like this:

He also gave me a big stack of CDs which were mostly broken but he didn't know that (I didn't notice until I got home)

I went back to my car and had to figure out how to get home. It was pretty much the worst thing ever. I ended up calling home several times to get directions since MapQuest didn't seem entirely aware of the fact that Monterey is almost entirely made up of one-way streets and nearly impossible to escape from.

I finally got onto highway 1 but then I had to pee really bad and it was a 1 hour trip and I was like yo **** this and I pulled off and found a gas station and it took a while to find another onramp but I DID.

Then I was all chill and I turned on the radio but I stopped paying attention to the road and suddenly the lane I was in turned into an offramp so I was like ****

At this point it was pitch dark at night and also getting foggy, hard to read the signs and whatnot. I found a road leading back to the general area of my accidental departure from Highway 1 but it turned into an onramp going the OPPOSITE DIRECTION so I was like OH NO and pulled off again.

Eventually I found a dirt area on the side of the road and got out and called home for directions again, but apparently leaving your car parked in a dirt lot with the lights on and standing outside with a fitted cap on talking on a cell phone is a bad idea because after a couple minutes some drug dealers pulled up and rolled down the window and were like "what's going on here" and I was like "I'm getting directions" and they were like "oh ok"

So then I got back on the freeway and drove home. It was pretty uneventful except for me almost plowing through a bunch of drunk people at 30 miles an hour

Oh yeah and Moss Landing looks cool as hell at night


That's pretty much it really

(Moss Landing is a tiny town in between Santa Cruz and Monterey whose only notable feature is the gigantic power plant you can see from across the god damn bay, although you wouldn't know it from their website

Awesome story!

was it this guy?

Awesome, Thrawn

Nifty story, that's probably as good a nerdcore roadtrip yarn as I've ever heard.

The Moss Landing photo in particular is kool, though I think if you find yourself taking pictures of power plants you've probably been playing too many edgy modern shooters/HL2

When are you gonna perform your shizzz in front of an audience and get famous in nerdcore circles or the greater urban African-rooted music society? Not that I think you should be limited to either, because the best elements of your music (song structure/clever sampling) are universal.

Heh, a Thrawn[numbarz] roadtrip!

First I've heard of nerdcore, though, so thanks for the introduction.