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Music critics have been raining the "nerd-rap" designation on white rappers faster than the contents of Fat Joe's billfold over strip club floors. Blame Atmosphere. Blame The Streets. Blame Justin Timberlake. But no ivory emcee is safe.
He's white? Nerd-rap. He's from the Midwest? Nerd-rap. He rhymes about broken hearts? Nerd-rap.
But what if "he" graduated from Stanford with a degree in English after studying abroad at Oxford? Then, armed with a laptop and a wordsmith's tongue, "he" started dropping rhymes about his roommate Satan's obnoxious Trapt posters and his hipster-chick girlfriend's love for Conor Oberst? Then "he" started playing shows at places like Kilby Court on nights like tonight?
OK, so MC Lars wears the typecast's pocket-protector with pride, but it's this erudite emcee's unapologetic geekiness that makes him all the more gangster.
MC Lars' latest laptop offering, The Graduate, busts drive-by caps at the commodification of the underground ("Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock"), the ridiculousness of MySpace romance ("Internet Relationships Are Not Real Relationships") and the major label manufacturing of the nerd-rock craze ("Signing Emo").
MC Lars comes off as even more thug on tracks like "Ahab" that witness the emcee gripping true to his roots: Lit History and '90s alternative rock.
As the whitest-voice-to-hit-the-wax-since-"Ice, Ice Baby," Lars spits, "I didn't think that it would end like this/
Pride met fate, this captain got dissed/ Let it be a lesson, revenge is never sweet/ So I stomp my peg to this Supergrass beat!" over a track sampled from -- yes, it's true -- post-grunge, Brit-rockers Supergrass.
It's hard to imagine hip-hop getting any more legit.
With the integrity of gangster rap drowning beneath its own bling, could campus be the new Compton? Ben Sherman the new Ben Davis? Vespa the new Impala? Texas Instruments the new Smith & Wesson? Could doing time come to refer to finishing a Ph.D. and not a drug-related prison sentence?
One thing's certain: College kids and gangster rappers will forever share a mutual adoration for smoky dance clubs, 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor and, well, gangster rap.
But these ill literati -- spearheaded by knowledge-dropper Lars -- are proving that there's nothing nerdy about keeping rap real.
MC Lars' lecture will ring through Kilby Court around 7:30 p.m. for a mere $7.
