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| Sharon M. Steinman / Fort Worth Star-telegram |
 Down with D&D, yeah you know me: T-Byte and MC Router (right) in Waco, Texas. |
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WACO, Texas - A cramped upstairs bedroom in an apartment complex with all the whimsical charm of a Soviet prison block doesn't seem like the kind of place where a new branch of hip-hop would take root. But here, within hollering distance of Baylor University, are Fort Worth's Kristin Ritchie and Tannar Brown - aka MC Router and producer T-Byte - staying inside on a sun-washed Saturday afternoon to lay down a rap that combines their love of high-tech and hard beats.
And while this particular song, booming with an old-school, retro-electro Kraftwerk/Afrika Bambaataa-style groove, has a title that includes a rhymes-with-rich word that's no stranger to the hip-hop lexicon, others in the MC Router catalog are more Silicon Valley than South Bronx.
"One of my very first raps was a `Halo' rap," says Router, 20, referencing the popular video game. "And then `Bill Gates' was the first professional one."
She's talking about "Bill Gates Revolution," a track on her coming album that's an anti-Microsoft rap where "the operating system is so old, it was a horror story my grandmother told."
Welcome to the world of nerdcore - some call it "geeksta" - where math majors, computer-code cowboys and other young scientific Americans celebrate their love of algorithms and hip-hop rhythms.
To quote a nerdcore performer, MC Hawking, who raps in an electronically distorted voice that makes him sound like famed physicist Stephen Hawking, they're "young, gifted and tenured."
At first a minor curiosity spread by word-of-mouth and MySpace pages, nerdcore is starting to attract broader attention. While major labels have yet to take the plunge, two documentaries, "Nerdcore for Life" and "Nerdcore Rising," are in the works. And nerdcore performances were featured during last month's CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, where all the tech gurus gather to sample the latest gadgetry.
Chicago-based film director Dan Lamoureux had never heard of nerdcore until a couple of years back when he went to see a club show from MC Chris, whom he knew only from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." He was surprised to stumble into a whole geek world.
"He raps about being a geek, and he has this huge following," he remembers. "They were calling it nerdcore. How can this be a genre of music? As soon as I got home, I Googled it. As soon as I started looking into it, I figured if I'm curious, other people would be curious."
So he started to film "Nerdcore for Life" for which he hopes to line up distribution shortly. He says he found his subjects refreshingly honest. "They may be pretending to be bigger nerds than they are sometimes, but they like hip-hop and want to make it their own," he says. "They're not rapping about things they don't know about."
Even though, as journalist Robert Andrews says of their rap skills, "there's not a Jay-Z among them," there's a musical split between those with a more genuine hip-hop style (MC Frontalot, MC Plus+, and the best of the bunch, a hacker-turned-rapper called ytcracker (pronounced "whitey cracker"), who has a Paul Wall-like swagger) and those who have a more comedic approach (MC Lars, MC Chris, MC Harding).
But, in either case, all agree that everyone - no matter the class, color or musical preference - can relate to nerdiness on some level.
In fact, MC Router is dismayed that nerdcore, still far from a household term, is as popular as it is. "Now people are just jumping on the bandwagon like it's the new emo. It's the new Hot Topic," she says dismissively.
"I've done over 200 shows, toured the entire country," says MC Chris. "There are black people at every show, and a lot of times they're nerdier than the white guys. It's old people, jocks, kids, girls, every race. Anybody can be a loser.
"You don't have to walk around with a pocket protector. The guy who memorizes baseball stats is a nerd. Nerds are everywhere and it's about accepting it, coming to terms with it, and having a little pride."
