In high school, nerds were banished to the dark land of A&V Club, with "Magic: The Gathering" cards spilling out of their pockets, rarely seen or heard from. But things have changed. Techy and trekkie love has now met its soul mate in the form of hip-hop, and its love child is named nerdcore.
Nerdcore is essentially nerd hip-hop. Take some good beats, a hip-hop sensibility, mix in some clever lyrics about "Lord of The Rings," video games or other nerd denominators and you've got nerdcore.
What started out as the proudly geeky playing around on their computers has spread across the Web to become an underground sensation. Notable nerdcore artists have emerged such as Optimus Rhyme, MC Router and MC Frontalot, the man who named the genre with his 2000 song "Nerdcore Hiphop."
Frontalot, a 34-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y. resident whose album, "Nerdcore Rising," was featured on the front page of iTunes, describes himself as "Too dorky to be a rapper but rapping anyway," in an e-mail. He explains the nerdcore scene seemed to just grow after he gave it a name.
"I guess technically the scene has drawn itself up around me," Frontalot says, "That sounds unutterably arrogant! All I mean is: I came up with the term to describe what I was doing … and now a lot of people use the term to describe their own rapping, and a scene has developed among them."
Frontalot, or "the Godfather of Nerdcore," sings songs on topics ranging from a disturbing sexual experience with a girl dressed as Princess Leia in "Yellow Lasers" to a song about a toilet-paper factory used in the DVD "Elmo's Potty Time."
Many nerdcore rappers still hold day jobs, but Frontalot is solely supported by his geek-inspired music. He proves just how far nerds have come in the public eye when answering the question, "Are you popular with the ladies?"
"More than I ever thought possible," Frontalot says. "But still, not very."
Chris Avila, a Chandler resident and former ASU student, only discovered nerdcore recently but has already become an ardent fan.
Avila claims his nerdiness manifests itself in "the more classical sci-fi way" with symptoms such as a deep love for "Star Trek." He says he appreciates nerdcore because it "plumbs some of the nerdiest depths of the human experience."
Avila is also a free-style rap-battle enthusiast, and says he showcases his nerdcore skills whenever possible. "But it's hard to find people (for battles), as you can probably imagine," Avila says.
When attempting to list other music he enjoys, Avila jokingly says, "There's music outside of nerdcore?"
Avila hopes to someday pursue a career in nerdcore, though maybe not a full-time one.
"The genre isn't mainstream enough to make it a full-time job yet," Avila says. "It would mostly be a hobby on the side."
Reach the reporter at: lana.burke@asu.edu.
