Apparently, Juggalos Like Dexter

The Jewddhist and the Druid invited me out for a night of raucous merriment, and a nerdcore-concert headlined by MC Lars and that guy with that song about Boba Fett’s Corvette. Arriving only a couple of hours late, I was surprised both at the fact that the second act was on his last song and that the sweltering heat and sweat-humidity from the huddled masses of young black-clad emo-hipster nerd-rock wannabes reminded me uncomfortably of certain market streets in Vietnam. I moved my wallet to my front pocket, kept my hand over it, and complained loudly about bands starting on time. I mean, really, WTF.

MC Chris was the headliner, and the fucker legitimately packed more of a punch in his show than you’d expect from his hobbit-frame/leprechaun-voiced deportment. Seriously, he looks and sounds like a svelte dwarf who just got finished mainlining helium into his alveoli, which I don’t even think is possible. The point is, it was a badass show; two parts hip-hop, one part nerd-comedy routine.

I’ll give props- this guy isn’t Aesop (you’re all familiar with my unbounded and unfettered devotion to all things Aesop), but is in the same vein of white rap-artists who bend the genre into contortions so odd you think they’re doing yoga until you see the cock and realize they’re actually having sex in that pose. His beats are consistently fast, and filled with synth- there’s very little rock or traditional jazz in here. His delivery matches that speed, frequently delivering a veritable avalanche of internal rhyme. Nevertheless, he’s unafraid to experiment with tempo or use big-words. His main calling-card is nerd-culture, so he deals with a lot of Star-Wars, ninjas, action figures, jedi, Street Fighter, storm troopers, and things like that. What makes him stand out is his humor though.

Consider his introduction to ‘Hoodie Ninja’
‘This song is about a boy who sneaks out one night to climb a tree to masturbate to a redheaded classmate of his getting undressed. And on the way home, he takes a shit on his gym teacher’s front porch.’

Or his somewhat longer introduction to a song about the Clone Wars:

“Fuckin Fridays are the best, you know why? ‘Cuz CLONE WARS IS BACK! FUCK YEAH! But as badass as it is, somewhere there’s a guy out there whose kid really loves this show. Fuckin loves this show, man. And he comes up to his dad, and he’s like ‘Hey dad, fuckin Clone Wars is awesome. Obi-Wan and Anakin are such great friends they’re gonna be heroes and friends forever. And the clone troopers? These guys have got to be the best troopers ever because they've always got each others' backs and people say they’re all the same but whatever they have different hair and they talk different and one guy painted his ‘craft to look like a shark. A fuckin shark. These guys are awesome and they do such a good job doing every awesome and I love it.’”

“And you’re gonna be like ‘Ah, shit. Look, Timmy… Ah… I knew this day would come … Ah… Look, all the clone troopers die off when they fight the Jedi when Palpatine unleashes his evil plan for domination and Anakin turns to the dark side and Obi-Wan slices of three fingers of his hand and his arm on a volcano planet and he turns into a robot cyborg that kills the Jedi starting with the children. The fucking children.’”

"That’s like saying ‘You know how Bert and Ernie are best friends? Well Bert slashes Ernie’s arm and three fingers off, and Ernie turns to the dark side and becomes half-machine and kills everyone on Sesame Street. Starting with the viewers.’”

There’s three more iterations in that skit, but that’s pretty representative. And his delivery is impeccable; great tempo, great timing.

What I was looking for was connection though, how the artist connects with the crowd. MC Chris jumped on-stage and didn’t even go into his act, he played some bullshit country song and tried to sing along with the words and failed- turned out it was a joke, because, you know, Texas likes country music, and stuff. During his actual set, he got the crowd moving, arms in the air, side-to-side, even got us dancing a little bit, which I thought was amazing. The crowd was already warm, but what put them over the top was the fact that his hobbit-like antics were so ridiculously charismatic. He’s funny, he’s loud, I’m guessing chicks dig him because they like any dude with a mic on the stage, and he acted completely without hesitation. The man radiated confidence, and I think that’s the source of where people are willing to follow his lead.

Curiously though, he had to open up to eye-contact. The first couple of songs he mostly rapped to himself with his eyes closed, either from an incomplete warm-up or too much pot beforehand, I don’t know. He grooved more eye-contact into his work towards the latter end. Just something I thought was of-note.

One a won to tin scale, I give this a rating of Warhammer 40K. Its better than a sharp stick in the eye, but I couldn’t really make out the words to what he was saying (I’ve never been able to, at any show), so you kind of have to have listened to the album, and the only song I’d heard him perform was the Boba-Fett-‘Vette song. Also, Jesus tap-dancing torrent-bashing Christ, it was hot in there. My pants and shirt are all a solid color- there’s not a single spot that didn’t completely soak through the fabric. Even the denim. Denim. Denim was soaked through. How is that even possible?

Also, I paid $10 for a CD. CD has seven fucking songs on it. I’m so DLing his discography guilt-free.

But it wasn’t a bad show. In fact, it was a very good show, I just wasn’t prepared for it, and I’m not really into nerd-core. I have too much violence in my heart to really enjoy the collecting, the cathecting, the cosplay and the complete isolation involved in actually being a nerd. I’ve been there, got the T-shirt, probably have a few character sheets lying around here somewhere, but I’ve moved on. It’s good to look back though. Like XKCD, I feel like part of a special club when I get the jokes