The Sandspur

Issue date: 2/26/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment

"Hacking on computers disassembling stuff
Paid off in the end, now who got it rough
The beauty of the baud and the world of the switch Make a new generation of us geekstas"
-ytcracker,
"Meganerd Baby"

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-withrich 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, computercode cowboys and other young scientific Americans celebrate their love of algorithms and hip-hop rhythms. Among those
whose burgeoning underground success is exacting sweet revenge on those who excluded them from high school's cool-kid cliques:

MC Plus+, a Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, took his name from a programming
language and named one of his albums "Computer Science for Life."

Computer programmer Monzy has a master's degree from MIT and is a Ph.D. candidate at
Stanford. His debut disc: "Drama in the PhD."

Boston's MC Frontalot, whom some consider to be the nerdcore George Washington because he
whipped up the geek anthem "Nerdcore Hip-Hop" back in 2000, is a Web designer who only recently cut back on his client list to
concentrate on his music career.

New York's MC Chris is known for his high-pitched raps and Cartoon Network connection
(he's the voice of MC Pee Pants in "Aqua Teen Hunger Force") but his background includes stops at the Art Institute of Chicago and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Continued...

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