Today, not just my favorite nerd-core rap album, but one of my all-time favorite albums turns fifteen. MC Lars’ second studio album, This Gigantic Robot Kills, was a formative one as I ventured into the weird world of the nerd-core music genre, but it was the perfect segue into it due to Lars’ genius writing and features from artists like Wheatus, Weird Al” Yankovic and MC Frontalot.
To celebrate the anniversary of This Gigantic Robot Kills being released, I’m ranking my three favorite tracks. Let’s get into it.
3. True Player For Real (feat. Wheatus, “Weird Al” Yankovic)
It’s truly a flex to start a song by singing “We’ve got my childhood hero, “Weird Al” Yankovic playing accordion on this jam, That means we’ve made it, guys“. Getting your childhood hero on your autobiographical song means you’ve made it. That, and then he’s got Wheatus on the song as well, who has collaborated multiple times with MC Lars, my favorite track being Finite Jest. This was just one of their early works together.
What I enjoy so much about it is that it’s jovial from “Weird Al” playing accordion. Even when he raps about the not so positive moments in his life like being a Stanford grad living at his parents pad, it’s still upbeat. You couple that with his blend of writing that incorporates literary references and the history of hip-hop and you have one of his career best songs. “Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, I stay “Self Reliant”, Genre-defiant, all ages shows with Kobe Bryant, I just checked Billboard, my album’s in the charts, I think therefore I soundscan, right Descartes?“
2. White Kids Aren’t Hyphy
“I wish I was a little bit hyphy, I wish E-40 liked me, I wish I didn’t crash going ghostriding nightly, I wish I didn’t have to fact the fact that I’m whack on the track, white kids aren’t hyphy“. Writing and recording a song that, I’m assuming, makes fun of himself is hilarious. Lars raps about the idea of white kids in the Bay Area getting no respect on the mic due to them not being deemed cool enough, and it’s probably something he encountered early in his career.
The term hyphy is a Bay Area term that was first used by Keak da Sneak, and Lars writes in a part of the song about Keak da Sneak acknowledging his seizure induced dance moves; “‘Im up in the club in my brand new stunnas, Had a seizure from the strobe so my moves got dumber, Keak da Sneak looked at me and said ‘yo this kid can dance’“. His Bay Area callbacks all through the song made me enjoy it because he’s referencing his career roots.
He also adds a part where he accidentally kicks someones girlfriend in the face while dancing. “Check out this dance move, it’s the new hyphy style. You just throw your arms and legs around like you just got electrocuted. It’s the new hyphy style. Let’s get it twisted!, Easy man! You just kicked my girlfriend in the face! She’s bleeding everywhere!, Come on man…, Dude, you come on!” In my first listen it made me laugh. In my thousandth listen it made me laugh.
1. Hipster Girl
While Hipster Girl is my favorite song off This Gigantic Robot Kills, it’s also getting the top spot due to the fact that I always reference it when I write about the 2001 film, Donnie Darko (scroll to number forty-five). Aside from it being a great reference to stress the complexity of the film, it’s a great track.
A lot of Lars’ songs utilize satire to poke fun at people or groups or things, and in Hipster Girl, it’s on full display. In Hipster Girl, he’s making fun of the over-glamorized hipster lifestyle of the mid-2000s. Verses like “Queen of the hipster scene, Straight out of Vice magazine, Social outcast at sixteen, But now she lives her Boho dream” is genius. He’s pointing out how no one really is, or was, a hipster. The aesthetic was built of Vice (R.I.P.) articles and was adopted by, mostly, social outcasts. They romanticized ideas of trying to be effortlessly cool in the way they act and dress, but it’s really a facade.
A portion of the song that digs deeper to point out the ridiculous nature of the song is the ad-libs. Hearing a pretentious hipster girl say things like “Did I show you my new mini skirt/leggings combo?
You know what they say: ugly IS the new hot” is funny. She’s following the hipster fads that she thinks are in because she read something somewhere and that’ll all change in the blink of an eye. It’s brilliant writing that flaunts Lars’ ability to insert humor into his songs without going too over the top.
