SXSW 2008

AUSTIN — Damian Hess still remembers the day his nerd identity collided with his hip-hop future.

It was at fourth-grade YMCA day camp. He was grooving to "Rapper's Delight" on a turntable in the corner of the room. He especially liked the line about Superman and Lois Lane. He heard the song, liked it and got up to play it again.

"But the cool kids controlled the record player, and every time I would try to listen to it they would make fun of my jacket," he told me Tuesday at SXSW. "It was this mocha-colored faux-leather trench coat I had gotten at Salvation Army. It was apparently quite girlish."

Now, at age 34, the nerd has had his revenge.

Mr. Hess now goes by the name MC Frontalot, the leading light of the nerdcore hip-hop movement on display in the SXSW documentary Nerdcore Rising. He was greeted like a rock star at Sunday night's sold-out festival screening packed with his core constituents.

You know. Nerds.

Nerdcore hip-hop is pretty much what it sounds like. You take World of Warcraft or Star Wars fanatics, set 'em loose with some rhymes, a microphone and some curious dance moves and let them do their thing.

http://frontalot.com/

Mc Frontalot

Then, if you're MC Frontalot, you soak up the adulation of fellow nerds who follow you from show to show as you jam out to "I Hate Your Blog" and "Romantic Cheapskate v.2.0."

Frontalot may be the leader of the nerdcore movement, but he's hardly the only nerd on the scene at SXSW. Remember, the festival has its own interactive conference, featuring panels called "A General Theory of Creative Relativity" and "Can Wii Learn? Using Wiimotes in E-Learning." Brainiacs abound here.

And this year they have an unusual amount of company in the film bracket. Once you've seen Nerdcore Rising you can check out Blip Festival, a doc about circuit wizards who compose and perform electronic music using old video games (they call it "chip music"). Or Second Skin, which looks at the dark side of addiction to Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) including World of Warcraft.

Indeed, you can't throw a microchip around here without hitting a nerd. Which raises the question: Is it possible to be popular and retain your nerd credibility? After all, many of the artists in Blip Festival appear to be half nerd, half hip club kid.

Mr. Hess ponders.

"Do I fear impending coolness?" He asks himself out loud. In his plaid jacket and soul-patch beardlet he could pass for a hipster. "The neat thing about having an audience with certain proclivities is that even if I became a superstar of nerd-dom, I would still just be appealing to all of the nerds. I'm never going to be cool. I know because of my personality that I'm never going to running around with Lindsay Lohan."

"Famous last words, MC Frontalot," retorts Nerdcore Rising director Negin Farsad. Ms. Farsad made the film after she became enamored of nerdcore fan passion. "I found a dedicated, supersmart, superdorky legion of fans," she says.

She also has her own utilitarian theory of nerdiness.

"A lot of people ask if nerd is the new cool," she says. "I think it goes beyond that. Nerds are the new necessary. You need a geek around to help you at all times with computer problems. You take back the word. There's utility in being a nerd, and the tech revolution has made that widespread. Nerdcore is just a cultural embodiment of the new nerdish necessity."

In other words, what the world needs now is nerds. Nerds, sweet nerds.

Even the ones with girlish trench coats.