Nerdcore Undercover

The title of this compilation is totally misleading.

First off, not all of the submissions are hip-hop, and some of the artists themselves actually eschew the nerdcore label. Second, it’s not simply a collection of covers; it’s more a selection of reinterpretations ranging from covers to parodies to full-on rewrites.

Of course Nerdcore Undercover has a much more pleasing aesthetic than An Anthology of Song Reinterpretations by Artists That Are Nerdy But Not Necessarily Nerdcore. That shit just sounds silly.

I’ve been working on this compilation for the last few months, and I have to say that by “working on this compilation” I mean haphazardly emailing artists to ask for submissions. They did all the real work. This is their project. Clearly, I’m just here to hijack the credit.

Let me reiterate: a lot of hard work went into putting this release together, and very little of it was on my end. Guys like funky49 and Ultraklystron did more than their fair share by creating excitingly fresh covers and helping others do the same. Cats like Doctor Popular and My Parents Favorite Music scoured their back catalogues for old gems. Hell, artists like Shael Riley and Goondocks even went so far as to have brand-spanking new songs deftly recorded and competently mastered, almost as if this were a legitimate album and not just a downloadable freebie from some hick’s blog.

I truly can’t thank them enough.

The same can be said for folks like my pal Brüx (who tried to distill years of recording and sound engineering experience and instruction into a half-dozen emails for my benefit), my faithful comrade Church (who helped me wade through my text-heavy elucidations concerning the project), and my friends Dennis and Denika (who put together the cover art amid moving cross-country.) Truthfully, I owe tons of thanks to a bunch of people. So much so that I gush over them in the liner notes, so please read ‘em.

If you're still scratching your head concerning where, exactly, this album came from, that's totally understandable. I obviously didn’t do a lot in the way of pre-release promotion for this project, and that was due to a number of reasons.

The most straightforward is that I had to forgo an open submission process in order to limit the number of tracks I was dealing with. Even though mine was the easy part, there was no feasible way to get more than a single disk’s worth of music together and still meet my self-imposed deadline. I started down a list of nerdy musicians – beginning with those with which I already had a working relationship – and then stopped when I got close to 20 interested parties. As a result, a lot of really deserving artists got left out, and that’s the only thing about this comp that saddens me.

The most compelling reason, however, is that I’ve developed a recent allergy to hype. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating, but with all the publicity nerdcore’s been getting of late I thought it might be fun to work in secret, to simply focus on putting together what I hoped would be a really fun CD and not worry about making too much preemptive noise along the way.

That’s what this is all about: fun.

I had fun putting it together, and you can tell the artists had fun with their individual submissions.

I hope you have fun listening.

Moreover, I hope you hear some material from some folks you know and love as well as some you might not be so familiar with.

Mostly, I hope that some part of this compilation strikes a chord with you and reminds how much fun it is to sing someone else’s song at the top of your lungs as you motor down the highway with the windows rolled down.

Thanks for reading, and happy listening.

-- Right-click and Save Link As --

Download Nerdcore Undercover (in its entirety)

Individual track downloads available for the finicky and those poor bastards still on dial-up:

1. My Parents Favorite Music – “Just Try and Sue Us”
2. Beefy – “Move Somethin’”
3. Shael Riley – “Umbrella”
4. mc chris & Modd Jobs – “Dare to Be Stupid”
5. Nursehella – “Keep It Real (Represent My Nuts)”
6. funky49 – “Intergalactic Pizza Party”
7. Glenn Case - “Alex Chilton”
8. Goondocks – “Posse Needs Upgrades”
9. Ultraklystron – “Daydreamin’”
10. LogicOne – “You Don’t Know Me”
11. ZeaLouS1 – “Paparazzi”
12. funky49 – “Everything (I Own)”
13. Drown Radio Therapy – “Vapors”
14. myf - "Paid in Full (feat. Kal-L & DJ Snyder)"
15. Shael Riley – “I’m Yours”
16. Dual Core – “What Have We Done”
17. Optimus Rhyme – “Train in Vain (live)”
18. Rai – “Shiki No Uta”
19. YTCracker – “Summer Girls”

Brilliant front cover
Equally brilliant back cover
Tiny iTunes cover

And don’t forget the liner notes!