{"id":517,"date":"2011-10-11T18:15:09","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T23:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=517"},"modified":"2011-10-11T15:35:27","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T20:35:27","slug":"lucky-as-the-wheat-grass-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"Lucky as the wheat grass grows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I’d like to think that the world would be a better place if nerdcore supplanted whatever garbage hip-hop they play on the radio these days, but Average Joe just doesn’t want to hop on the bandwagon. I don’t understand how people, especially nerdy people, can not<\/em> be into nerdcore. It’s quite often smart and funny, and covers so many more themes than club-approved rap, which is always the same dumb\u00a0thing. But whatever; different strokes I suppose. Me, I love the stuff. (Duh.)<\/p>\n

I just bought Beefy’s With Sprinkles<\/span> on iTunes, after much deliberation. I’ve heard him feature in a couple MC Frontalot tracks, but was wary of paying money for an album from an unproven artist. A new Frontalot album I’d slap down the cash for without a second thought, but a rapper I’d never even heard\u00a0one song from? The previews seemed pretty rad though, and at $10 it wouldn’t be a huge loss. Personally, I feel there wasn’t a cent misspent.<\/p>\n

Beefy’s a pretty competent rapper, but what I really like here is that he’s not such a computer geek, and focuses more on video games and comics. This is great, because I always get lost in the more technology-oriented songs. “Zero Day” is up there on my list of favourite Frontalot songs, but I feel stupid when I listen to it because I don’t get it. I had to read a lot of Wikipedia pages to even grasp the basic theme of the song. Yeah, maybe it comes with the added bonus of learning, but I like when people write songs that I can easily relate to or understand,\u00a0like Beefy’s “Game Store Girl” or “Sidekick”. Also he makes a referenece to Zack & Wiki<\/a>, which is so many kinds of awesome.<\/p>\n

As much as I just want to sit here all day typing about how much I like Beefy and nerdcore in general, but there’s a point to make! Like every rule, there are exceptions to this, but in general I am not a fan of music sampling. Seriously, I know rappers are generally talentless hacks, but they could get their producer to write up a shitty six-second looping beat instead of appropriating someone else’s music\u00a0for their (usually) inferior song. Mostly I just hate hearing music I like cut and pasted into some garbage rap.<\/p>\n

Beefy is the exception here. I don’t know how many of the songs on With Sprinkles<\/span> use samples, but there are at least a few I recognise; most notably “Duh-nuh Nuh-nuh Nuh-nuh” and “One of These Nights.” But the real stand out here is “Uncanny” which samples the theme from the ’90s X-Men<\/em> cartoon. Not only is it great to hear the tune, which I hadn’t expected at all, but the whole song is about getting up on Saturday morning to watch X-Men on FOX Kids.<\/p>\n

This song is pure nostalgia, and it is me. <\/em>When I was nine? Hells yeah I was up early on Saturday watching X-Men (and Spider-Man<\/em>, and Ninja Turtles<\/em>, and Mega Man<\/em>, and\u00a0Samurai Pizza Cats<\/em>, etc etc). I even had the whole box of cereal in a giant mixing bowl thing going on. And I know many other people who did the same. It’s a wonderful, happy song that really brings on the warm fuzzies. And the X-Men theme is here for a reason<\/em>. It’s not there because Beefy was too lazy or talentless to write his own music, or at least have some written for him. It’s there to enhance the experience of the song. The X-Men theme is to “Uncanny” as mutant healing factor is to Wolverine: it’s not really a defining feature, but it’s certainly cool and the song\/character wouldn’t be the same without it.<\/p>\n

While the song makes me feel all good inside, it does have a sneaky, unpleasant facet that is inherent in many things that invoke nostalgia: it makes you realize that stuff just isn’t as good as it used to be. Listening to “Uncanny” makes me think about why I don’t still get up early in Saturdays (that I don’t have to work) and watch cartoons all morning. The long and short of it is that there just aren’t very many really good cartoons on these days. Ben 10<\/em>\u00a0is easily the best superhero cartoon produced in years. Batman: The Brave and the Bold<\/em> seemed like a charming throwback at first, but then he travelled back in time to help Sherlock Holmes beat a ghost? I know comic book plots can get even more ridiculous than that, but sullying the good name of Sherlock Holmes is unforgivable. Johnny Test <\/em>is fun in the same way that Dexter’s Laboratory<\/em> and Johnny Bravo<\/em> were, but wears thin pretty quickly. Pretty much everything else ranges from.\u00a0Don’t even get me stated on the stupid My Little Pony <\/em>craze.<\/p>\n

I don’t even know if FOX still airs a cartoon block on Saturday mornings. When they rebranded it as the FOXBox,it started off pretty rad, with shows like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/em> reboot, Kirby<\/em>, Shaman King<\/em>, and Ultimate Muscle.<\/em> Last time I checked in though (which was many years ago), it had been all but taken over by girl shows like Winx Club<\/em> and Bratz<\/em>. Apparently at some point they ran the Biker Mice From Mars<\/em> reboot, which I’m very sad to have missed.<\/p>\n

So yeah. Kinda got off-track there. To summarize: Beefy = good. Sampling = usually bad. Biker Mice From Mars = awesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d like to think that the world would be a better place if nerdcore supplanted whatever garbage hip-hop they play on the radio these days, but Average Joe just doesn’t want to hop on the bandwagon. I don’t understand how people, especially nerdy people, can not be into nerdcore. It’s quite often smart and funny, … Continue reading Lucky as the wheat grass grows<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idiot-box","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}