Clown College
A lot of MCs suffer from an identity crisis. It is not uncommon for a rapper to show a totally unexpected facet of their personality outside of the recording booth, for better or for worse. Be it an artistic decision or not, many artists can’ t even decide who they are on the mic. Tupac could switch from playing the belligerent gangsta on one verse to being sensitive and vulnerable on the next. Lil’ Wayne thinks he’ s a rock star all of a sudden, and how many different personalities does Kool Keith actually have anyway? One thing about MC Lars that can’ t be said about many other rappers is that he is uncannily consistent—both as an artist and a person.
The video shoot for ‘Guitar Hero Hero’ is being held in a small storage unit outside the offices of Oglio Records – MC Lars’ new home. When I step on set, guitarist Paul Gilbert and the rest of the band is setting up for their shoot. Everyone except Lars. I only have time to nod ‘Hello’ to a few of the PAs before I hear a friendly voice behind me, ‘Hey, are you Dan? What’ s up man, I’ m Lars.’
Normally artists have grown accustomed to having someone schedule and arrange everything for them. There are so many people that artists have to meet and greet and that they typically need to be told who people are, why they’ re important, and what they have to do next. But not Lars.
He excitedly introduces me to everyone in our immediate radius before showing off the set. We pass a small pile of posters for his upcoming album, This Gigantic Robot Kills, and he proudly holds one up. ‘This is the cover for my new album. Cool, right!?’ His whole aura is of an excited kid showing his favorite uncle around his bedroom. He has an endearingly innocent quality – an idealistic optimism. And listening to his music gives you those same impressions.
Lars makes silly music, but humor is his greatest weapon. While other MCs May angrily shove something in your face to demand attention, Lars has made the decision to persuade by getting listeners to laugh at themselves. This is one of the key characteristics of the tongue-in-cheek nerdcore subgenre that he has unwillingly pioneered along with rappers like MC Frontalot and mc chris. The music they make is a postmodern soup with lyrics that reference everything from politics to Star Wars, comic books to video games.
‘Honestly, nerdcore to me is kind of a limited genre,’ he professes. ‘There are all these kids now who sample Nintendo music and rap about how high school is boring, and that is so uninteresting to me. It’ s hip-hop in that people are talking about their lives, but the problem with nerdcore is that it’ s a joke.’
You have to understand that Lars’ interests extend way beyond trivial pop culture references. He was an English major at Stanford, and got the opportunity to study abroad at Oxford through the school’ s international study program. He not only has an insatiable appetite for knowledge, but enjoys sharing it with other people. For him, music is a tool to introduce people to things outside of the pop world – like literature. ‘Ahab’ and ‘Hey There Ophelia,’ for example, are humorous retellings of Moby Dick and Hamlet respectively. Mr. Raven is a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, and there are countless other literary references scattered throughout his commentary. The man is a teacher, and when he isn’ t teaching English lit on the mic, he’ s discussing real world issues like the challenges of being environmentally friendly, or the mind-numbing dangers of living in a consumer-oriented culture. The beauty is that he approaches every song as though it were a dissertation or persuasive essay. He’ s got a formula for it.
‘I wrote so many papers on books and literature, and I learned that when you’ re writing a song, if you really want to convey a point, you have to approach it where each verse is like a defending statement and your thesis is your chorus. So if you have a chorus that reinforces your thesis, you’ re writing it like an analytical essay.’
As he leans forward and explains all this I can’ t help but laugh a little – he even sounds like a teacher. He makes points emphatically and speaks clearly and deliberately so as to understand exactly what he is trying to get across. It’s hardly surprising that he wants to teach a course on hip hop culture once he gets his PhD and his rap career dries up.
Our conversation stems into a discussion on modern vs. postmodern literature. He uses T.S. Elliot’ s ‘The Wasteland’ as an example of how modern literature only references high culture, explaining that his music takes both high and low culture and grants them equal status. As he puts it, ‘Everything has the potential to be art.’
‘The whole thing about postmodernism is that you take the high culture, but you also can assimilate pop culture or ‘low-culture’ and reference whatever you want…I learned in studying modernism that postmodernism is essentially modernism-lite – you take all these references but you don’ t have to be selective. If you want to talk about the ‘ 84 Olympics or the Simpsons or Kool Keith, it’ s all just as relevant as Shakespeare.’
We finish our interview and head back to the set. The band is still shooting, so we stand around and watch for a while. However Lars isn’ t really the type to stand still for very long, so before I know it he scurries back toward one of the lighting rigs. When they resume shooting I can just barely make out his silhouette beyond the glare. The director calls for the lights to sweep over the band in order to simulate a on-stage performance. Lars has personally taken up the job of controlling one of the lights. Suddenly I feel bad for just sitting and watching.
When we break for lunch, Lars is the center of attention, not because he’ s the star of the video, but because he’ s the life of the party. He cracks jokes and begins conversations with people, only to turn to someone else who isn’ t interacting and get them involved. He introduces me 3 times. ‘Guys, have you all met Dan yet?…I just want us all to be friends.’
The last half of the afternoon is spent filming Lars in front of a green screen. His bassist Scott passes by me wearing the separated legs of a tiny pair of boys’ jeans on each arm. On his hands he’ s got a pair of Velcro children’ s sneakers. The plan is for Lars to stick his torso through an opening in the green screen so that Scott can reach around his waist with his little arm-legs, giving the absurd illusion that Lars is a grade-schooler with a monstrous upper body.
While they’ re making adjustments between takes, Lars gets specific feedback on his performance from director Sean Donnelly. ‘C’ mon Sean, we’ re gonna get this right,’ he says as Scott’ s phony legs dance comically beneath him. ‘I don’ t wanna run the risk of people not taking this video seriously.’
He’ s only half-joking though. While Lars loves being a clown, he never wants the silliness to obscure the points he’ s trying to make. He’ s kind of like that really cool teacher who would joke around with all the students; the one who actually made going class and learning kind of fun. That teacher is MC Lars.
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