It’s fitting that the last film I saw at SXSW was Nerdcore Rising. I’d begun my experience of this year’s festival with a screener of We Are Wizards (review here), a documentary that mostly focuses on the Harry Potter-based “wizard rock”, which I’d then assumed was the nerdiest music genre in existence. And now I’d finished my experience with this doc, which is actually about the nerdiest music genre in existence, “nerdcore hip hop”.

The proof is not in the artists, though. It’s in the fans, which director Negin Farsad is right to concentrate on and showcase so significantly here. The film may center on one specific nerdcore hip hop artist, MC Frontalot, and his band’s first tour, but Nerdcore Rising is really, ultimately, about the freaks and geeks who make up the audience at each show along the way. Not since the height of the ska scene ten years ago has there been a genre so well defined by the character of its fanbase.

And in addition to highlighting the many eccentrics attending Frontalot’s gigs, allowing them to represent themselves by their computer programming jobs, their Magic the Gathering and World of Warcraft addictions, their memories of being high school outcasts and their admittance to allowing a nerdcore concert be the very rare exception in which they actually leave the house, Farsad has managed to find the most amusingly intelligent fans to supply their definitions of what exactly is nerdcore hip hop. Two of my favorites: it’s hip hop about “Chewbacca and cunnilingus”; “it’s like playing Halo while getting a blow job from Hello Kitty.”

The fans aren’t the only funny people in the film. Fortunately MC Frontalot and his three bandmates are also hilarious. Yet some of the greatest bits come by chance. For example, Farsad couldn’t have asked for a better turn of events than for MC Frontalot to throw his back out after one of the earliest dates of the tour. Here is a guy who looks like the easy mix of Matt Frewer and Steve Zahn (though one non-fan interviewee suggests a Kelsey Grammar resemblance), who raps about Star Wars and internet porn and sounds like Eminem’s whiter brother, proving that this is the least glamorous genre of music out there.

Other incidental moments of comedy involving the band come on purpose, but they’re mostly of the kind where you had to be there, or at least had to see them in the context of the film, for them to make sense — otherwise I’d share more. Especially, though, humor comes via Frontalot’s songs — at leas t the ones I’m not too un-nerdy to understand. And because of this musical humor, the film addresses the idea that a genre like nerdcore can be viewed as more a novelty than a substantial form of music. Interestingly enough, Farsad presents “Weird Al” Yankovic to stress the problem with being seen as a novelty act. Unfortunately, having the famous parodist talk about your genre only hurts your genre, in my opinion.

Also hurting the genre in a way is legendary hip hop producer Prince Paul, who appears as one of the representatives of “real” hip hop. Though he isn’t necessarily one of those arguing that nerdcore isn’t real hip hop, he does point out that most quality rappers may be considered nerds. Possibly breaking down the lines of the genre would be none other than the Wu-Tang Clan, who Prince Paul reminds us often rapped about Marvel Comics. Even prior to his noting this, though, I was already thinking of past artists who long ago did just what MC Frontalot is now considered to be the “godfather” of doing. Almost fifteen years ago a mostly white hip hop group called 2 Skinnee J’s had a rap about Star Wars that actually sounded a bit like Frontalot’s (I just noticed that 2SJ’s Wikipedia page classifies them as nerdcore!). And of course way before that, the Beastie Boys were always slipping in obscure nods to their own nerdiness in their songs.

The point of the film, however, is not so much about this brand new, never before thought of kind of music. It’s more about how a music genre like this can flourish thanks to the age we live in. That this is a music reflective of the dot-com, “the nerds won”, Microsoft and Apple-informing age we live in. That it helped to have the internet expand this genre, which was primarily for and received by people who would never go to a club to check out new sounds.

I find it funny, by the way, that this is the second film I saw at SXSW to make me think about the current “nerd age” (see my review of 21) and, as I mentioned, the second film I saw about really nerdy music — unfortunately I did not see the other significant nerd-music doc, Blip Festival).

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