MC Frontalot

As Chuck D of Public Enemy once declared, "Hip-hop is the CNN of the ghetto." Yet the genre began with wider ambitions, later recovering some of that scope once it moved past the gangsta era. MC Frontalot demonstrates this breadth through his unapologetic embrace of nerd culture, performing in glasses, tie, and pocket protector while delivering rhymes on webcomics, computer games, blogs, and encounters with women at Star Wars conventions.

Born Damian Hess in San Francisco, he spent his childhood in Berkeley secretly layering homemade rap tracks onto four-track tape as a teenager. In 1999, while employed as a web designer, he revived the hobby by launching a site to host MP3s of his bedroom productions, crediting the beats to a fictitious DJ CPU. Within one of those tracks he introduced the term "nerdcore hip-hop" to label his focus on the geek-centric topics he held dearest. Earlier acts such as Dream Warriors, MF Doom, and Deltron 3030 had already touched on similar subject matter, yet the act of naming the style allowed MC Frontalot to establish it as a distinct subgenre. Subsequent artists who pursued the same path include MC Lars, Optimus Rhyme, MC Hawking, and YTCracker.

Many of his initial recordings served as entries in the weekly Song Fight! contests hosted at songfight.org, where participants composed pieces sharing an identical title and listeners selected the winner. Entering each time under the MC Frontalot name, he took first place on every occasion. In 2002 the popular webcomic Penny Arcade endorsed him as its official rapper, which increased his visibility; he responded with the tribute track "Penny Arcade Theme," later included in the video game In the Groove.

After relocating to New York, a musical he created for Emerald Rain Productions titled Young Zombies in Love appeared at the International Fringe Festival in 2004. He then completed his debut full-length release, Nerdcore Rising, issued independently on Level Up Records & Tapes in 2005 during the Penny Arcade Expo. The concerts that followed constituted his first tour, an undertaking documented on camera by Negin Farsad. Revenue from CD and merchandise sales, together with a cameo as the TP Factory Rapper on the Elmo's Potty Time DVD, allowed Hess to abandon his day job and devote himself to music, resulting in the 2007 album Secrets from the Future. Negin Farsad’s documentary Nerdcore Rising: The Movie, which also included appearances by MC Chris, Prince Paul, J-Live, Jello Biafra, and Weird Al Yankovic, debuted at the SXSW festival in 2008.