What is Nerdcore Hip Hop?

Have you seen some of the headlines that came about as a result of Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek teasing contestant Susan Cole about her preferred genre of music, Nerdcore Hip Hop? Even TMZ got in on the act, comparing Trebek to Donald Trump. Variety did a tweet piece on it, obligingly throwing fuel on the fire by characterizing Trebek’s attitude as “unenthusiastic” and claiming that he “sighed antagonistically.” LOL!!

Susan Cole was obviously not offended and the joking continued about it when Trebek asked the returning champ, Pidge Meade, if she would be likely to join the group of nerdcore hip hop lovers. Pidge said, “It sounds pretty good to me,” and Alex responded “You bet it does.” So you might say that Alex Trebek is getting a bad rap over this. It’s true that not everybody gets the game show host’s sense of humor and sometimes he does push it a little too far but we didn’t see this as one of those times.

We decided to look a little deeper into the genre and we discovered that the earliest user of the term is MC Frontalot. “Nerdcore Hip Hop” was born when he came out with a song with that very same name. MC Frontalot now has a whole catalog of nerdcore hip hop lyrics on his website. In one, he wishes he was “Better at Rapping”:

“If I were better at rapping,
you wouldn’t need a napkin
wadded up in your ear to keep out the noise
I make with my voice.”

That doesn’t mean he can’t be impressed with his own skillz. We like these lines from “Braggadocio”

“Pistachios ain’t that great. I thought I’d mention ’em:
distinctive from how awesome I am. My rhyme’s venturesome!”

Maybe the Jeopardy! cluewriters are looking up nerdcore hip hop, too and we will see MC Frontalot in a clue one day. Meantime, Susan Cole won Wednesday’s game with a runaway and she won today, too. She’s more than a winner… she’s a Jeopardy! champ.