Rap’s Big Bang Theory
First, the good news: folks who’ve enjoyed MC Lars’s previous output will probably be fans of The Dinosaur Zombie LP, too. And there will undoubtedly be a great deal of first-time listeners who also get into it. However, the vast majority of music enthusiasts will surely find this record borderline unlistenable.
And that’s absolutely fine. Lars is a niche artist operating within a very niche sub-genre (nerdcore), and there will always be a place for art that most people don’t relate to. Art shouldn’t be about pleasing everybody, and Lars seems satisfied with the modest niche he’s carved. That, in itself, is worth some degree of respect. Still, for the majority of people not already sold on the artist, that aspect may be the only thing they come to respect about his work.
So, for the uninitiated: Lars Horris is a 32-year-old Stanford alumni who’s been rapping about literature and “nerd culture” for more or less 15 years. His beats tend to be mash-ups of other artists’ compositions—an aesthetic that manages to split the difference between pre-Night Ripper Girl Talk, mid-90’s ska-punk and a remarkably uninspired, off-brand imitation of “Weird” Al Yankovic. Lyrically, Lars is so overtly reliant on pop culture name dropping, one wouldn’t be out of line to question how much of his material can actually be considered “original.”
MC Lars seems to subscribe to the Web 2.0 notion that referencing pop culture is the same as telling a joke, and therefore substitutes wit and originality for recycled tropes. And while his artistic endeavors pre-date the wide-spread usage of memes, they are rooted in the same aesthetic—scattershot, disposable quotations of others’ creations, and little else. As a result, The Zombie Dinosaur LP boasts songs like “The Ballad of Hans Moleman,” which is literally a catalogue of things that have happened to the perpetually doomed Simpsons character. Or “The Dip,” which takes A$AP Ferg’s “Shabba Ranks” and turns the lyrics into a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? synopsis (to its credit, the track does feature a pretty great guest verse from Kool Keith). Then there’s a Linkin Park-esque song about Daenarys Targaryan (“Dragon Blood”), followed by “If I Were a Jedi (That Would Be Hella Awesome),” which doesn’t really demand any further explanation.
Beyond these “jokes,” Lars displays some fairly disturbing attitudes throughout. “Sublime with Rome (Is Not the Same Thing as Sublime)” exhibits a bratty, nihilistic sense of entitlement, with the rapper whining about bands that aren’t as good after a member has left…or died, even. Lars makes no distinction between the two vastly different circumstances (Jello Biafra’s omission from the Dead Kennedy’s reunion is treated with the same gravity as Old Dirty Bastard’s passing); instead, he’s concerned only with broadcasting his disappointment and demanding his money back. (There’s something chilling, dystopian and distinctly 21st century about a 32 year old man treating human beings like toys, existing solely for his amusement).
Other tracks demonstrate a more common—yet still troubling—disconnect from reality. The characterizations of women found on “Hipster Mom” and “The Top Ten Things to Never Say on a First Date” seem pulled directly from out-dated sitcoms and sex comedies rather than, well, any actual encounters with women. Later, on “Forgot About Jack”—perhaps the least-nuanced portrait of Jack Kerouac ever conceived—Lars questionably asserts that the Beats were responsible for the creation of hip-hop (never mind that the Beats plundered the Harlem jazz scene for their identities, and were pretty terrible people, overall).
While its been made apparent that MC Lars is at least somewhat conscious of the ways white cultures continuously colonize black art forms, this awareness—akin to his pop culture name-dropping—seems fetishistic and shallow. When Lars writes that he feels like an “outsider in hip-hop” because he “went to college,” or when he argues that any rapper who wasn’t one of the 1970’s South Bronx originators is as much “cultural tourist” as he, or—hell—when he insinuates that an interloping pack of white assholes kinda, sorta invented hip-hop, it’s difficult to see the difference between his output and the entitled, consumption-driven, white-nerd-persecution-complex he’s supposedly opposed to. At the end of the day, The Zombie Dinosaur LP—like much of the Lars catalogue—recycles and manipulates the names, labors, histories and creative works of others to conjure an illusion of greatness, effectively misconstruing consumption for creation. Unlike newcomers who draw from similar pop culture realms (particularly the utterly dagger-tongued Michete), Lars doesn’t bother to subvert or radicalize his source material, and as a result, fails to say much of anything worthwhile. His songs become catalogues of things he likes; things he’s consumed, that his audience has consumed as well. Even when those things aren’t really things at all, and are instead entities who draw breaths; who possess thoughts and feelings and identities of their own, be it in past or present tense. Here, they’re reduced to raw material; grist for the mill—a fresh batch of “jokes.”
Leave a Comment