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Weekend Earworms: Underground Hip Hop With Nerdy Undertones

An estimated 98% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times that we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things ever.

We here at Nerdist are dead-set on bringing you those types of songs, if only for the weekend. We’ll be scouring the internet for the best earworms we can shove into your meaty brains!

As I’ve mentioned before, there really isn’t any rhyme or reason for how I pick these songs. I listen to music all week on my commutes and there’s usually something that happens to stick in my head. Once that seed song is planted, I scratch at that idea until other things come to mind usually in that same genre. It’s all quite scientific. I swear.

I can blame this week’s earworms on one thing and one thing alone – watching Daredevil on Netflix.

Haven’t watched it yet? Oh man, what is wrong with you?! It’s incredible. The cast is amazing! Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin? Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich? The fact Ben Affleck has absolutely nothing to do with it? It is a phenomenal series that does the source material so much justice that you’d be nuts not to watch it! Needless to say, I’ve had Daredevil in the brain which is what lead to this week’s first song:

Sage Francis – Escape Artist

With a career spanning more than a decade, Sage Francis‘ knack for intricate lyrics while maintaining thoughtful messages in the majority of his music make for some incredibly earwormy songs. Like me, he’s from Rhode Island which, besides the gratuitous shout-out to my home-state, has afforded me a lot of time over the years to see shows and listen to a lot of his music. “Escape Artist” and others like “Sea Lion” off Francis’ 2005 album A Healthy Distrust have lyrics that, if you’re anything like me, will bug the crap out of you until you learn them all perfectly. Also, did you catch the Daredevil reference?!

“They call me daredevil but I’m not precise enough. Unprofessional on an amateur level, I love my life too much.”

Having that song stuck in my head for most of the week, it got me thinking about other superhero references in hip hop.

This, of course, leads to… say it with me: M… C… CHRIIIISSS. Did you say it with me? I can’t tell because I wrote this in the past. This was a tough choice because picking a catchy, superhero-reference-heavy song in the discography of MC Chris leaves us with about, let’s say, almost all of them. However, after much deliberation I arrived upon:

MC Chris – Nrrrd Grrrl

Oh the references! The sweet sweet nerdy references! Did you catch them all? Sure, we’re all a bit nerdy and damn proud of it, but MC Chris is king among men with his ability to weave so much fandom into his music. X-men, Nintendo, Emily Strange, Ragnarok, Serenity, Animal Crossing, Lucas, and my personal favorite, a reference to actress Annie Potts who played Janine in Ghostbusters! Also, considering it’s Star Wars Celebration this weekend, I’d be a fool to not mention the MC Chris classic ode to everyone’s favorite Star Wars bounty hunter “Fette’s Vette“.

If these haven’t burrowed into your brains, I figured I’d give you a bonus this week that’s considerably more “underground” with both hip hop and the nerd references with Dangerdoom’s Space Ho’s. Who doesn’t love a song peppered with Zorak laughter and Brak as hype man.

What do you think of this week’s earworms? Is there a nerd-heavy hip hop song I should have included? Let me know in the comments below or share some with me on Twitter.

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