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Ransom Riggs
Droppin’ Science: The World’s Nerdiest Rap Songs
by Ransom Riggs - September 8, 2008 - 7:30 AM

Yo yo, check ya headz an’ sharpen ya pencil leadz ‘cuz MC _floss is in da blog!

(Ahem.) So what makes a rap song nerdy, other than (as demonstrated above) the nerdiness of the rapper? One thing above all else: subject matter. We’re all familiar with the cliched canon of rap song themes (pimpin’ ain’t e-z; my rapping skillz are superior to yours; I admire the posterior regions of the opposite sex, etc), but it’s when rap songs start to stray outside these lines — way outside — that the nerd factor increases. And there’s no nerdier way to drop science … than to rap about science. For instance:

Large Hadron Collider Rap

Scientist/nerd rap impresario Alpinekat’s latest track is a bona-fide hit on YouTube — and it explains all you need to know, sort of, about CERN’s ambitious new particle collider project.

Physics Guy Rap

“Get your hands in the air, yeah that’s the notion / Now come on, let me see some oscillatory motion!” (Somehow I don’t think this is the kind of thing Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow had in mind when they were pioneering rap 25 years ago … but what’re you gonna do.) This was written and performed by a physics student whose teacher agreed to drop a low assignment grade if he’d rap for the class. Sounds like a pretty good trade-off to me.

Richard Dawkins Rap

Ah, the old science-vs.-religion debate. It may never be settled, but as long as everyone’s arguing, we may as well make a tongue-in-cheek rap about it.

MC Hawking: A Brief History of Rhyme

I couldn’t not mention this, since it’s brilliant, but VIEWER BEWARE! MC Hawking don’t hold back, and he spits a few NSFW rhymes. This is a promo for the MC’s greatest hits compilation, and includes snippets of such classic tracks as “The Big Bizang,” “The Hawkman Cometh” and “E=MC Hawking.” Check it:

N3UROCH!P Rap

Two physicists from Tel Aviv imprinted rudimentary memories onto a network of living neurons. Now that’s something worth rapping about.

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Comments (14)

  1. Don’t forget about those bands that rapped on the “Bill Nye the Science Guy” shows.

    posted by Joshua on 9-8-2008 at 8:21 am

  2. ProfessorElvisZap has a couple of nice ones on youtube. There’s an extensive calculus rap, as well as a laws of logarithms lecture with a nice breakdown in the middle.

    posted by jbb on 9-8-2008 at 8:38 am

  3. I can’t view any of these at work, but..I’ll recommend Nhym and DemineonZ.

    If you want the “Best of” for each of them, then I’d have to say “hard like heroic” by Nhym, and “I’m a beast” by DemineonZ. (for the best of the latter, skip to the 1:50 mark, listen to the lame chorus, then get your mind blown by the second verse)

    posted by chris on 9-8-2008 at 8:38 am

  4. Wow…I guess I’m more of a nerd than I care to admit. I actually wrote a rap about cell mitosis when I was a freshman in high school. Then I performed it in front of my class.

    It was supposed to be a group presentation, but I did all the rapping. My classmates just stood behind me yelling “I-P-M-A-T” in the lamest way possible during the hook. My teacher gave us an A…not because the rap was so great, but because we actually described mitosis acurrately, and somehow made it rhyme.

    Anyhow, rest easy, world. I’ve given up rapping. (I’m now a poet, but I rarely write about anything scientific.)

    *Bonus*: There’s a videotape of this crap floating around. A young friend of mine called me a few years ago and said she watched a tape of me rapping in her bio class. WTF?! The teacher is showing this to other students years later?! I could lose serious cool points if it ended up on Youtube…

    reCAPTCHA: hood Silas (sounds like a good pseudonym for a gangsta rapper with an above average IQ, right?)

    posted by MC Such 'n Such on 9-8-2008 at 9:07 am

  5. Oh yeah, and the opening track of DJDB’s “The Secret Art of Science pt. 2″ is called “Droppin’ Science”. It’s not rap, but I figured I should throw that out there.

    posted by chris on 9-8-2008 at 9:19 am

  6. Any discussion of this topic begins and ends with the Mormon Rap
    h ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TeV8yp8ALM

    posted by Dan on 9-8-2008 at 9:44 am

  7. I have to put in a word for

    “Make a circuit with me” by the Polecats

    It is a nerd’s love song. When you watch the video (available on Youtube), it is obvious that they are bunch of nerds that some hip producer dressed up.

    Technically not a rap by today’s standards, but it does qualify as early 80’s proto-rap.

    posted by n2y2 on 9-8-2008 at 9:53 am

  8. While it’s more of a sci-fi and computer type nerdiness, I have to give a shout out to mc chris.

    h ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRhnw1gFuDA

    posted by vowell on 9-8-2008 at 10:38 am

  9. While you’ve mentioned “nerd” songs that deal with actual science topics (I LOVE MC Hawking, been listening to him for a long long time, 2000 I think), there is a whole other side that deals with video games and the like also “nerd” in nature. One of my favorites happens to be “Fett’s Vette” by MC Chris (who has a lot of good songs as well).

    You should do one dealing with other nerd topics as well, a good start is the musician lineup of the Penny Arcade Expo…, all of those headliners are worth listening too.

    posted by Allen on 9-8-2008 at 11:04 am

  10. Blackalicious does a great nerdy rap. Chemical Calisthenics off of Blazing Arrow is full of science. Listen and you will be impressed.

    posted by teo on 9-8-2008 at 12:07 pm

  11. Ok, different kind of nerdy, but no mention of Weird Al’s “It’s all about the Pentiums”?

    Can’t wait to get home and watch these!

    posted by auslander on 9-8-2008 at 12:42 pm

  12. I’m really kind of disappointed that you would pick a video of mc hawking and not actually use one that has a song in it. Like “What We Need More Here is Science”. You just used a kind of lame advertisement. :-(

    Also, mc frontalot, mc chris, yt cracker, and l33t g33k b34t ftw. Nerdcore hip hop is awesome.

    (I also think a rap song that rejects all matter of science shouldn’t count as a “nerdy” song.)

    posted by Mattie on 9-8-2008 at 1:59 pm

  13. does anyone remember the rap in the babysitter’s club movie? the club wrote it to help claudia pass summer school because she was really stupid and risked having to drop the club to focus on school

    “the brain, the brain, the center of the chain…!”

    posted by liz on 9-9-2008 at 6:44 am

  14. A friend of mine is an aspiring NerdCore Artist.

    posted by Zoasterboy on 9-9-2008 at 9:09 pm

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