MC BookReport
September 5th, 2006 by Christopher HarrisYo, MC BookReport coming to you straight outa da liberry.
Stick with me a bit here for a quick trip through some nerdcore hip hop possibilities for your library. While some of the music contains explicit lyrics, other tracks from artists like MC Lars mix old-school beats with rhymes about the social networking sites, statistics, and great works of literature. Eh? Rapping about great works of literature? MC Lars remixes some high-school classics with funky new beats on “Mr. Raven” and “Ahab.”
I miss Lenore, my Annabel Lee, taken by angels from me.
Alone with books (hey that’s me!), harbinger of death visiting me.
I said, “Can I help you, evil prophet? If you got a problem, look, I’ll solve it.”
He checked my hook, DJ revolved it, perched on Pallas, chalice dropped it.
“Tell me sir, please, if you can. Am I good or evil man?
What can I say, what can I do, when will I be rid of you?”
“Nevermore,” quothe he at me, hating on this fresh MC,
Satanic raven, Niche glee, killing me softly like the Fugees.
[MC Lars - "Mr. Raven"]
Like most alternatives to the traditional book report, creating a literary rap that synthesizes passages from the text with modern references requires an incredibly complex understanding of the text. Since this is, as MC Lars calls it – post-punk laptop rap, creating these tracks requires minimal hardware. On a Mac, GarageBand and a computer microphone should cover it, Windows users may need to look at Sony’s Acid (or even the free version of Acid XPress) to compliment Audacity. After that brief tech setup interlude, you can get right back to the real focus; reading. Well, reading mixed with writing (they are intertwined, after all) and understanding information.
MC Lars also has some other tracks that speak to information/technology literacy – “Download This Song” [Quicktime Movie] and “iGeneration” [Quicktime Movie]. A bit more risqué is ” Internet Relationships (Are Not Real Relationships). “