brazilian nerdcore

#music #art #brazilian #geek #🌲 #topic

wtf is nerdcore?

in short, nerdcore is a genre of music inspired by/that reflects themes from nerd culture: anime, manga, games and such.

in brazil, though, the "nerdcore scene" has started and developed quite differently from the rest of the world, with a much bigger focus on making songs as if the singer were the characters themselves (a kind of theatrical interpretation), rather than simply making references to them or to the story. i'll explain more on the nuances in the section below: #a brief historical introduction to brazilian nerdcore.

the brazilian scene is by far the biggest in the world, with channels like 7 minutoz racking up 13.5M subscribers, tauz 9.3M, MHrap 3.7M, and many others in the range of hundreds of thousands/low-millions.

but first, let's explore a bit more: why is nerdcore interesting?

why nerdcore?

i find it fascinating how often cultural artifacts - works of fiction in general, but especially anime, manga and games (which usually reserve the right to not be as "close to reality" as other tv shows or mainstream music) can portray subjects/narratives that are deeply symbolic, philosophical and psychological. similar to devotional/ritualistic music, they're often interested in conveying meta-narratives instead of just talking about immediate suffering, pleasure, needs, challenges, goals that are widespread in our society today - and most other forms of media.

themes like the psychological aspects of the cycle of hatred in politics and war (naruto/attack on titan), transforming yourself by identifying your strengths and seeking/embracing multiple, counter-intuitive perspectives (blue lock), the futility and at the same time profundity of many of our desires (chainsaw man), how egocentric/infantile/traumatized our morals usually are (death note/vagabond/vinland saga), the oppression of modern extractive systems and lifestyles (evangelion/serial experiments lain), different spiritual and philosophical views of reality (shuumatsu no valkyrie), enticing views of the future that play with/challenge our desires (sword art online, overgeared, many manhwas)...

most of these are references that are currently popular in the nerdcore scene, but other folks will connect more with more classical works such as j. r. r. tolkien's hobbit/lord of the rings, harry potter, the universe of RPGs, and more...

i find the kinds of reflections this subculture (can) generate a lot deeper than most other "entertainment" media i have watched, as evidenced by many "psychology in anime" channels popping up on youtube in the last few years.

sometimes the anime is not really that deep though, but we can impose/project onto the characters/narrative the depth we wished to be there (rodrigo zin and i certainly do this a lot). many of these stories are also just power fantasies/coming of age tales of kids learning to make sense of the world and take responsibility for their lives and for the state of the world itself... but they still serve as vehicles to connect us with very fundamental topics that grow up with us and within us throughout life.

for example, m4rkim (my most listened nerdcore artist) isn't the most philosophical of them. in fact, he's one of the most literal ones - his songs often portray more his emotional interpretation of the characters and a literal storytelling of what happens in their lives - yet, he finds a way to musically convey the vibe of that character/story in a way that resonates tremendously with both my adolescent and adult self. giving your best to interpreting these meta-narratives is where it's at for me. by the way he creates his songs, it feels like he completely "gets" it. i feel heard/understood on a deep level.

even more personally, i connect with these stories on a deep level because i don't identify with my own personal narrative/story of this life that much. i believe modern culture teaches us to overemphasize the individual, glorify our biographical story, but especially once you start living experiences that get you to expanded states of consciousness in a ritualistic setting, a lot of the vanities and pettiness of your ego become exposed and you can grow beyond what you've been taught, integrating what the deeper layers of the self really carry.

(see: a personal review - why m4rkim is my #1 most listened artist for more)

playlists

a curated introductory collection

this playlist is a curated collection featuring a little bit of everything i find fascinating in the nerdcore scene in a reasonable amount of time, in portuguese. (5h hehe) you're invited to listen to a couple of the songs to get a feel for it.

i'm currently in the process of writing about most of these songs in more detail, and will update it here once i do so. i also intend to transform this into a series of videos at some point. for now, it has 2-3 songs from many artists, a little more from my favorite ones, and a special place for cyphers (which feature artists with multiple genres/styles), that although are not my favorite to listen to continuously, i find them really cool to watch to be introduced to these new artists.

if you don't speak portuguese, i've created a smaller playlist with a selection of my brazilian nerdcore favs w/ english subtitles (2h30). it also contains a few songs like henrique mendonça's songs that mix english and portuguese, and also a few songs that feature collabs between brazilian and english-speaking nerdcore artists, like fabvl, halaCG and johnald.

a brief historical introduction to brazilian nerdcore

if you search for nerdcore online, you'll find a description like chosic's:

"Nerdcore is a subgenre of hip-hop that focuses on themes of geek culture, such as video games, science fiction, and technology. The lyrics often contain references to popular culture and the music is characterized by fast-paced, intricate rhymes and electronic beats. The genre has gained a dedicated following among fans of nerd culture and has expanded to include elements of rock and pop music."

masterclass' "Nerdcore Music Guide" also shares a bit of the history and introduces some of the artists/precursors of the scene.

in brazil though, nerdcore really started its scene as "anime rap". mostly people rapping about a character or interpreting the story as that character (from anime/manga like naruto/dragon ball, games like GTA/the last of us, tv shows like the walking dead/game of thrones and such). i don't know much about the history of the scene in the world - from what i know, it's a reasonably small scene - people just created songs about these topics, not interpreting as the characters themselves.

in brazil, this scene grew A LOT and differently from the rest of the world. today we have the biggest nerdcore channels of the world (with over 100M/200M visualizations in some of their most famous songs). over the past ~10 years, it grew from being mostly rap, to a whole set of styles of "geek music" (how it's often called here).

the result was a new generation of young independent artists making songs in their bedroom, that got inspired by this gradual development of the scene (old-school player tauz), catapulted by 7 minutoz's hits such as the cornerstone naruto's "akatsuki rap" (220M views), the innovation of enygma (who started making "anime metal"), and the URT (a group of artists that for a long time kept releasing songs every week) which gathered a very engaged fanbase and consistently raised the bar in the last few years in terms of musicality, production and video quality (it's absolute madness what the editors do nowadays. they're basically animating entire animes out of mangas [static illustrations]).

on the musical aspect of it:

brazilian nerdcore as a genre has a much bigger focus on storytelling and interpretation than most other mainstream styles.

since artists create music about fictional universes, the way they choose to portray it - be it having a focus on the emotional/psychological aspects of the character/story or making metaphors/parallels between that world and our reality - says a lot about the artist's worldview/focus and also select/affect how the public receive it.

it's often common to have a mix of styles - a song that goes from calm/reflexive instrumentals, with ethnic elements reminding the character's theme, to parts with trap/rap influences and metal somewhere in between. i've seen the same character being interpreted as love song, a sad/reflexive song, aggressive, mocking, and sometimes all of it in one song - after all, characters/stories are complex and they often mix these things.