“X-Men Whore,” Ex-Lawyer, Gamer, and … Rapper? Adam WarRock Takes the Stage

You consider yourself in part a “geek emcee, ushering in the Silver Age of Hip Hop.” What do you mean by this label, and what exactly is your vision of the Silver Age?

“Geek emcee” is kind of a term that’s been thrust onto me. I mean, it makes sense, but in a lot of ways I don’t like being labeled as only a geek emcee. There are a lot of songs that would appeal to hip hop heads, or just music fans in general who aren’t necessarily geeks; and I feel like having a label like that creates a lot of expectations, and segregates a lot of the audience. But I mean, I am an emcee, and I often rap about geeky stuff. I just don’t rap in a geeky way, if that makes any sense.

The Silver Age of Hip Hop thing is something that we are going to roll out more in the future. It was an idea created by my friend and fellow emcee on the album, Tribe One, member of the Remnant Crew from Atlanta. We were actually sitting around trying to come up with a term to describe my music, rather than geek emcee, or nerdcore. And he came up with the idea that we were doing Silver Age Hip Hop. On the one hand, the silver age comes after the golden age, and the golden age of hip hop pretty much ended in the late 90s, after the era where all the classic material was created from the late 80s to the mid 90s. Our music is beyond that era, and it is an easy way to describe that.

On the other hand, it’s a direct reference to the Silver Age of Comics, which also came after the Golden Age, where artists and authors started using more imaginative, and sometimes plain crazy, ideas in comics. And as a parallel, the music I make uses crazy, unexpected, and imaginative ideas and applies them to hip hop. So we just kinda kept spinning that term around, and started saying we should refer to ourselves as “The Silver Age” for our duo name, and talking about all the ideas that we’d love to do for a Silver Age album. I’m not sure what exactly will happen, but if you go to http://silveragehiphop.com, you can see the domain’s already bought up. Yeah, that was me.

Tell us about your new single, “Ira Glass,” which is of course the name of the host of This American Life. It’s very self-aware, and technologically conscious. By invoking This American Life, what parallels are you trying to draw to your rapping?

The parallels are not just to my rapping, it’s to music in general. The idea is that the art of storytelling is a constantly evolving thing, but at the core of it, the stories are still composed of the same emotions and elements of the human condition since ancient times. This American Life is a pretty interesting canvas to play off of, because on the one hand, it’s a very old school thing. I mean, radio in general is not exactly cutting-edge technology. But TAL has risen to prominence in the youth demographic because of its web presence and the podcast, which is very much a new thing. And as new and cutting-edge as podcasts may seem, it’s basically the same thing as radio, just delivered differently.

So when I had the idea for the song, I wanted to draw on that idea for music. Whether it’s hip hop or pop or folk or whatever, it’s delivering you the same emotions and human experiences. I think a large contingent of my fans are not rap fans at all, or just peripheral rap fans. And that is kind of cool. I like the idea that my music can deliver the same experience as non-rap songs, because people often kinda put rap in a musical corner when it comes to emotional resonance or meaningfulness. I hope that comes through in “Ira Glass.”

You have rap tracks about Inception, Donald Glover for Spider-Man, and the final Scott Pilgrim comic. It seems more and more that geek culture is becoming more ubiquitous, converging with even hip-hop culture. Would you say there’s some truth to this trend? Whereas you rap that “one day geeks will rule the world,” others say this signals the death of true geekdom!

That depends on what you think geekdom means. Geekdom doesn’t have to mean ostracization, or isolation from popular culture, unless you want it to. And if you do, that’s totally fine. That’s your prerogative. I don’t see it that way. Geekdom is about being passionate about very specific things, almost to an obsessive level. But that doesn’t change the fact that the things you may obsess over (comics, hip hop, movies) have some inherent universal appeal. And just like there are people within the geek culture who annoy you, there will be outsiders or newcomers who will annoy you as well. But there will be newcomers and outsiders who come in, embrace it, respect it, and take it to another level. At one point, all of us were newcomers to certain facets of the geek culture, and look at where we all stand.

On top of that, you have to look at what generation is coming into power right now. When the modern day geek culture first emerged, these were children of the 70s and 80s, and it was a new thing to the mainstream culture. Now, these are children of the late 80s and 90s, and arguably the 90s were the first decade where geek culture began to be accepted, or even approaching being seen as cool. So it only makes sense that these people grew up and became artists and entrepreneurs who incorporated those geek elements into their art and business. Where some people want to cry co-option and perversion, others may see as a natural progression. And isn’t that a good thing? The public recognition that the stuff we all love and cherish is actually worthy of mass love and appeal?

Same with rap. People think because I talk so much about golden age hip hop, that early 90s NY style, which a lot of my stuff is based off of, that I automatically have to hate the state of modern rap. And I don’t. I love most, if not almost all of modern rap, because there’s value in all of that. Electro-hop, southern bounce, nerdcore, everything. I love Amanda Blank and Nikki Minaj as much as I love MF Doom and Atmosphere. Even Kid Cudi‘s new single, “Erase Me,” where Cudi sings backed by distorted guitars and big drums, is exciting to me, because it incorporates hip hop into some new amalgamation that I haven’t heard before. New stuff is exciting.

So do I think that geeks will one day rule the world? There will always be geeks, and there will always be exciting things to love and obsess over, and for me to make songs about. And amidst the growing contingent of mass, commercial popular successes, there will always be visionaries worth keeping up with, expanding and pushing the boundaries. And until they blow up, we can all be geeky about them together.

Photograph by Victoria Ruan. Check out Adam WarRock and his music at his website, or follow him via Twitter.

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Michael Suen