Interview with MC Lars


MC LARS . Oct 27th 2011
PEARL STREET NIGHTCLUB . Northampton, MA
DJ Starryeyes

On October 27th, MC Lars (along with mc chris, Adam Warrock, Tribe-One, and Megaran) performed an epic nerdcore concert at the Pearl Street Nightclub. MC Lars, otherwise known as Andrew Nielsen, took the time to sit down and talk with me about his music, his career, the internet, and buffalo wings.

DJ Starryeyes: So we’re going to start off a little silly: on a scale of one to ten, one being a demi-god and ten being a greater god, where would you put Atom and His Package?
MC Lars: Uh, nine. Nine. We played this venue in Philadelphia at the First Unitarian Church, and that was where he played his last show. And there were people there who were in his new band, like running sound, and…he just inspired me so much when I first started, he gave me a list of venues to hit up. He was just such an inspiration. So yeah, he’s like the DIY god. Greater god. Maybe 10, even.

DJ Starryeyes: Excellent. If you could do a cover for any song, what song would you cover?
MC Lars: I would like to cover Bohemian Rhapsody and sing every part perfectly. That would be sick!

DJ Starryeyes: That would be awesome. If you could have any musician feature on one of your tracks, who would it be?
MC Lars: Alive or dead?
DJ Starryeyes: Either.
MC Lars: Kurt Cobain, yo! I’d love to hear him rock out, yo.
DJ Starryeyes: And the same question: if you could tour with any musician, dead or alive?
MC Lars: I would like to tour with Beethoven. That would be sick! People would come, lots of people would come out! [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: What are your five favorite hip hop or rap albums? Nerd-core counts.
MC Lars: Oh, well, I’m actually writing a book about the history of hip hop that we’re going to get published next year, which is really exciting, and I have a chapter on the ten greatest albums and why they matter, and my favorites from that are: Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP, Run DMC’s Raising Hell, Public Enemy’s Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back, Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu (36 Chambers), and Nas’s Illmatic.

DJ Starryeyes: Okay, what’s your guilty pleasure music? Something you think is kind of embarrassing to admit.
MC Lars: I mean, I was the teenage juggalo, and I grew up listening the Insane Clown Posse and everything, because it was just…they did rap in a really fresh way that white, suburban kids could get. For a minute, in 1997, they were kind of awesome. When it first came out, their album, Great Milenko, was awesome, but now I feel like it’s embarrassing to admit that, but…that’s okay. [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: Okay, cool. What was the first concert that you went to?
MC Lars: It was Weird Al Yankovic, Alapalooza Tour ’93.
DJ Starryeyes: Nice!
MC Lars: At the Catalyst, which is a venue we played at this tour, which is kind of cool. [laughs]
DJ Starryeyes: That’s really cool. What’s one of your favorite concert venues that you’ve played at?
MC Lars: My favorite venue in the world is Slim’s in San Francisco. I’ve seen so many shows there, growing up, and we played there too and that venue is just awesome. The people are awesome. It’s right downtown San Francisco and I love that.

DJ Starryeyes: What’s the best food to eat when you’re on the road?
MC Lars: Well..sushi. The worst food is McDonalds and junk food at 4AM cause it’s just so bad for you. Like, on the road, if you don’t watch it and you drink a lot and you smoke weed and everything, like, you can gain weight and become really depressed and, like, hate your life. So, the trick to touring is to stay healthy. And I try to be vegetarian, I’m not…I’ll be honest, I haven’t been perfect, but that’s the trick. And not to drink a lot. Be healthy. Have a lot of protein and have protein right when you get up so your metabolism is going, cause, you know, I’ve struggled with gaining weight on tour. Like, Warped Tour, I lost, like, 60 pounds, and the goal is to stay healthy, cause then you feel better and there’s nothing worse than feeling like crap and being on the road. Then you just want to quit, you know? [laughs]
DJ Starryeyes: Okay, what’s the weirdest regional food you’ve had while on tour?
MC Lars: I want to think of a good answer…well, okay, well, this is kind of cool: in Buffalo, New York, we went to where they invented Buffalo Wings. That’s not very vegetarian, I just admitted that. That was awesome, that was really cool. It’s a little weird, they’re not actually flying buffalo, it’s Buffalo, New York. You knew that, cause we’re on the East Coast. [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: Can you describe your sound in, like, three words?
MC Lars: Intellectual punk rap. That works, right? [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: Totally. Okay, so, I’m an English major and I really love all your lit-hop songs like Hey There Ophelia and Ahab and Annabel Lee R.I.P.
MC Lars: Thanks!
DJ Starryeyes: What works of literature inspire you to write? And, do you have a favorite author?
MC Lars: Yeah, I mean, I like stories that are timeless. What’s so great about Shakespeare is that his themes are timeless, Poe is timeless, and I just think that my whole mission with lit-hop is to make literature cool and to make reading cool, because we live in such a culture that’s cut and paste, disposable culture, like instantaneous Twitter culture, social networking where we’re all really connected, but really disconnected. I love old school literature, cause it connects us to a greater history, which you know as an English major! Right?
DJ Starryeyes: Yeah
MC Lars: And so, anything that affects me emotionally, that I feel like I can put my own spin on it. My next full length album is gonna be called the Lit Hop LP and it’s gonna be, like, 15 songs all about books and I want to do, like, all sorts of stuff, like, I think Catcher in the Rye is really important. There’s a lot of stuff that I’m going to do for that. I want to do a song about Calvin and Hobbes, which would be awesome!
DJ Starryeyes: That would be awesome!
MC Lars: And so, yeah, I’m just writing constantly. I think that anything that’s timeless makes for a good song. On my new album, Lars Attacks, my approach was to just write about anything timeless. In the past, I’ve tried to hit pop culture niches. The fun thing about literature songs is that they’re always relevant. A song about Guitar Hero or…what else have I written about that’s topical? Stuff like Myspace, like, that stuff is culturally antiquated. But good books will never run out of style. [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: Totally! So, how do you feel about the fact that a lot of people see you as the progenitor of the concept of the “iGeneration”? Is that, like, heavy or cool…?
MC Lars: It’s kind of cool. I made up that term and in 2003, I recorded a song about it and I’ve seen it used so much, you know, and I was the first guy to use it. I think it’s just…it’s kind of cool because I’ve been put in kind of a niche as the DIY computer rap guy who was doing this stuff and people kind of laughed at me at first and now everyone…all the dubstep DJs are, like, they just do it from their laptop. Hip hop and all these nerdcore MCs…it’s really awesome that I feel like I was ahead of the curb. And now I gotta stay ahead of the curb more. And so, yeah, the iGeneration thing, I was the first rapper to be on MTV rapping in emoticons, or whatever. I think that’s kind of dope. [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: Really cool. So, in a lot of your songs, like Black and Yellow off of Indie Rocket Science Mixtape and you’ve even gone on, like CNN talking about how you encourage your listeners to share the music and download it and pass it along; why is that so important to you?
MC Lars: Well, it’s a good question, I’ve been on, been distributed by labels in the past who really don’t like when I say to “steal my music” and honestly, it’s understandable, because they’re not seeing any cut of my t-shirt money. I mean, my LLC, which is my Limited Liability Company, we gross six figures a year and it comes from being on tour and selling t-shirts and playing shows and tapping into this underground internet awareness that I’ve been bt to, like, support you want to feel like they’re part of this culture and that they get to donate and support as they see fit, because it fits their lifestyle. And so, you know, I undeuilding for eight years, and so, you know, iTunes is maybe 20% of my gross income a year, so it’s not the majority of it and you can’t rely on the money you make from digital downloading and CD sales because it’s a changing cultural revolution…it’s the Cloud now, and your brand is something that, like I say in my song Download this Song, is a service and not a product, so people who understand my audience, and I was one of those kids who, back in ’95, ’96, was figuring out how to get MP3s and I just think that it’s important that kids feel they can have as much of the music as they want. Because there’s so much competition, so many people are making music, it’s so cheap to make, that if you try to tell people not to steal your music, you automatically look like an antiquated, like, I know I used that word already, but you’re, like, backwards and out of touch. I just found that my brand, it’s really important that people download it for free. And then, I did this kickstarter campaign this year to do my record and I asked for five grand. We raised like, 24 grand because people just wanted to support me because they’ve stolen my music for so long and I’ve been cool with it. It was just such an outpouring of love from the fans, like, my fans are the coolest, most supportive, loyal, smart, beautiful people in the world, so if they want to steal my music, like, please, go ahead, do it, just…be sure to come to the shows and then they buy the shirts and then I’m chilling and I don’t need a day job, you know? [laughs]

DJ Starryeyes: Yeah, that’s really cool. So you…you have Horris Records and you’re pretty verbal about musicians working with independent labels. So, what are your suggestions to bands and musicians just getting started?
MC Lars: Never sign to a major label because, these days, they want your 360 deal, so they want to take your publishing money, your t-shit money, your licensing money, they want a cut of everything. And it’s, like, really problematic because that’s how you’re going to make a living. Don’t try to copy what’s big because then in six months you’ll sound, like, played out. The two things I tell people…people are like “how do I get started? How do I get started?” Well, you need to build a regional fanbase, so, wherever you live, you need to be at the point where, like, a club like the club downstairs, you need to sell 300 tickets, and sell that place out, so that you have a local buzz and people see what you are doing is legitimate and it catches on, even if it’s just packing with your friends. You need to create digital content and videos that are amazing and really capture your personality and so hopefully something will blow up and go viral. And nowadays, that’s like the two prong approach to longevity and success. If you keep doing that, and keep putting up really dope things, and have an incredible live show that’s totally unique, then if you can do both those, you have a good chance at success. And if you don’t quit, and you do it for, like ten years and you sacrifice relationships and are broke then you have to invest every dollar you make back into it. And, like, this is the first year we’ve really been profitable. For eight years, every dollar I’ve made has gone right back into my LLC, and so that’s what you gotta do. You’ve got to know your business. You should take business classes and accounting classes and read about the music business because every single person in the music business wants to screw you—not like hook up with you, but take advantage of you—and so, if you have any success or any traction, you need to be on your own terms and you need to always own your masters. That’s why I run my label, and the whole thing is to help my friends and help myself out, because I’ve been through all the major label distribution and been in meetings with Warner Brothers and they’re just like a giant whale that wants to just suck everything in like plankton. They don’t care about art, they just care about the dollar. You know, I think the machine is inherently problematic and so you gotta build your own. And that’s why, you know, I do hip hop music, but I have a lot of punk rock ethos and background and philosophies, you know what I mean?


DJ Starryeyes: So, I know, or at least your Wikipedia says that you were involved in community driven radio in high school and college. I wanted to know if there’s anything you wanted to say to the WOZQ DJs or listeners?
MC Lars: Well, I think that it’s so cool that college and high school radio still exists, I mean, it’s the one place where this kind of music can have a continued support and I want to thank you for your support and love, for coming to the show and playing my music. Just…keep at it. It’s so fun to have your own format and paint your own canvas of your post-modern collage of art and what you’re into, cause that’s important. Corporate radio is all about the machine and selling Coca-Cola and Justin Beiber and Katy Perry and just not pushing things forward, and it’s local community, college radio and stuff that keeps culture alive and keeps the underground bumping. So, on behalf of indie artists everywhere, thank you for supporting and helping us have our music heard.

DJ Starryeyes: Awesome. So, what can we expect from you next? I know you talked about the book about hip hop and the lit-hop LP, but any other future plans?
MC Lars: Yeah, so after this tour, I’m working on my book. Then I go to the magical island of Nantucket [to do] hip hop education with the kids in the schools there and, you know, teaching them about hip hop and teaching them about this history of Nantucket and using my Ahab song as the launching point of that. Nantucket is cool cause it’s all preserved 19th century town that was huge during whaling and then had this big depression, but then everyone realized it was awesome because it was stuck in the 19th century. So, I’m doing that, and then I’m going to Washington DC for four days and working with Kyle Murdock—Megaran’s DJ who’s on tour with us—and we’re doing a Roger Rabbit EP real quick. Just to do it fast, for fun, because that’s my favorite movie. And then, I’m moving to LA so the other thing I’m working on, I’m doing a kids album and I want to translate it and launch a successful kids hip hop tv show. The Aquabats did that with Yo Gabba Gabba, you know? So I’m gonna do it with my stuff and I want to call it “Yes Yes Y’all!” and make it a really fun—where I’m the host, with puppets and cartoons—and make it educational, really cool, no ones ever seen it, amazing kids tv show. So, we’re gonna do a pilot for that. And then I’m working on the lit-hop album and that’s kind of most of what I’m doing. And then I’m going to go on tour next year, and I’m going to go to Russia and the UK next year.

DJ Starryeyes: That sounds excellent. Alright, well, any final words? Anything you want to say, talk about?
MC Lars: My new album, Lars Attacks, just came out on iTunes and I put out a great record called Sick Kids by my friend Weerd Science, and he did Warped Tour with me as my co-rapper and that album is incredible and so check it out. I think hip hop has the power to change the world. And…oh! I forgot to tell you, we’re planning on an Edgar Allen Poe EP later this year to help raise money to keep the Edgar Allen Poe house open in Baltimore!
DJ Starryeyes: Excellent! That’s a cool place! Well, I’ll keep my listeners updated about that. So, thank you!
MC Lars: High five! Thank you!

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