Music Monday: A Rapper By Any Other Name

A few months ago when I started this column I talked about the biggest name in nerdcore hiphop. Nerdcore is an interesting subgenre, in that it blends two diverse ideals together: the lifestyles of rappers and geeks. Sitting around at night doing a speed run of Symphony of the Night isn’t exactly “baller”. Today’s act is someone who’s straddled the line of traditional hip-hop and nerdcore, and always seems to come out on top. Not only has Random put out proper hip-hop albums (like his debut The Call), he’s also released nerdcore hits under his alias Mega Ran.

This Philly-born rap star has garnered fans across the hip-hop and gaming landscapes for his brilliant Mega Ran 9 and Mega Ran 10 albums, where he remixes and raps over the Mega Man 9 and 10 soundtracks respectively. He also regularly releases music through his mailing list, and has an awesome album coming out later this week; Black Materia (releasing Jan. 31st) will be made up of music from Final Fantasy VII. Oh, and he’s also the first person to ever produce a rap about comics live in a comic book shop. Which is pretty fucking awesome.

Enough talk, let’s get to the music. On this week’s Music Monday I’m proud to present Random, a.k.a. Mega Ran, with his songs “Boss Battle: Jewel Man”, “Aerith”, and “Bedrock City”.

“Boss Battle: Jewel Man” (from Mega Ran 9)

“Aerith” (from Black Materia)

“Bedrock City”