OK, it’s the third installment of this series, and we come to a band that operates in a genre of music that most of you don’t even know exists. But that’s why you have me as a friend, to teach you about these obscure things that you can then choose to willfully ignore.
Optimus Rhyme is a Seattle based band formed by a former Nintendo employee that goes by the stage name of “Wheelie Cyberman”. They are a nerdcore hip-hop group, meaning that they rap about things like robots, the Internet, ping pong, and other things that are of little interest to anyone that hasn’t read all of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation or Robot stories.
You should give them a listen- first up is Coded and United, a song about a robot that lives in the real world and his struggles with adapting to human kind. The struggle with having a fascination with large prime numbers, and thus being unable to adapt to a job driving a taxicab is something with which we can all identify. Wait, what? Trust me, it’s so nerdy that it’s cool.
Followed this up with a remix of “Ping Pong Song”, in which the great MC Frontalot adds his own vocals to add to the nerdly goodness. You get to hear all about the ORPPRB (Optimus Rhyme Ping Pong Ranking Board) and Wheelie brags about his dominance.
Sadly, the realities of life caused Optimus Rhyme to end their collaboration a few years ago, but Wheelie is still at it with a new effort called “Supercommuter”, in which all of his lyrics were written while stuck in traffic, and all background music was generated with a Nintendo DS.