Beefy

BEEFY
When he’s not rhyming, he’s slingin’ 20-sided dice with his role-playing posse. He invites all the fly females to check out his funky-fresh Flash cartoons at albinoblacksheep.com.
Sample: “Dear Internet, you’ve pwned my life / And if you had an orifice I’d make you my wife.” - Wired

Nerdcore artist Beefy is living the good life -- putting out his first official album, traveling overseas for concerts and dating a game store clerk.
His one resolution for 2009?
To release another album before the end of the year.
"I just put out my last album, and people are asking when the next one is going to be released," said the 23-year-old Richland rapper. "Can't I just have a little break? But I'm definitely going to make fun of rap some more."
It's rap that has gotten him where he is, so why is Beefy picking on the genre that made him a self-described Internet celebrity?
"T.I. remixed the Numa Numa song," he said of the song originally called Dragostea din tei as performed by the Romanian pop group O-Zone. "I just get so riled up about that. It should have been ours."
And by "ours" he means those who want more of this subgenre of hip-hop characterized by themes appealing to nerds.
But music in 2008 wasn't all bad for Beefy.
"I recently did a show with MC Chris," he said. "He's the reason I started rapping nerdy."
Beefy's music about classic video games and references to comic books landed him in the independent documentary Nerdcore For Life, directed by Dan Lamoureux. The film gained the attention of promoters, who then put together Glitched, a Dutch nerdcore event in the Netherlands on Feb. 26.
"A guy saw Nerdcore For Life and called Dan," Beefy explained. "(The promoters) wanted to screen it and have a concert. They're paying for MC Lars, MC Router, YTCracker and me to come over for four days and perform."
Beefy hopes to follow in the footsteps of fellow Nerdcore artist and friend YTCracker, whose music is featured on G4TV, a TV station with programs tailored around the latest must-have tech gadgets, Web culture and video games. He doesn't want to tour, but he would like to make music from home and sell CDs online.
For now, though, he enjoys being the only artist to have two songs on an upcoming nerdcore compilation CD.
The album is being produced with the help of the creators of Penny-Arcade, one of the most popular online comics. For the past five years, Penny-Arcade has staged Child's Play, a fundraiser to collect toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children's hospitals across North America.
The event has raised more than $3.5 million, and proceeds from The Child's Play CD 2008: Music For Charity compilation album will go to it as well.
Beefy's song, Game Store Girl, will appear on the album, along with Underbeard, a song by his band The Grammar Club.
The Grammar Club consists of four other nerdcore musicians from around the nation who collaborate online, sending soundbites back and forth. Their second album, No Bueno, also is slowly coming together and will be made available to download free on their website http://thegrammarclub.com.
Another side project is Beefy's free LP,The Adventures of Beef Thompson in Space, which will be available to download for free in mid-January on his Web site www.beefyness.com.
Fans can look forward to his work on the song Gasping For Air with the now-defunct Kennewick rock group From the Dust.
Beefy's album Rolling Doubles is his first that doesn't use copyrighted music samples. Fans can purchase Doubles on Amazon or iTunes for $9.99 in MP3 form, but in the meantime, he's not selling actual CDs over the Internet.
* On the Net: www.beefyness.com; www.nerdcoreforlife.com
* Bethany Lee: 509-582-1465; blee@tricityherald.com.


Read more: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2009/01/01/431395/for-beefy-its-about-more-than.html#ixzz14Vp5UuUX - Tri-City Herald: AtomicTown

Last time Beefy hit the Internet with an album, it was all about nerd pride, carving out a place in the world for geeks and gamers.
This time around, in his new "With Sprinkles" LP, Beefy presents geekdom not as a struggling subculture but rather as the frosting on the cake of life.
"The theory is that everything is better with sprinkles." Beef Thompson, or Keith Moore, as he is known off the web in his hometown of Kennewick, Wash., spent two years working on the album, but the concept for the album came to him in one night.
"My girlfriend gave me the idea when we were making chocolate-covered pretzels and I was foolish enough to ask why she wanted to add sprinkles to each one. I wanted to make an album that would make people feel good, even if the entire week sucked."
Yes, the nerdcore rapper used to wonder in his lyrics whether his growing fame would prompt women to send photos of their naked breasts to his inbox. However, he has grown up some since we last heard his rhymes.
For the uninitiated, nerdcore is what happens when rap, hip-hop, and other mainstream music genres are fit to the lyrics of nerds and geeks, musicians who forgo guns, whores, and bling in favor of comics, video games and Dungeons and Dragons.
Beefy's trademark style provides a liberal dose of geek culture references that, in his previous albums, he mixed with a twinge of rebellion against the brain drain of modern hip hop.
But if his last album, 2008's "Rolling Doubles," was Beefy's nerdcore adolescence, then "With Sprinkles" is Beefy stepping into his musical adulthood, standing apart from the mainstream crowd.
‘With Sprinkles' is definitely a showcase of how much my life has changed. Got a lady, she has an adorable kid I call Nugget, and I've pretty much become a grown up. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. I'm not exactly living a stress-free life, but I feel like ‘With Sprinkles' highlights some life goals."
The lyrical content of "With Sprinkles" matches Beefy's newfound maturity, leading off with a track titled "Up, Up and Away" which makes it clear that he's moved past the drama of his younger years.
While the first track is one of the more uplifting beats on the album, tracks like "One of These Nights" give it some balance by reflecting rapid-fire on the hardships and insecurities Beefy had to get through to reach where he is.
"No one wants to hear about the perfect life," Beefy said. "Without some conflict the story would be boring as hell."
"Game Store Girl" is Beefy's answer to his earlier "Dork Date" and "Play With Me" tracks off "Rolling Doubles." While "Dork Date" gave us nerd courtship at full power and "Play With Me" was a lament about a total lack of nerd confidence when it came to women, "Game Store Girl" is the story of how Beefy saw a girl working at his local GameStop and went for it. It debuted on the 2008 Child's Play Charity compilation album, but considering the rarity of that CD, it is a welcome addition to "With Sprinkles."
Other tracks like "Join My Guild" and "Sidekick" are hip-hop homages to the comics and video games that shape Beefy's trademark nerdcore flavor. "Uncanny" in particular, a collaborative effort between Beefy and MC Lars, will make you scratch your head in wonder as to how Beefy managed to clear a sample from a classic comic-book-turned-cartoon theme that dragged me by the toes back to the early ‘90's. If you watched Saturday morning cartoons at all as a kid, it'll hit you like a booster shot of nostalgia directly to the left buttock of your childhood.
Of course, no Beefy album would be complete without a pile of references to nerd culture bordering on the obscene, with tracks like "None of your Business" and "Geek Out" taking the album's pace to new heights.
But where Beefy has outdone himself this go-around is with the crowd of nerdcore collaborators he's managed to pack into 18 tracks. YTCracker, Schaffer the Darklord, Dual Core, Epic-1, MC Lars, Mustin from TheOneUps and c64 all make appearances, with tanner4105 returning from "Rolling Doubles" to round out his nerdcore team.
Beefy's grown up, and it shows in his newfound support.
"This community is 100% connected. You can't get away with being a dick online without paying for it. When I put out ‘Whitesican' and ‘.nerd' my ego exploded. I was like 18 and I spent all of high school talking shit online. I had to learn to put myself in check and I think that came with growing up.
"I learned to give up the attitude and just get along with everyone." said Beefy.
You can find Chris Mikesell's full web Q+A interview with Beefy this week in Ka Lamakua, UH Manoa's alternative arts and entertainment webzine: www.kalamakua.org.

http://beefy.bandcamp.com/
Digital Download: $9.99 in your choice of MP3, AAC or FLAC
Physical Album: $10 + shipping. Includes digital download. - Ka Leo The Voice

Beef Thompson is a good humored fellow. A man of many dedications – from his girlfriend, to his video games to his deep love of comics and classic television. Deeper than all of that is his dedicated to music, which has resulted in him being dubbed the “crowned prince of Nerdcore.” Commonly and artistically known as Beefy, his tunes are a refreshing mix of bullet fast raps reminiscent of MC Frontalot or Optimus Rhyme, with a deeper edged sense of humor and metaphorical rhyming. With Sprinkles is the newest release from Beefy, and it’s full of all those dedications and more.

With Sprinkles is 18 tracks of geeky in-jokes, comic book references and tales from the life of a gamer. They are told in quick rhyme style with creative smirks in the tone and vocalization of Beefy’s raps. The accompanying music and production (by Mustin, c64, and tanner4105) is slick and infectious. The album starts off positive with the uplifting tune “Up, Up and Away” and really never shifts outside that tone.

While some of the subject matter isn’t always as positive, such as the song “Feature Creep” in which Beefy so eloquently illustrates the actions of the one jackass that always seems to be in the movie theater, the positive tone seems to behave slightly like the plague would. The tone even ends up infecting Nerdcore’s evildoer – Schaffer The Darklord – on the collaboration track “Smiles Times” – also including Epic-1. Other collaborations include “Ones & Zeroes” with ytcracker and “Press Start” featuring Dual Core. Dr. Awkward lends some rhymes on “Give Me My Gun,” a track undoubtedly inspired by first person shooters, and MC Lars chimes in on the flashback to childhood track “Uncanny.” - Wired Geek Dad