Tag: The NPC Collective

Gone Too Soon, Music, Sports

Mega Ran on The Soul Man

MegaRan

My relationship with professional wrestling is very complicated at best. I watched my first wrestling match sometime around 1983, and the larger than life characters were literal comic books that had exploded in front of me. Like most other kids in the ’80s, I wanted more. I begged my mom to buy me wrestling magazines, toys, and watched every Saturday morning.

I loved guys like Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage, but I remember my eyes widening every time there was a Black or Brown face on my screen. So naturally I had an affinity for characters like The Junkyard Dog, Koko B Ware. But what really turned me on to wrestling was a tag team called The Soul Patrol.

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Sports, Television5 Comments

The Show of Shows: Being at Wrestlemania 31

MegaRan

The Granddaddy of them all. Wrestlemania.

I’ll start this off by stating how special this year’s ‘Mania was for me, mainly because my favorite wrestler ever, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, had such a huge imprint on the event.

Wrestlemania IV in 1988 took place in Atlantic City, NJ, not even 90 minutes from my childhood home in Philadelphia. We had plans to attend, but tickets were sold out, so the Spectrum — the local basketball stadium — had decided to open the stadium up and broadcast Wrestlemania on the JumboTron for a small fee. I was so excited, I had to go. My mother agreed and took my cousin Howie and me to South Philly for my first Wrestlemania moment. I bought a Macho Man poster, a foam finger, and a program.

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Animation, Music, Nerdcore

SkyBlew Pays Homage to Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold!

The Nerds of Color

“The Ballad of Pigeon Man” — featuring D&D Sluggers and produced by SublimeCloud of The Digi Destined — is the latest single from North Carolina-based emcee SkyBlew. The song pays homage to the classic Nickelodeon cartoon Hey Arnold!, a show that had a major impact on SkyBlew’s life and serves as the main subject of his latest album.

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Nerdcore2 Comments

My Guest Spot on Ask the NPC Last Weekend

Keith Chow

Last Sunday evening, we flipped the script on the Google Hangout format. Instead of hosting Hard NOC Life, I had the pleasure to be Mega Ran’s guest on the NPC Collective’s monthly “Ask the NPC” series on YouTube.

Catch me on with Ran, and his NPC partners-in-rhyme Shubzilla, Sammus, and Sky Blew. We discuss a lot of topics including potential NOC/NPC collabos, gender representation in nerd spaces, how people perceive nerdcore music, and our favorite comics. Plus, we get into some show-and-tell of the best nerdy stuff in our rooms. Check out the video after the jump!

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Hard N.O.C. Life, Nerdcore1 Comment

Strictly Nerdcore with Adam WarRock, Tribe One, & Mega Ran

The Nerds of Color

As you know, we love talking about hip-hop here at The Nerds of Color. More specifically, the subgenre known as Nerdcore has a special place (and its own category) here as well. So it was a big deal to get three of the biggest names in the game to sit down for a special episode of Hard N.O.C.

Joining Keith (@the_real_chow) on the show are overly enthusiastic hip-hop artists Adam WarRock (@eugewarrock), Tribe One (@tribeonewon), and Random (a.k.a. @MegaRan). As always, Hard N.O.C. Life is directed by the indomitable Nelson Wong (@aarisings).

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Music, Nerdcore, Origins1 Comment

Introducing the NPC Collective

MegaRan

In gaming culture, an NPC (non-player character) is often a bit player in the overall story — he or she is there for no reason except to get the main character to their goal. Their backstory is never told.

Much like an NPC, people of color who desire to create music or art or think differently than their counterparts are often discouraged and forced to keep those thoughts and ideas to themselves. And to play the background.

I had an idea a while back to create a collective of like-minded, forward thinking creatives who have been through a lot of the same things I had as a person of color who enjoyed nerdy things as a child an as an adult.

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