Student MC brings ‘laptop rap’ to Orono

Straight outta … Stanford? No doubt, being a 22-year-old student at a top-notch university isn’t going to bolster MC Lars’ street cred with the Eminem or 50 Cent set. No matter. Not that Lars, ne Andrew Nielsen, intends any disrespect to those current big-timers or the MCs of old. It’s just that, well, Lars is in an altogether different category of hip-hop.

He calls it “post-punk laptop rap.” Which, as it states in his online bio, “[is] not a category exactly, but he’s working on that.”

It’s a lengthy label, but as closely accurate a description as you can get of music that draws together so many disparate threads: the raw yet refined guitars of present day pop-punk, computer-generated beats and goofy but intelligent lyrics rattled off rapid-fire on top of it all. And somehow it all kind of works.

Lars will bring his unique sound to Maine Center for the Arts next Thursday where he’ll perform solo as part of the Texas band Bowling for Soup’s supporting lineup.

At live shows, Lars raps and plays guitar, backed by bassist PJ McCombs and Damondrick Jack, who provides samples and playback from that other instrument, the laptop.

Lars admits there are some challenges to playing out live while being on the fringe of several different styles.

“The main issue is that I tend to get made fun of by hard-core rap fans because they think I’m making fun of hip-hop a little bit,” Lars said in a recent phone interview from a

tour stop in Chicago. “It’s ironic, because I’m such fan of old-school hip-hop.”

A hyperawareness of his musical influences, literature and pop culture runs throughout Lars’ frenetic lyrics. On “Mr. Raven,” he reworks Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” over a sample from New Jersey emo outfit Brand New. While on another “Laptop EP” track, “U.K. Vice Versa,” Vanilla Ice, Seymour Skinner and Hanson all get name-checked in one verse of his streaming, wry examination of the differences between U.S. and U.K. culture. Lars spent a semester abroad in England, studying at Oxford while performing anywhere he could. Even doing opening slots for indie rock bands, he found audiences to be surprisingly open-minded.

“The Streets and Dizzee Rascal are so huge in England,” he said. “Hip-hop for them is allowed to be more experimental.”

Lars isn’t alone on this side of the pond, either. In recent years the Net has helped jump-start a virtual (ouch!) explosion of indie hip-hoppers far left of the genre’s center – with the motormouthed Aesop Rock, quirky Canadian Buck 65, and the equally fringy San Francisco-based hip-hop collective Anticon all coming to mind. But Lars, however, stands slightly apart from this crowd, too, gleefully erring closer on the side of pop-punk ala Green Day than the arty atmospherics of his peers.

It makes sense then that Lars is performing with Bowling for Soup on its current tour. The Texas-based band is out and about in support of its current disc, “A Hangover You Don’t Deserve,” the album that gave us “1985,” the retro anthem about a soccer mom pining for her halcyon days during the decade of big hair and Swatch watches.

The tour, which also features American Hi-Fi and the Riddlin’ Kids, will come to the Maine Center for the Arts (of all places) at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10.

Tickets cost $10 and are available through the MCA box office, 581-1755. George Bragdon can be reached at gbragdon@bangordailynews.net.