Who is King Of The Black Nerds?

Art by NerdKing We’re a POC nerd site over here. Now, nerds of color have always been around, like Dwayne Wayne from A Different World. Oh, you expected me to say Urkel? You don’t know my life. Anyway, it really wasn’t until more recently that it has become “socially acceptable” to be a Black nerd. Where once you’d be exiled by your own for enjoying comic books or rocking hero shirts, that’s the case no longer. Thanks to years of POC Nerd Rights Protests and Obama shouting out that geek life in the White House, we have our own haven — or kingdom, if you will — which begs one question that I’ll throw to Naruto and ask you like Asuma asked Shikamaru: “So… do you know who the ‘king’ is?” I mean, there’s got to be one, right? Who is putting Black nerds on the map?

We can take it to genres for the sake of specifics. Let’s go into music first, preferably hip-hop. I wanna say first off that MF Doom is the fucking Aegon Targaryen of Black Nerds in hip hop. He rocks a mask that’s a homage to Dr. Doom. We gotta praise him as a pioneer God body of this section, but maybe we’d be remiss if we didn’t also mention Childish Gambino.

From his mixtapes & EPs to his Camp release, Gambino was the Black nerd rapper many of us had been waiting for. Rappers have of course been making many pop culture/video game references, but the depth that Gambino put into it though? Maaaaaaaan, listen. “Cause I’ma beast bitch, Gir, Invader Zim” “You’re her X-Man like Cannonball” “Uncool, but lyrically…