Rating: NN
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If some label were looking for a younger, hipper version of Weird Al Yankovic to do smartass rap songs about emo bands and file-sharing to sell to the myspace demographic, then Stanford grad MC Lars perfectly fits the sideways-baseball-cap-and-Public Enemy-shirt costume of their ideal laptop prankster plant. The Graduate’s opening track, Download This Song, blasts the backward practices of the music biz. It sounds just like one of Terry McBride’s rants about labels being obsolete, so it’s no great surprise to see McBride thanked in the sleeve notes right after MC Lars’s family and his Nettwerk manager. Actually, The Graduate seems less like the wiseass commentary of a pissed-off bedroom recorder than the contrived gags of a major label flunky with access to market research on iPod buyers. For a comedy album, it’s not that funny, but Nettwerk’s laughing all the way to the bank.
