It doesn't seem all that wrong to picture MC Lars with a Kool-Aid mustache as he's rapping. It's not wrong at all to picture him with darkened hair sweaty and stuck to his temples, combed through with a quick and haphazard set of fingers just to wring some of the perspiration out. It's not wrong to picture MC Lars with a wide-brimmed smile and a gap-tooth, looking at us with glittery eyes, with unabashed enthusiasm.
MC Lars, the rapper from Berkeley, California, has a kind of youthful abandon about his writing, but what's more is that he's chipper, in a way that marks him as one of the innocents, even when he's calling people assholes in songs. He's got a tender quality about him that stands as evidence that he is fascinated by all kinds of young pursuits - like science fiction, love, time travel, television and movies - and while he might have picked up on certain aspects of the jaded world, what he's really great at spotting and calling out are people and acts of ugliness. He's able to shine a quick-worded, smiley light on disgraceful people, as he does on his song, "The World's Greatest Assholes." All of the people that he lists deserve to be on there, but the way that he raps about them makes it seem even more justified because there really doesn't seem to be a droplet of malice involved with any of it. The proof is evident and all he's trying to do - with this song, or with any of them - is to encourage a change in behavior.
All MC Lars wants is for everyone to just "be a good person, yo." It's the ability to spot wrongness in another - without clouded judgments or predilections - that is something we seem to be born with. We can spot a shithead a mile away, usually, we just get worse and worse about giving people hell about it every time it's seen. Sometimes we laugh, instead of gasping. MC Lars wants a time machine to go back to warn Kennedy and to cancel all flights on September 11th. He wants the science fiction that he craves to work for good and he wants all the d-bags to just get a taste of their own medicine.