MC Frontalot, aka Damian Hess, represents the instant-messenger generation.

Courtesy of Sean M c Pharlin

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I hate your blog. You own a dog, and you feed it. You post about it. I get to read it. Plus: five paragraphs on the socks you bought and your thoughts on whether Nicole Richie's hot or not.

— From MC Frontalot's song "I Hate Your Blog"

If MC Frontalot's albums had a parental advisory sticker, it might suggest your kids get out more.

The rapper is more prone to boast of experiences on the Internet superhighway than on a gritty street corner.

Although the term "fronting" means pretending, Damian "MC Frontalot" Hess doesn't harbor any illusions about what he does.

Witness the term he created for his musical genre: Nerdcore.

"In general, the 'fronting' is I have to sort of pretend that I deserve to be on a stage," Hess said. "Most other rappers try to play it off as authenticity."

In a conversation ahead of his Sunday show at Solar Culture, the nasally Massachusetts resident didn't cuss once and said "excuse me" after he coughed.

His politeness, not to mention his whiteness, contrasts with the brash and aloof manner affected by most mainstream hip-hop artists.

More "White and Nerdy" than "ridin' dirty," Hess hustled in the graphic and Web-design game before quitting to jump full time into hip-hop.

The 33-year-old Hess, who mines the Web for material, is the "official rapper" of the geeky online comic Penny Arcade (penny-arcade.com) and headlines its annual convention.

On his new album, "Secrets From the Future," Hess rhymes about fathering a genius baby, Asperger's disorder and late-night pingpong battles. The album, his second, isn't loaded with trunk- bangers like the new Timbaland CD. Its primary strength is Frontalot's hyperactive approach to rhyming.

Nerdcore isn't a parody of rap; it's the art form taken into new terrain. Hess isn't the most gifted MC, but he boldly goes against the rap prototype.

"Coolness in general was denied to everyone who grew up being a nerd," he said. "So there's a big kind of flip there."

Hess, who got his start posting rhymes on Web pages, enjoys the idea of a kid in the middle of nowhere able to transform into a rapper through the identity cloak of his or her laptop.

"I don't think I would spearhead any kind of movement," Hess said. "I'm interested in collecting a really powerful and devoted niche audience like all the kids in the world who identify with the stuff that I'm saying. And there's a lot of them."

As a rap name, "MC Frontalot" isn't really accurate. Hess is as genuine as Ghostface Killah and probably engages in a whole lot less fronting than many rappers. Perhaps he could be thought of as the voice of a generation that expects its revelations delivered via instant messenger.

The name instead challenges preconceptions of what a rap artist should look and sound like.

"I guess I'm an enigma in that regard," he said. "I do court as much underestimation as I can, so that people are wildly surprised."