Artists like MC Lars

Damian Alexander Hess, better known by his stage name MC Frontalot, is an American rapper and web designer. He is widely credited as a pioneer of the nerdcore genre, blending elements of hip hop with themes from nerd culture.

Christopher Brendan Ward IV, better known by the stage name mc chris, is an American rapper, voice actor, comedian, and writer. He is recognized for his high-pitched voice and for blending his "geek” background with a “gangsta rap” persona, contributing to the popularization of the nerdcore genre. He has released ten albums, five EPs, one re-release, and a tenth-anniversary edition of his recordings with the Lee Majors. He is also known for his work on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block.

Optimus Rhyme was a hip hop group from Seattle, Washington. Optimus Rhyme is most widely considered a nerdcore group because of the nerdy nature of their lyrics. The name of the band as well as the stage names of the members and many of their lyrics refer to the Transformers franchise. Their music is a combination of rapped hip hop lyrics with funk rock music. Optimus Rhyme formed in Seattle in 2000.

Flobots is an experimental hip hop band from Denver, Colorado, formed in 2005 by Jamie Laurie. The band's origins date back 5 years earlier to a similar project by Laurie. Flobots found mainstream success with their major label debut Fight with Tools (2007), featuring the single "Handlebars", which became a popular hit on Modern Rock radio in April 2008. The band has released four studio albums and one EP, with their latest Noenemies being released in May 2017.

The Lonely Island is an American comedy trio formed by Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer in Berkeley, California in 2001. They have written for and starred in the American TV program Saturday Night Live (SNL).

Steven Adam Markowitz, known professionally as Hoodie Allen, is an American rapper. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he began working at Google before ultimately quitting to pursue a full-time career in hip-hop.

The Streets is an English musical project led by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mike Skinner. The project was founded in the early 90s in Birmingham, while Skinner was still a teenager; however, no music would formally come out until the early 2000s. In the initial run of The Streets, the project released five studio albums: Original Pirate Material (2002), A Grand Don't Come for Free (2004), The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (2006), Everything Is Borrowed (2008) and Computers and Blues (2011). The Streets also released a string of successful singles during this time, which reached the Top 40 on the UK Singles chart – including "Has It Come to This?", "Fit but You Know It", "Dry Your Eyes", "When You Wasn't Famous" and "Prangin' Out". After disbanding The Streets in 2011, Skinner pursued several other musical projects before ultimately reviving the moniker in 2017. A mixtape, None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive, was released in 2020. The Streets' sixth studio album, The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light, was released in September 2023.

Teren Delvon Jones, better known by his stage name Del the Funky Homosapien or Sir DZL, is an American rapper.

Daniel George L. Bull is a British rapper and songwriter known best for his songs about video games, which he publishes on his YouTube channel.

Cho Hye-ri, better known by her stage name Wax (왁스), is a South Korean pop singer. She debuted in 1998 as the lead vocalist of the rock band DOG. She released her first solo album, The Diary of Mom, in 2000. Wax made her acting debut in 2007 with a main role in the musical Fixing My Makeup, the plot of which is based on her hit song of the same name.

The Coup is an American hip-hop band from Oakland, California. Their music is an amalgamation of influences, including funk, punk, hip-hop, and soul. Frontman Boots Riley's revolutionarily-charged lyrics rank The Coup as a renowned political hip-hop band aligned to radical music groups such as Crass, Dead Prez and Rage Against the Machine.

Ian Matthias Bavitz, better known by his stage name Aesop Rock, is an American rapper and producer. He was at the forefront of the new wave of underground and alternative hip-hop acts that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was signed to El-P's Definitive Jux label until it went on hiatus in 2010. In a 2010 retrospective, betterPropaganda ranked him at number 19 at the Top 100 Artists of the Decade.

Ali Douglas Newman, better known by his stage name Brother Ali, is an American rapper, community activist, and member of the Rhymesayers Entertainment hip-hop collective. He has released eleven albums, four EPs, and a number of singles and collaborations. Some of his best known works include The Undisputed Truth (2007), Us (2009), and Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color (2012), all of which charted on the US Billboard and were favorably received by critics.

Fort Minor was a hip hop side project by American musician Mike Shinoda, who is better known as the rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, producer, and rapper of the rock band Linkin Park. The project's only album, The Rising Tied, was released in 2005. The album's fourth single "Where'd You Go" reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were an American hip hop duo formed 2009 in Seattle, Washington, by rapper Macklemore and record producer Ryan Lewis. That same year they released their first collaborative effort, an EP titled VS. EP. They later followed up with VS. Redux (2010), the Grammy Award-winning album The Heist (2012) and This Unruly Mess I've Made (2016).