(MCT) WACO, Texas—A cramped upstairs bedroom in an apartment complex with all the whimsical charm of a Soviet prison block does not seem like the kind of place where a new branch of hip hop would take root.

But here, within hollering distance of Baylor University, are Texas’ Kristin “MC Router” Ritchie and Tannar “T-Byte” Brown, staying inside to lay down a rap that combines their love of high tech and hard beats.

“One of my very first raps was a Halo rap,” said Ritchie, referencing the popular video game. “And then Bill Gates was the first professional one.”

She is talking about “Bill Gates Revolution,” a track on her upcoming CD that is an anti-Microsoft rap where she describes the operating system as a horror story her grandmother told her.

This is the world of nerdcore—some call it geeksta—where math majors, computer-code cowboys and other young scientific Americans celebrate their love of algorithms and hip hop rhythms.

At first a minor curiosity spread by word-of-mouth and MySpace pages, nerdcore is starting to attract broader attention.

While major labels have yet to take the plunge, two documentaries, “Nerdcore for Life” and “Nerdcore Rising,” are in the works. And nerdcore performances were featured during last month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where all the tech gurus gather to sample the latest gadgetry.

For Ritchie, 20, and Brown, 19, it is less about their careers—she works at Starbucks; he’s studying audio technology at a community college—than just talking about stuff they like: computers, video games and hip hop.

She now has “geek life” tattooed on her knuckles, is Texas’ best-known nerdcore geek—and one of few female performers in the genre.

“I said, ‘OK, I’m a nerdcore artist,’” Ritchie said, “and this is what I do.”

Chicago-based film director Dan Lamoureux had never heard of nerdcore until a couple of years ago when he went to see a club show from Chris “MC Chris Ward,” whom he knew only as a voice from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” He was surprised to stumble into a whole geek world.

“He raps about being a geek, and he has this huge following,” he said. “They were calling it nerdcore. How can this be a genre of music? As soon as I got home, I Googled it. As soon as I started looking into it, I figured if I’m curious, other people would be.”

So he started to film “Nerdcore for Life” for which he hopes to line up distribution shortly. He said he found his subjects refreshingly honest.

“They may be pretending to be bigger nerds than they are sometimes, but they like hip hop and want to make it their own,” he said. “They’re not rapping about things they don’t know about.”

© 2007 Fort Worth Star-Telegram