Two years ago, Toronto emcee/producer/deejay and Backburner member More or Les released his opus, Blow the Fuck Up But Stay Humble. About a year ago, he gave us a beat tape called Big Lunch in Little China to tide us over while he continued to work on bigger things. Now the time has finally come for his follow up album, Nerd Love.

More or Les has had an interesting career, if only in the way that his releases seem to oscillate back and forth between deep dives into nerdom, and releases that appeal to the general hip hop fan base. If Blow the Fuck Up was your general hip hop album, you better believe that an album called Nerd Love is one of the nerdiest projects that Les has produced. Les produces the entire album with the exception of a couple songs, which are produced by Abstract Artform, Thrillatron, and Klopfenpop. The album balances his love of classic boom bap with a touch of more modern and nerdier styles such as 8-bit production, to round things out into classic nerdcore territory that bumps and sounds great with the volume turned up. Over the course of the album, we get deep dives into all sorts of nerdy subject matter, whether it be The Avengers, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek, and more. We also get a who’s who of nerdcore guests stopping by to have fun with Les, such as Wordburglar, Nilla, Touc, MikeAll, Jesse Dangerously, Mega Ran, Alezandria Coldevin, Lex the Lexicon Artist, int eighty, Mikal kHill, and Timbuktu. Overall, it’s just a fun celebration of being a nerd, and having fun inserting yourself in the texts that you love, such as pretending that your neighbors are Klingons, or imaging the RPG campaigns that you and your friends might cook up. There is a little bit of room for some serious talk, though, and nothing hits harder than “Hidden in Plain Sight,” featuring Mega Ran. The song directly engages with the lack of representation for characters of color in the comic books, movies, and video games, and how the racist practices of these industries are overlooking some incredibly talented and motivated people in the process.

Sometimes nerds just want to have fun, and there is plenty of fun to be had on Nerd Love. More or Les is proud of his own nerdiness, and he celebrates it with his friends on this album and invites you to do the same. If you own twenty-sided dice, this album is for you.