Info

Press Kit

Electronic Press Kit available at SonicBids – Suggested Pics available at Flickr

Bio

name: funky49 origin: 609 area code, new jersey, usa location: 813 area code, florida, usa

Steven Rush aka funky49 is all over the map like Carmen Sandiego. Let’s focus on him being a producer and a rapper. He’s made music with two boomboxes and a cheap sampling keyboard, with Amiga MOD trackers, pirated software and whatever it took to get the idea in his brain to your ears. Currently he has a home studio with professional gear and Pro Tools.

Best known for his Beastie Boys remixes and rapping, funky49′s rhymes found a home in the nerdcore rap movement. He has been named a Wired magazine “Nerdcore Hip-Hop All-Star” (September 2006) as well as in the Tampa Bay Times Ultimate Local Music Guide 2009. He has a small cameo appearance in the documentary, Nerdcore for Life. He was filmed as a fan for the MC Frontalot documentary, Nerdcore Rising. He has performed at Nerdapalooza 2007-2009 as well as been an opening act for Schaffer the Darklord, mc chris, MC Frontalot*, MC Lars*, ytcracker* and Shael Riley*. In 2008 he released his full length album, Starblazer. This was followed by a music video for the song “Milk & Doo Doo” from the album. In 2009 he released the Rapbassador EP to raise awareness and support his local science museum, Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry. This led to him creating the song “Particle Business” for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. He frequently works with redvoid and together produce music under the following alias: Superfiends, 2DefMice. funky49 also has been known to work closely with the Emergency Pizza Party who funky49 attributes to getting him to rap live. He prefers his name be spelled with no space and no caps to make searching for him easier.

*As part of the Emergency Pizza Party

Aliases: The Rapbassador, Starblazer, Doctor Basswave, Fresh Prince of Batavia, Apollo49

Web/Print/Radio/Video

.web.
2010 Wired – “12 Geeky New Year’s Resolutions”
2010 Clever Apes - “Atom smashers, skull crackers and a volcano on the prairie”
2010 Wired - “Where the Higgs At?” – Fermilab Rap Spins Some Serious Particle Beats
2010 Tampa Bay Times – Tampa nerdcore rapper funky49 debuts Fermilab ‘Particle Business’ video
2010 Physics Central – Funky Science [Interview]
2010 Geek Peek Post - Funky49 Shoots Some Science At Us
2010 Crapbot Productions - Fermilab music video hits the web
2010 The Half-Astrophysicist Blog / Portal to the Universe – Where da Higgs at?
2010 New Scientist – Rappers with a beef – particle physics style (by alpinekat)
2010 Fermilab Today - In the Fermilab daily again!
2010 Physics Central – Physics Buzz – Where the Higgs At?
2010 Discovery News - ’Where Da Higgs At?’: Fermilab’s Particle Rap
2010 Symmetry Breaking - Just what your iPod needs: a Fermilab rap video
2010 JonseyMcFly Nerdcore Review – “You might actually learn something listening to his tracks.”
2009 Letters vs. Numbers – Noncast 02: “Bears” – thank you to Geno & Thugmaster J!
2009 Nature.com - Songs about science XXIII: The Fermilab rap
2009 symmetry breaking – Fermilab in the house: the Original Gangsta atom smasher gets its own rap
2009 Fermilab Today – FNAL’s daily. Announcing my speech and gig with the DSD.
2009 North Adams Transcript - “… even helping a lost child find her parents”
2009 ScientificBlogging.com - Finally! Science Rap Music For Children
2008 Tampastica - live show review at the Orpheum
2008 Hysterical Blindness – live show review at the Orpheum
2008 Wired.com – The Weekend That Was: Nerdapalooza
2007 Redmond Developer – Mentioned in a MS dev mag? wow!
2007 FragTV on Joost – available on YouTube @ 1:12
2007 DrownPirateRadio - podcast
2006 Solipsistic Nation - #4 Nerdcore and #31 L33T
2006 The Rainbow Family Podcast
2006-09 HipsterPlease – various blog posts & podcasts
2003 It’s $5 Extra Issue 2 Volume 2 – Studio laws of funky49
2003 It’s $5 Extra Issue 1 Volume 2 – Beastie Boys’ fan e-zine interview with Jimmy JRG

.print.
12/09 Symmetry Magazine – Deconstructing the Particle Business rap lyrics
Fall/09 Cold Facts/Cryogenic Society of America -  Popular culture interest in STEM growing
09/09 Creative Loafing – Best of the Bay 2009 – Best Nerd Rapper to Book for Your Party
08/09 Daily Herald – Rapper Funky49 rocks out about Fermilab
08/09 Naperville Sun - Rap song pays tribute to Fermilab / Beacon News -  Yo! Fermilab gets a rap
08/09 Chicago Sun-Times Media [pics]
03/09 Tampa Bay Times (3.20.09 / T22-T23) – 2009 Ultimate Local Music Guide
2008 Turkish Billboard – coverage of Nerdapalooza 2008 (photo)
07/07 Redmond Developer – mentioned with Nerdcore for Life documentary
04/07 Esquire - mention of “Trekkie Pride”
09/06 Wired - Nerdcore Hip-Hop All Star with MC Frontalot, Ham-STAR, High-C, Beefy and YTCracker.

.radio.
07/10 WBEZ 91.5FM Clever Apes “The Shakedown” – link
08/09 WBIG 1280AM The Big Wake Up Call – mp3
10/07 Arcadia University (Beaver College) with DJ Remedy
09/07 Palomar College Radio KKSM AM1320 The Takeover with Zealous1

.film/video.
2009 Particle Business – music video by Dan Lamoureux of Crapbot Productions
2008 Milk & Doo Doo - self produced music video for the Starblazer album
2007 Nerdcore for Life – small cameo in nerdcore documentary by Crapbot Productions

Trivia

• In January of 2001, funky49 asked MC Frontalot in email if he would like to make a fake, internet rapper hostility. MC Frontalot declined.
• In the summer of 2006, MC Wreckshin asked funky49 to rhyme with him at Austin’s Coffee & Film. funky49 acknowledges wreckshin as his ‘rhyme daddy’.
• In March of 2007, funky49 did an acapella version ‘Positive’ for Chuck D after a Public Enemy performance in St. Pete, Florida. (pic)
• For Nerdapalooza 2007, funky49 gave High-C a belt because he came from Louisiana without one. funky49 & redvoid also did a live cover of Jesse Dangerously’s Outfox’d in which funky49 put on a tie and rapped while redvoid sang the hook.
• In November 2008, named #9 (Sangriaa) and #7 (Nina) in the Vagina In Deep Podcast ranking of the sexist nerdcore guys.
• Long time tour dj of Spinal Tap (just waiting on a new drummer)

Labgear

Short list of the gear I use to make sweet jams: PC, ProTools LE, Reason, Mackie mixer, Electro-Voice monitors, Sennheiser headphones, Korg MS2000, Shure & Audio Technica microphones.

Need gear and don’t know where to go? Buy from people I trust! Worldwide, contact Mike C @ Sweetwater (1-800-222-4700 x1387) or if you are in the Tampa Bay area, Glen C @ Sam Ash (813-908-5556‎, x7 “DJ, lighting & sound) – These are my guys. Make them your guys too!