And the geeks shall inherit the earth.

With its petty insults and ludicrous outfits, hip-hop has always been a playground. But while the jocks strut around in the centre, on the left of the field are the kids with the smartarse answers who’ve been spending breaktime in the computer room. Call it geek-rap or spod-hop if you want, but they’re making their voices heard.

“We’re neither determined to stay underground nor take the majors on, head to head,” says Amaechi Uzoigwe, label manager of Definitive Jux. “What’s going on is just a natural part of the dialectic.”

Of course, hip-hop has always had experimental edges, but for most casual listeners these were smoothed away by US radio. For commercial American airwaves everything is standardised for strict demographic niches so, although someone like Dr Octagon was releasing records that moved beats and rhymes into new territories, these square pegs were buried beneath Puffy’s ego.

But now the nerds have organised their own gangs. Company Flow were one of the first leftfield rap acts to break overground, emerging in 90s New York with an abrasive style that underpinned their frenetic rapping with computerised noise and weird turntablism, rather than the standard-issue loops of the era. Spurning the majors, they instead signed to the then obscure Rawkus, before founder member El-P established Definitive Jux with his manager Amaechi Uzoigwe, to release music from the likes of RJD2 and Aesop Rock.

“My fantasy is that artists will boycott majors that support degrading music,” elaborates Amaechi. “Not from a free speech standpoint, but from a quality standpoint - and that has nothing to do with the type of hip-hop it is, because I’d f**k with Nelly in a second.”

Their ethic is shared by the Anticon label in Sacramento, California. The verbose rhyming and strange sound collages of acts like cLOUDDEAD were clearly inspired by Company Flow. They, in turn, gave Def Jux the confidence that they could make it on their own, organic terms.

“Anticon is fantastic,” enthuses Tom Brown of Lex Records. “When people talk about futuristic hip-hop most of it is total crap, but they’re completely out there.”

Lex is Warp’s hip-hop subsidiary although, as Tom points out, “musically we’re headed in a completely different direction.” But Lex’s experimental outlook owes as much to Squarepusher as DJ Premier. “It’s not about one particular scene,” says Tom. “So everyone stands up for themselves.”

But as the “four elements of hip-hop” are replaced by a periodic table of possible sounds, grouping it all under one banner seems redundant. Even mainstream producers like The Neptunes betray a clear leftfield influence in their syncopated beats, and all that acts like Madlib and Anti-Pop Consortium really share is a belief that hip-hop is a way of life – not just a medium for marketing trainers. As Will Ashton of Big Dada, home to Roots Manuva and Mike Ladd, asserts, “Hip-hop is now as broad as music itself. We’re anti-mainstream, but we’re also anti-niche.”

The geeks have done their homework, and the sums add up… Paul Clarke 30 May 03

Lexoleum, released 02 June 03 on Lex Records.