Richie Branson (born Marcus Brown II; November 18, 1985) is an American music producer, game designer, and nerdcore rapper from San Antonio, Texas. His stage name is derived from that of British entrepreneur Richard Branson. He has also made various ending themes for the Rooster Teeth web series Camp Camp, in which he also voices Jake Stonewall. He is also known as the "Otaku King" and founder of the group Otaku Gang.
Career
Beginnings
Before gaining notoriety as a nerdcore hip-hop artist, Branson pursued a career as a music producer, eventually switching focus to pursue a career as an artist. In 2011, he signed a recording contract under a partnership between Jagore Music Group and TuTone Entertainment, an imprint owned by an executive at Universal Republic. Months after the release of his first commercial single "Jersey Shore Fist Pump", Branson decided to change directions as an artist and began making nerdcore hip-hop music. He has stated in various interviews that he never really had much of a personal interest in the mainstream music he was making prior to his decision to create music by video games and other nerdy influences. He attributes the start of his nerdcore career to a restroom break he took in December 2011 while playing BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. Upon his return to his desk, he heard the game's main theme music and was inspired to make a hip-hop song based on it.
Cold Republic and The Letter To Squaresoft
In February 2012, he released a free EP titled The Cold Republic – Episode I: The Empire Likes Rap, a 12-track album based on his gameplay experiences in The Old Republic. The Cold Republic gained Branson notoriety in the nerdcore community after receiving coverage from a variety of major gaming sites, including TheForce.Net, AOL's Joystiq, and IGN's The Jace Hall Show. San Antonio's Fox Network affiliate television station KABB filmed and aired a music video featuring Branson performing "Looking For A Group", a song from his Cold Republic EP. The San Antonio Express-News would later feature the music video on their website. In addition to the live action music video to "Looking For A Group", Branson has released four machinima music videos to various songs from The Cold Republic. Shortly after the release of The Cold Republic, Branson released a single titled "Letter To Squaresoft" in protest to what he felt was a decline in the quality of videogames released by Square Enix. The single received worldwide coverage from gaming news sites, most notably Gawker media's Kotaku. This coverage prompted a response via Twitter from Square Enix's online content manager Ben Bateman.
The Wing Zero EP
Around the same time as the release of "Letter To Squaresoft", Branson announced he was working on an album based on Mobile Suit Gundam Wing titled The Wing Zero EP. Notable comic writer Rich Johnston personally covered the announcement on his website, BleedingCool.com. The release of the Wing Zero EP gained Branson notoriety from a variety of major players in the anime/manga community. Famed Gundam manga publisher TOKYOPOP featured Branson's gundam-inspired music multiple times on their official Facebook fansite and Twitter prior to and after the EP's release. Anime news and streaming provider Crunchyroll praised The Wing Zero EP as "far more focused" than previous incarnations of anime-inspired rap, "providing a great listening experience despite a few slip-ups along the way". Gawker's tech news site, io9 noted the oddity of a mainstream musician going into nerdcore (rather than the other way around) and hailed one of the album's songs, "Wing Memories", as the "Coolest Gundam Wing Rap Song You'll Hear Today". On numerous occasions, music from The Wing Zero EP has been featured on AOL's ComicsAlliance, The Jace Hall Show, Comics Beat, and a variety of other anime and comic related websites.
Reception
After Branson's release of two well-received projects a little more than a month apart from each other, Jace Hall himself tweeted the idea that Branson might be one of the busiest artists in nerdcore. Nerdcore Now mentioned Branson as "proving a bit of a dark horse" in the nerdcore scene. In an interview with Whiskey Media's Anime Vice, Branson announced that he was working on a Gundam-based electronic dance music album titled "The Epyon Project. In April 2012, the San Antonio Express-News reported that, in addition to The Epyon Project, Branson is working on a Street Fighter-influenced playable video game mixtape titled Richie vs. Capcom.