Poe Made $9 for ‘The Raven.’ MC Lars Raised $29K to Rap About Him

MC Lars aligns with Oglio Records to drop a massive, 19-track anniversary expansion of his legendary lit-hop album.

Edgar Allan Poe was paid nine dollars for “The Raven.” Across his entire career, he earned roughly $6,200. In 2025, MC Lars raised $29,917 from 385 Kickstarter backers to make an album about him. Poe would have found this either vindicating or infuriating. Probably both. He was like that.

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

Just in time for Halloween, on October 16, 2026, Oglio Records will release the expanded 19-track anniversary edition of The Edgar Allan Poe LP. Executive produced by Adam F. Goldberg (creator of The Goldbergs), the campaign finished at a staggering 598 percent of its original goal. The lead single, a new version of “Amontillado” featuring Watt White, arrives October 2nd.

Lit-hop to Still the Beating of My Heart

Widely recognized for popularizing lit-hop, Lars has spent more than 20 years making the case that hip-hop and classic literature belong together. He even put that idea to the test for his master’s degree in Instructional Science and Technology. Instead of writing a standard think piece, Lars ran a controlled study using a poetry-through-rap curriculum. The results showed statistically significant improvements in student retention and attitudes toward poetry—boasting effect sizes that would make a pharmaceutical company nervous.

So when people say MC Lars makes literature stick, that is not a boast – it is a methodology section.

A Legacy of Nerd-Core and Losers

A graduate of Stanford and Oxford, Lars is no stranger to subverting the industry. He charted in the Australian Top 30 with “Download This Song,” an anti-RIAA record he made while signed to a label, which the label released anyway. As a pioneer of nerdcore—the mid-2000s subgenre famously dismissed by Alex Trebek on Jeopardy! as a home for “losers”—Lars has toured with everyone from Nas and Snoop Dogg to Simple Plan and the Vans Warped Tour.

The expanded album draws from “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Black Cat,” and “A Dream Within a Dream,” while “Who Killed Edgar Allan Poe?” frames the record as a gothic true-crime podcast. The anniversary edition adds seven bonus recordings to the original 12 tracks. Guests across the record include Jaret Reddick of Bowling for Soup, Mega Ran, The Dead Milkmen, and underground prank-call legends Longmont Potion Castle.

Oglio Records Tapping at the Door of Legends

The Oglio Records release also closes a 22-year loop. The label previously issued Lars’s This Gigantic Robot Kills, housing a historic roster that spans from Brian Wilson to Wesley Willis. For an artist who started Horris Records as a tiny imprint before going independent, walking back through Oglio’s door counts as a rare music industry happy ending.

“I’ve been rapping about Poe since before I had any business doing it,” Lars says. “A year ago I sent this record to 385 people who paid for it before it existed. That is the most Poe thing imaginable, except Poe never actually got the money.”

Ultimately, the record bridges two seemingly distinct worlds. This fall, Lars will perform at the Gathering of the Juggalos just weeks before presenting a lit-hop project with Stanford University’s English Department. Both settings make perfect sense for an album built for English teachers and mosh pits alike.

“I want a kid to hear this record, get obsessed with The Raven, and not realize until later that they just did their homework,” says Lars.

May the Music Live Forevermore

Pre-order the album HERE.