I think it’s a general phenomenon. I’ve had moms in Texas. Moms in Mobile. You know, any place that women can have children is where we succeed.

mcchris website

To hear the interview click on the link below the picture.

Grateful Web's Aaron Souders, Rob Pray, John Souders and Barney Moran spoke with MC CHRIS [a.k.a Chris Ward] September 23, 2005 during his Fall Tour. 

MC Chris:  What’s up guys?

Gratefulweb:  Not much. How ya doin’?

MC Chris:  I’m great. I’m livin’ the dream.

Gratefulweb:  You want to tell us a little about that dream you’re livin’?

MC Chris:  Well, basically, I get to rap for a living. I own my own company that puts out my own records so we don’t have to share our money with anybody, we like that a lot. We have like big, humongous Scrooge McDuck vaults of money that we swim around in.

Gratefulweb:  Excellent. Do you have a swimming pool full of dollar bills yet?

MC Chris:  Anything that can hold a liquid is filled with dollars. So any glasses, bowls, mugs, sinks, basins, buckets, it’s all filled with cash.

Gratefulweb:  Sounds like a swimmin’ good time. Are you making some money off this new tour of yours? This is your first tour, isn’t it?

MC Chris: We’ve been touring all year. So, we’ve basically just been on the internet, or on college radio, and people saw me in cartoons and stuff but they never really saw us live, so all year long I’ve kind of like been going out, meeting everybody that we already knew off the internet, and just kind of saying, “Hi,” and saying, “Thanks.” This fall we’re basically doing a tour that kids can go see. We’re trying to be like more “all-ages” shows. A lot of kids have been kind of hanging out in parking lots around the venues, so the tour this fall is basically about getting everybody that hasn’t seen us yet a last chance to see us before we go and make a new record.

Gratefulweb: Hey, I really appreciate that. I have a four-year-old and seven-year-old and they love a lot of your music but my wife makes me, like, mute parts of it.

MC Chris: Well, it’s nice for little kids, but you know, if I was like a thirteen-year-old and I heard my stuff now, I would be like, “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” So, you know, I understand it. I think the thing with kids is you kind of have to treat them like they can make their own decisions, that they can decide what they think is offensive, what’s not offensive. Really, really, little kids is kind of weird, but you know, their moms are often times very hot. So, it’s a compromise I have to make.

Gratefulweb:  So you see a lot of MILF’s on your tour?

MC Chris:  Yes.

Gratefulweb:  Call this the MC Chris MILF tour. So what’s the best city for the MILF action?

MC Chris:  Well, you know, I think it’s a general phenomenon. I’ve had moms in Texas. Moms in Mobile. You know, any place that women can have children is where we succeed.

Gratefulweb:  Excellent. Sounds the kind of tour I want to be on.

MC Chris: No. Everybody wants a piece of this and you’re not allowed in.

Gratefulweb:   How do these fans affect you on your tour? Is this kind of a new experience for you to actually be out on the road meeting your fans?

MC Chris:  Well, a lot of the music is about being a loser and being kind of a social failure, so it’s weird to have people ask for autographs. I just try to be like a politician about it and try to be really cool and up-front with everybody and hang out. And I do signings after every show. So I try to be a little bit more accessible than the average person that someone would go see perform live or somebody that was on television. You want to exceed their expectations.

Gratefulweb:  Does that ever backfire on you? Do you get any like stalker-types coming after you?

MC Chris:  Yeah. The more you give to the public, the more there is a risk or a chance of somebody just taking it overboard, just kind of thinking that like we’re friends. A lot of the music is all about losers, so of course losers are going to be coming up to me and being like, “We can be losers together,” and I’ll be like, “Uh, you know what, you’re a crazy person and I’m gonna have to say ‘No’.”

Gratefulweb:  So is it fair to say you’re a loser magnet, then?

MC Chris:  I’m definitely a loser magnet. I’m the King of the losers. They all come to me for guidance and I’m like, “Go away.”

Gratefulweb:  I think you may have found the one point that makes me relate to your music, then.

MC Chris:  Ah, yes. Well, I think everyone’s been talking about how it’s all about geeks and nerds, but I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s more about just being . . . umm . . . a failure. Anyone that’s ever failed in life, they can kind of come to me and be like, “Oh, it’s so nice to hear my story told over a beat . . . and in rhyme.”

Gratefulweb:  What was the most disappointing failure you had when you were just starting out with your whole career?

MC Chris:  Well, I mean the rap thing has always been just fun. And that’s just me. I mean, when I started it, I just hung out with bands that could record music and we just did it to make it . . . for fun. And then when we started making money on it, then that was just an extra bonus. I had a day job and this was extra cash and I loved to do it and then we got a following and that was just really, really weird.  And now we toured and we’ve been selling out shows and we have all those buckets of cash I was speaking about earlier, you know, so that’s all really crazy. I think when I talk about failures, meaning like, you know . . . I’m not smart enough to be a nerd, is the thing, so I’m not even cool enough to be at the bottom of the feeding pool of high school. Basically, I use high school as a kind of place to set my archetypes, or my stereotypes, about nerds and jocks and being made fun of all the time or not being liked or not getting invited to parties and stuff like that. It’s more about being a reject. I guess you could call it being a nerd, but I try to make the distinction because nerds are actually really amazing people. They’re really, really smart. They’re well suited for becoming adults, you know, whereas I wasn’t really. I wasn’t that at all. I was like more of an average student that had a pad of hall-passes in his pocket.

Gratefulweb:  With all your work on the road and meeting all these new fans, and possibly these potential stalkers, does any of this make you think of wanting to go back into film school, or go into film since you were in film school. Have you thought about that any?

MC Chris:  That’s my real dream. This is just like a weird sidetrack. It’s actually working out better for me than working for a corporation or having a job. This is just something that’s kind of working right now. I’m gonna make a DVD of the tour and, you know, it’d be cool if I could do my own videos and it’d be cool if I could go from the videos into, I don’t know, directing or producing a cartoon. And I want to make live action films. I was a screenwriting major at NYU, so that’s something that I’m always going to want to do. I kind of think about movies I want to make a little bit every day. But for right now I’m a rapper.

Gratefulweb:  So some of that film work lead you to do some work with Michael Moore, didn’t it?

MC Chris:  Yeah. I worked on The Awful Truth at the taping of the end of the series, so, like the last couple of episodes they did. You should see me on the DVD and I’ll be in the credits. I worked on a senatorial campaign and we did a lot of Times Square stuff. All the people that Michael Moore would talk to on the show, I would go find those people. One night he was doing a sketch that had some homeless people in it and I basically had to entertain and protect the homeless people in a Winnebago for an entire night. We all just started rapping. It was like a rap contest the entire night.

I’d get Michael Moore’s McDonald’s. Which they all called it McMurder. Which was really weird. They’re very anti-corporate but at the same time they’re like gluttons for corporate product, you know, which I thought was pretty ironic. But Michael Moore was a really, really nice guy. He’d talk to everybody that talked to him. Anybody that would stop and talk to him, he would just stop and start listening to them and then talk to them a little bit. He wouldn’t go on and on, but he’d listen to everybody. He truly was like a man of the people, which I thought was really, really cool about him.

Gratefulweb:  If he ever approached you to work with him again, would you work with him again?

MC Chris:  In a heartbeat. In a heartbeat. I love him. I think he’s awesome.

Gratefulweb:  Do you share any of his political beliefs? Is any of that reflected in your work?

MC Chris:  I’m more extreme.

Gratefulweb:  More extreme than Michael Moore?

MC Chris: I want to hypnotize Karl Rove and start having him do good stuff.

Gratefulweb:  Do you think Rove is the anti-Christ?

MC Chris:  I think that that’s too kind. Karl Rove needs to get . . . Did you see The Incredibles? You know at the end when the Underminer comes up and he’s driving that big bulldozer, tunnel thing? I want Karl Rove to get raped by that thing.

Gratefulweb:  I think he could accommodate him.

MC Chris:  Yeah. I want to talk to Pixar. I’m gonna have to have a sit down with Pixar and see if I can make that happen.

Gratefulweb:  We would support that. Do any of these graphic desires ever make it out through your work? Through your rap songs?

MC Chris:  No. I’ve actually been doing a lot of research on Karl Rove lately and I’m thinking about writing a song called like, “Karl Rove Getting Raped by a Gorilla,” or something where he’s getting raped, some way that he’s just having a real horrible, horrible experience that involves rape. And it can be a gorilla, it can be like a team of Mexicans, I don’t care how we do it, I just want it to happen.

Gratefulweb:  Are you going to take any of these beliefs into Washington, D.C. on your tour? Are you stopping there?

MC Chris:  I am stopping in D.C. When I do a show I don’t talk about politics at all. I said one thing in Texas. I said that, um, what I like most about Texas is that George Bush isn’t from here. The whole room erupted into applause.

Gratefulweb:  How about Karl Rove just being done by gay Republicans?

MC Chris:  Umm, that’s fine. I’m thinking more like Karl Rove getting raped by like Orson Welles when he was that planet in the Transformers movie.

Gratefulweb:  Oh yeah!

MC Chris:  I want Karl Rove to get raped by him. What was that? Unicron?

Gratefulweb:  Yeah. Great movie!

MC Chris:  It was a great movie.

Gratefulweb:  How do you feel Bush has been handling the current hurricane situation and how that’s affected gas prices?

MC Chris:  Like a real pro!

Gratefulweb:  Alright!

MC Chris:  He sure is impressive. It just seems that every time I go into the office he’s doing something new. He’s always just . . . he’s there before I get there and when I leave the office he’s still there. He’s workin’, man. You remember in Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks, when he played, I think it was the Governor?

Gratefulweb: That’s right.

MC Chris: That’s how I think of George Bush, like a cross-eyed retard. So, you know, my dad has pictures of him all over his over office that say, “We thank you for your support, like Bartles and Jaymes.” And, uh, so I come from an extreme Republican, conservative family, so, actually I have a lot of fun just pissing all over that.

Gratefulweb:  How does your family feel about your work?

MC Chris:  I just talked to my parents this morning and they said they have my back, which I thought was pretty awesome. I think that my parents are kind of blue-blooded and old-school. And they like that I'm working my ass off. Basically I have my own company and I tell them about my legal troubles and my money troubles and they lend an ear and they just listen. My dad wishes I didn't swear so much, but I'm totally like Tourrette's If someone tells me not to say something, I'll just start blurting it out, screaming at the top of my lungs. That's just me.

Gratefulweb:  You never hold back.

MC Chris:  I just can’t. I don't like restrictions. You can’t put restrictions on me. It’s basically like I just go insane and then I start disobeying whatever restrictions you just applied.

Gratefulweb:  Do you believe the government should get involved in restrictions on file sharing?

MC Chris:  No. I think that the music industry has stolen so much of our money by putting out crap. I think I’ve bought a million bad records. I found that my fans have downloaded every single thing I made. But then they come and they buy a sweatshirt or they buy a hoodie or they come to a show and buy the cd's and say, "I already have this but I wanna support you." I don't think that file-sharers are bad people. I think they just wanna support good products and I think the music industry has many times just taken them for a ride. And I think everyone knows that and the music industry doesn't want to own up to it. It’s just like the movie industry. They've had a really horrible year and I think it’s because people are beginning to get sick of shitty movies. So the whole idea with MC Chris is that we try to provide a good product and we basically make it for free. We don't discourage people from stealing it. If you like it, support us, then give us some money, but we’re not demanding it. And people still give us dough, so it all works out. Even if the government tried to do something, they couldn't. They can't even stop levees from breaking. How could they stop file-sharing?

Gratefulweb:  Do you think that downloads have influenced your popularity?

MC Chris:  Yeah, definitely. We started as an internet joke and we just blossomed from that. The internet, everybody has it. It was kind of right during the dotcom boom when everyone was talking about internet companies making millions of dollars. It was just like people were letting computers become a part of their daily lives. Like myspace, livejournal, stuff like that, checking their e-mail every day. We just became a part of that.

Gratefulweb:  So you've had success posting your music on your website for free. That is how I got introduced to your music. A friend of my pointed your music out to me and I fell in love with Fett's Vette. Is that something you are going to continue doing?

MC Chris:  I want to. I don’t think that the people that run this business with me want me to. I’d like to put out some free music every year. If we get a little richer, more successful than we are now, we can afford to do that. It’s just that we make money selling records now and we kind of support ourselves. We have to bring home the bacon. I always want to. I’d like to have samples and I think a good way to have samples is to just not sell the music. I think fans would love that too. If we have to be able to afford to not put out an album. I think in the future it will happen more often, but right not we can’t afford to do that.

Gratefulweb:  Are you looking to get signed to a major label?

MC Chris:  No. I’ve been recorded for a long time by one party and they still talk to me everyday. It’s basically like they’re saying, “Do you want it to go big? Do you want it to go major?” I’m like, well, you know, we just have to do the best thing, the smartest thing. I have no interest in having a huge launch if the product sucks and if people are just going to eat me alive. If I make a really good album, which I’m going to try to do this winter, and if it’s awesome, I’m going to be like yes, let’s try to get this into every single house in America. And I would be able to do that really easily. Because we have had a great year getting exposure and we’ve impressed a lot of different companies, labels and agents. Everyone’s kind of coming, calling now and you know we’re not rushing into anything; we’re not making any stupid moves. We’re just kind of saying what is the best, smartest most economic thing for my company to do? So, that’s the plan anyhow.

Gratefulweb:  Do you think you will ever go on tour again if you have these successful albums come out? Is this something you want to continue doing?

MC Chris:  Oh yeah, touring is how you make money. You don’t really make it selling any in stores. You would have to sell as many records as the game does or as 50 cent does, and I don’t think that’s gonna happen right out of the gate unless I have some sort of crazy hit . . . everyone’s doing my dance . . . like the Bartman or something. Which I don’t see happening. I don’t know, maybe, who knows? Maybe I’ll totally be rapper du jour next year, we’ll see.

Gratefulweb:  With you being so closely tied into the geek world and those people at Sealab and gaming, do you ever see yourself making music for a video game or having a video game based on it?

MC Chris:  We would love to. We’ve talked to Rock Star, we’ve talked to EA Games and it’s definitely something we would love to do. A lot of those deals get done if it’s a game for the Playstation and the music will be off a label on Sony . . . a lot of politics go on as to why it gets played in Grand Theft Auto. It would be a dream come true to be played in a game. I would like to make my own game based around the cartoon that eventually we put out.

Gratefulweb:  Can you describe what ideal game MC Chris would create?

MC Chris:  My favorite games are Resident Evil games, but I think if I made a game around MC Chris - the show that I have in mind that would be about MC Chris would be kind of a Dragonball Z, so  if I made a game it would be a fighting game Marvel like Tekken or Capcom vs. Marvel, or Mortal Kombat. Have it kind of be old school with lots of jokes, lots of different characters would be from the show. That is what I’ve been thinking.

Gratefulweb:  I understand you’re from a part of Illinois the great John Hughes based some his movies on. Is that where you grew up?

MC Chris:  I grew up in Shermer, Illinois. I always say the ‘s’. I don’t know what my problem is. I'm from there and I say the ‘s’. Its just nice white suburbs north of Chicago where people who make money in Chicago go buy big houses.

Gratefulweb:  Do you ever miss the Midwest?

MC Chris:  No, Not at all.

Gratefulweb:  And why not?

MC Chris:  I love Chicago. When I go back to Chicago I say this is an awesome city, it’s a really beautiful place. Its got a great art museum, great food, but you know, I’m kind of like a New Yorker I think now. I even think of Atlanta as my home more then I do the Midwest now cause I lived in Atlanta for the past four years.

Gratefulweb:  The John Hughes movies relied heavily on those stereotypes of the geek, the jock and the nerd. Do you still see those in your every day life even though you’re not in high school anymore?

MC Chris:  No, I don’t. I use those stereotypes because I think they are very identifiable, and my live shows that are like an anti-jock rally , I think it’s easy to understand, kind of the against-the-man-idea that you have to deal with your entire life. You might get rid of the letterman jacket and broken eye glasses, but if you’re in the corporate environment there is still going to be the jock dude and the nerd, and the same exchange between those two. And so the whole idea behind my tour this fall is called The Revenge of the Nerd. It's all about the nerds standing up for themselves. You don’t have to be a nerd. You can be any underdog given a tough time, standing up for themselves, getting a crowbar and ripping peoples face off.

Gratefulweb:  Do you think growing up in the Midwest in that John Hughes environment gave you a good concept of all those stereotypes?

MC Chris:  No, it wasn’t that stereotypical when I grew up. I’m just using stories, myths that are current suburban myths. I mean my experience wasn’t anything like that. I was the guy who drew all the time, I was in all the plays, I dated girls non-stop, I had a car, I loved listening to rap music, and driving around really fast, making out with chicks in forest preserves. It wasn’t really a horrible experience.

I know that my fans are having that and basically my music is for them, so the whole idea is I am trying to entertain a certain group of people. And who liked Fett’s Vette? It was a bunch of nerds and geeks. So the second album I put out was all about nerds, and they loved it. We stuck with that. We know who likes us and we try to make music for them.

Gratefulweb:  We are based in Colorado. You're making a stop in Colorado on the tour, is that correct?

MC Chris:  Yea, It will be our first time.

Gratefulweb:  When you’re here, would it be possible to meet up with you at your concert and kind of chat with you then?

MC Chris:  Hell no, no way.

Gratefulweb:  No way, not at all?

MC Chris:  Forget about it.

Gratefulweb:  What if we stalked you?

MC Chris:  Keep dreaming! Keep dreaming, buddy! Keep dreaming. Hope that pillow’s soft. Hope those sheets are comfortable, ‘cause your dreaming buddy.

Gratefulweb:  When are you stopping by in Denver?

MC Chris:  I don’t know, you have to go to mcchris.com and all my tour dates are right there.

Gratefulweb:  It’s October 26. I bought my tickets today.

MC Chris:  Ah! The mysterious emperor has chimed in!

Gratefulweb:  You’ll have to keep an eye out for us. We will be in the crowd watching ya.

MC Chris:  “I bought my tickets yesterday!”

Gratefulweb:  What’s been the best thing about touring so far?

MC Chris:  All the blow jobs. Having my own business and all, having people know the words and all, having people know who I am is great. That’s what I like about it. I went to a strip club in Orlando and the DJ of the strip club cased me out in the parking lot. He was gonna kill me.

Gratefulweb:  I mean seriously, do girls really wanna get with you more when you're on tour? Do they really come up to you?

MC Chris:  Of course, if you can get a room full of people to clap their hands in unison to a beat. That’s the strongest aphrodisiac in the world. I could quite possibly be one of the ugliest people on the planet and girls are like “I could eat you up with a spoon." You basically hypnotize an entire room full of people, or you try to, and if it goes well, then girls are just all about it. Its just a weird phenomenon. They lose any kind of morals. Any moral is just thrown out the window, forget women's lib, I am a puddle, this man is my ruler, I will mop his floor with my tongue.

Gratefulweb:  Even though you’re the king of the geek world?

MC Chris:  I know it. Well, there’s a lot of hot nerd chicks out there.

Gratefulweb:  Do you have anything else you might want to say to your fans that will appear on Grateful Web?

MC Chris:  Turn off your computer, get a life, stop with the war crap.

Gratefulweb:  That’s ‘grate.' Thanks a lot Chris. We will be coming to see your show on October 26. We are going to do a review of it for our website, Gratefulweb.net, which you can check out after your show.

MC Chris:  Awesome!

Gratefulweb:  We appreciate your time and we hope you have a good time on your tour. We look forward to seeing you in October.

MC Chris:  Thanks guys.

Its http://www.mcchris.com .

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image credit: grateful web from art asylum figurines & mcchris

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Earlier Chris Ward Interviews: