MC Chris dreams you into his Nightmare

MC Chris has blown past the nerdcore label to become one of the most interesting minds in music. Sure, he could rock the mic for the comics-convention set indefinitely, but he clearly has a broader audience in mind. His latest, MC Chris Is Dreaming, concludes a kind of trilogy with an ambitious set centered on dreams and A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s one of the rare hip-hop records on which the skits generate real excitement.

The Pitch: Did you specifically time the release of Dreaming to come out around Halloween?

MC Chris: I’ve always wanted to make a Halloween album, [but] it’s obviously not a Halloween-themed album: It’s a Nightmare-, Freddy-themed album. So it’s not like I talk about all the things I love about Halloween, but this is definitely me kind of putting my toe into that pool and going that direction. But, yeah, I definitely feel like the release was timed for it being a spooky time. Plus, I’m on tour right now, and we have a costume contest every night, so the whole tour kind of has a Halloween vibe.

I’m one of those people who celebrates Halloween year-round, except for maybe Christmas, when I switch for a day, but I love spooky stuff and I wish it was longer than just the month of October. You’re only supposed to watch scary movies during that month — I mean, I don’t, but you’re supposed to — but because I was making this album, I was watching every single slasher flick released between 1975 and 1985, and that was a lot of fun. It made my year-long Halloween even more so.

It’s interesting you mention that golden age of slashers, because those movies do a really great job of injecting humor into really dark situations 

Yeah, it was supposed to be a good time at the movies. They were supposed to be weird. There was one movie — I think it was Slumber Party Massacre or something — which made me feel really creepy, because it was a little too real. The killer wasn’t particularly strange or anything. He was just a typical crazy person who didn’t even look that strange. He looked kind of like a square. There were just these movies that left me feeling like, “What the hell were they thinking?”

In addition to delving into your fears in the songs, you also do it in the skits. What’s the message there?

On the first level, the skits are just supposed to be funny and enjoyable, and the second level is kind of supposed to help a story evolve that’s on all my albums. All my albums have skits on them, and all the skits are connected and take place in one universe — or, as you found out a couple albums ago, multiple universes. It’s just supposed to be this fun, nerdy thing — like Lost, you know?

But, I think on this album, the skits are very revealing about where I’m at and what’s going on. The skits are changing, as if the person who controls what’s going on, what’s going on in his life is changing. Domestic jokes are going to come in there, because my life is becoming more domestic. Or, having a big meeting at Netflix is going to come up, because I’m in L.A. and I’m going to start pitching my cartoon again.

All these things are happening, and I talk about them in a funny way, because that kind of lets off a little steam for me, because if you listen to the album you can get the sense that I’m under a lot of pressure and stress right now. Kind of self-imposed, but still. It’s always a relief to make an album and talk about what I’m going through, because it feels like I can put it to bed and move on.

It’s great that there’s an 11-minute skit on the album, “Indispensable,” wherein Freddy Kreuger becomes domesticated. How’d that come to pass?

It’s funny — Freddy has almost three different wants in that scene: from not getting caught to discovering that reality has become really nice, and then he kind of becomes a jerk. He becomes this asshole roommate all of a sudden. He goes through three different things in that skit, but you’re right, it becomes a bit of an epic.

It’s reminded me of a scene from that documentary, Crumb. [R. Crumb’s] brother was also a cartoonist, and something started to go wrong in his mind. His cartoons started to have more and more text, and I think you could probably say that I’m losing my mind as my skits get longer and longer, but I really enjoy them. I get to work with all these Upright Citizens Brigade improvisors, and it’s almost irrelevant to me what people think of the skits because I’m having such a good time making them. But it’s something my fans readily consume and can’t wait to regurgitate back at me.

MC Chris

With MC Lars and Mega Ran

Friday, November 11, at the Riot Room