He’s the rapper on Elm Street!
With his high-pitched voice and lyrics about Star Wars and Harry Potter, MC Chris may not be the hardest rapper in the game, but he is a pillar in the nerd rap — or “nerdcore” — community. At the Knitting Factory on Oct. 27, the rapper is going to get real, spitting rhymes about some unusually heavy topics. But he plans to lighten the mood with references to something everyone can enjoy: supernatural, teenager-slashing serial killer Freddy Krueger, from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films.
“I wanted to address certain difficult things in my life, and talk about them as if to expel them,” said Chris, “I bring in all this stuff about horror movies and Freddy because I need to make it fun, too.
The usual MC Chris album mashes coarse rap god bravado with self-effacing navel gazing to create a strange brew, both vulgar and endearing, charming and offensive. His latest release, “MC Chris is Dreaming,” has lyrics that alternate between discussing Freddy Krueger’s five-bladed gloves and the rapper’s difficult childhood. Mixing the topics helped Chris to get through the album, he said.
“It’s a painful process, but I’m always a little kid at heart. I never want to do my homework, I always want to do the fun thing. When you’re examining who you are and why you are the way you are, it’s not a lot of fun,” said Chris. “So I had to sweeten the deal with some Freddy Krueger and other fun things. It just makes it easier for me to talk about more difficult issues.”
Chris got his start rapping for comedy, in what he called a “very white, very suburban” background.
“I was always doing jokes for my family,” he said. “I would rap for my mom’s bridge club, I would go and rap for all these old women playing bridge in the front room of our house — and I think that was my first real beginning.”
Chris continued to rap for friends in college, eventually gaining a following while voice acting on Adult Swim cartoons, with roles as the evil spider MC Pee Pants on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and bit parts on “Space Ghost Coast to Coast.”
The Knitting Factory show is a kind of homecoming for the rapper, who lived just a block from the venue before moving to Los Angeles last year. He plans to take advantage of his stay in the borough by visiting some of his favorite restaurants.
“You know I love Brooklyn, my wife and I miss it a lot,” said Chris. “And I know she’s going to be jealous when I’m eating our favorite potato pancakes and talking about the food I’m eating that we miss. I love the jambalaya at Juniper. I loved Brooklyn, and I always will.”
MC Chris at the Knitting Factory [361 Metropolitan Ave. at Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, (347) 529–6696, bk.knitt
