He’s Peter Pan with a mic, a humorous, pint-sized, lithe-lipped prankster with unabashedly geeky tastes and a passion for pop culture. He rhymes about banging the princess from Super Mario Bros., tripping on cough syrup and chilling like a DQ Blizzard, amid a storm of references that run from Britney and The Six Million Dollar Man to Carrot Top and Fraggle Rock.
If he sounds a bit cartoonish, that’s not off base. He’s done animation for shows on Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim lineup and voiced characters including Sealab 2021’s cross-dressing reactor operator Hesh Hepplewhite and diaper-wearing rapper MC Pee Pants on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He’s got more energy than a Saudi sheik, which he plugs into high-speed and high-pitched raps that race by like helium-fueled funny cars.
Chris Ward IV, aka MC Chris, wholeheartedly embraces our consumerist existence, lampooning as well as heralding it on odes such as “Reese,” which goes so far as to break down the history of Reese’s popular peanut butter confections, from George Washington Carver to Milton Hershey and his WWII philanthropy: “Milton did his part / Made anti-aircraft guns and sent the soldiers chocolate bars.”
“It’s just a part of us,” Chris writes via email. “We’re as artificial as the cheese we eat. I’m just into celebrating our consumerism—making low art or corporate edifice into high art by laughing at it and celebrating it at the same time.”
Certainly this is similar to Adult Swim’s initial impetus. Sealab 2021 employed blocky stock Hanna Barbara cartoon footage from a short-lived cartoon to mold a subversive blend of high camp and low humor. After graduating from NYU, Chris was spending time interning with the Upright Citizens Brigade improv troupe when, during one drunken night, he met Sealab co-creator Adam Rich, who, amused by Chris, hired him on the spot to do animation.
After several years of production work on Adult Swim, Chris took a stab at a music career in fall 2004. He’d gotten a boost already, as the cartoon block would occasionally run advert cards listing Chris’ website, and his song “Fett’s Vette” found its way into a Sealab episode. It turned his meditation on Star Wars character Boba Fett’s need for cash to cover his car payments and repairs into an Internet sensation. A couple weeks of sold-out shows later, he took the plunge.
“I kinda got cajoled into leaving my job and getting signed, but nothing really was what it seemed on the other side of things,” Chris says. “But it was a kick in the pants to try it out on my own.”
He just finished his fifth album, MC Chris Is Dead, which finds him in a rather euphoric state of decay, with paeans to nerdy girls and fat pizza butts. He’s happier with this album than with 2006’s Dungeon Master of Ceremonies, after taking on a greater role in the album’s creation.
“I worked with a different DJ and executive produced every detail of this new one,” he says. “I wasn’t totally down with the last record, how it sounded, what it was like to make it. This round it was way more fun, and totally relaxed. As for content, this album is more honest and to the point. Therefore it’s all about ninjas, zombies and masturbation.”
Chris notes his geeky nerddom frequently in song the way feminists reclaim “bitch,” but chafes at the term “nerdcore,” coined for the collection of similarly minded hip-hop artists like MC Lars and MC Frontalot, who rap about computers, video games, sci-fi and other brainy pursuits. As someone who discovered rap during the golden age of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Chris was taken with artists like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and, of course, The Beastie Boys, whose ebullient childlike enthusiasm he captures (and lyrically subverts). These days he doesn’t even feel connected to it.
“Hip-hop is boring and dead, and I can’t think of a single thing interesting about it right now,” he says. “Making little genres and divisions is something for the press to do. If the artists jump on that, then it’s just a snake eating its own tail. It’ll cave in on itself. What I miss are stories and honesty and humor. I try to bring back some of that, but unfortunately I don’t sound anything like hip-hop.”
Meanwhile, Chris has returned to Adult Swim, appearing in the live-action show, Fat Guy Stuck in Internet and another new show, Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge, which is written by ATHF’s Dave Willis and features Neko Case as Cheyenne Cinnamon and songs by Butch Walker (The Marvelous 3). He’s also working on his own cartoon show, Battle Hi, which he hopes to land on Adult Swim sometime down the road.
Never short on projects, Chris is also organizing donations to the St. Paul Minnesota chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation on behalf of his newborn nephew, Murray Walter Goff, who is stricken with the disease. He’s raised $500 in just a few days and hopes to reach $10,000 by the end of the year.
You can’t stop this bum rush—he tickles you too much.
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