Murs On His First PAX And Newfound Love Of Streaming
Murs waiting for a Steel Battalion demo to begin at PAX South 2015 Photo: Scott Craft
It’s not every day you see a world-famous rapper like Murs walking the floor at PAX.
As it turns out, Murs’ decision to attend was about as last-minute as you can get. After helping his son with his morning routine, on Friday, the rapper decided to pack a bag and catch the next flight to San Antonio. He knew he’d miss the first day but says conversations with friends made the gathering sound too good to miss. It took a bit of arm twisting, since Murs was unfamiliar with the PAX convention series, but fellow streamers SarahDope and VernNotice ultimately convinced him PAX South wasn’t an event to be missed.
“They all started talking about this convention…they were saying there was alcohol and games and people,” Murs told Player.One. “And I said ‘OK, I’m coming.’”
Like many new streamers, Murs' goal for PAX South is to establish working relationships with as many developers as possible, particularly among the dozens of independent game developers attending the show this year. He’s already filled out paperwork to become a Twitch partner and racked up more than 1000 followers in a week. But trying to make heads or tails of the show floor can be a bit overwhelming. Even for someone who’s attended plenty of similar events, like San Diego Comic Con. When asked whether he’d endured any of the long lines yet, like the oft-capped wait for the Elite: Dangerous booth, Murs revealed he’d actually done more roaming than gaming on his first day.
“It’s like Comic Con, where half the time you don’t even know what people are lining up for,” he said. “I wanted to get the lay of the land today and tomorrow. I love standing in line, because I can watch Netflix or whatever. It’s not as bad as it used to be. Standing in line I can get a lot of things done.”
Unfortunately, one of those things isn’t streaming. Despite the fact that he typically streams Monday through Thursday, for around three hours per day, Murs was surprisingly frank about how much the convention was making him want to go back home and get on Twitch. It seems a few hours per day is all it took to get Murs just as hooked as the millions of other users who enjoy the streaming platform.
“It’s addictive. I haven’t been playing for one day and I’m like ‘Man, I want to stream,’” Murs said. “Or sometimes I’m at home, because I put the setup away from the house, in my rehearsal space. And I’m like ‘Man, I want to just drive downtown and play right now.’”
Part of the appeal comes from the communities that took root on Twitch. Over the last few years, gaming has become an increasingly solitary activity, as modern network connections make it easier and easier for players to hop online and play games together instead of sitting side-by-side on the couch. But having an active chat room on Twitch can bring back that feeling to some extent. And that’s important to Murs, who grew up in an era when local multiplayer wasn’t just the only option. It was a way to bring disparate parts of a community together under the same banner.
“I’m from the N64 era, when GoldenEye first came out,” Murs said. “We’d all get drunk, and there’d be friends of mine that are gang-bangers, friends that just got out of jail, friends that are super-nerds like me and my friends. We all live in the same neighborhood but we never had a common ground. But [now] ‘Oh, we can get together and shoot each other?’”
Murs wants to bring that same sense of community to his Twitch channel. Obviously, the primary focus is on video games, like most streams, but the rapper tries to set aside some time from each broadcast to engage with fans and discuss their interests. The recent Twitter spat between Wiz Khalifa and Kanye West inspired the rapper to institute Rap Chat anytime there’s a loading screen or he’s swapping games. He and the rest of the chat also helped encourage a young fan who’d asked for advice on the best way to ask her crush to her school’s Sadie Hawkins dance. Anything and everything goes. And Murs is taking the same approach when deciding what to play on stream. He tends to open his streams with a few rounds of Rocket League before switching over to whatever seems most appealing at the time.
“We stream something different every day,” Murs said. “I’ve been waiting to play Fallout 4 until we could stream it…Counter-Strike I played for the first time. I’m more of a console guy, I play [Call of Duty] and a lot of other stuff but I’d never played Counter-Strike.”
The exposure to new games, genres and gaming communities is also appealing to Murs. From time to time he’ll stream Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with Jimmy Whisenhunt, Twitch’s manager of media partnerships and a Counter-Strike legend in his own right, who’s been teaching him the ins and outs of the popular online shooter. He’s also helping Murs boost his gaming lexicon, teaching him common phrases like “carry” that are frequently used by players in multiplayer settings.
As any Counter-Strike player knows, the game has an incredibly steep learning curve. And apparently Jimmy decided to have some fun at Murs' expense, swapping teams and dumping a few clips into the rapper, knowing Murs (as a new player) isn’t familiar enough with the game to do the same. It’s all in good fun. But the rapper isn’t one to back down from a challenge; especially one among friends. He’ll just find another way to beat you.
“When I left, I was like ‘This is what I can do to get them back,’” Murs said. “So I made a 16-bar rap about Jimmy, called ‘Fuck Jimmy’, and then the next stream I recited it. And then we played Fallout 4 and I got killed by a Deathclaw. So then I made a 16-bar sonnet about the Deathclaw.”
“When something strikes me to the core, when I can’t beat them digitally, I’m going beat them lyrically,” Murs said with a smile.
The winning and losing isn’t what’s important, though. Sure, video games can be frustrating sometimes. But streaming can give some players the patience/confidence they need to overcome difficult moments in their favorite games. There’s also something to be said about having an outlet for expressing yourself, even if your rap career has taken you around the globe. If anything, Murs believes his life experiences have given him a perspective unlike any other Twitch personality.
“I really just enjoy it and I feel like it’s also a way of entertaining. I curse, I make jokes. I also don’t think there’s anyone who streams like I stream, like my age group or demographic,” Murs said. “Like Starcraft, the first time I streamed that I was like ‘This is like Bloods and Crips’.
“I have this unique view,” he added. “It’s comical to some people. And it’s refreshing and fun.”
It’s not hard to see why the rapper turned streamer has managed to create a following in two different forms of entertainment. Murs is easily one of the most jovial people we’ve seen on a convention floor, eyes-widening at elaborate costumes he doesn’t recognize, enthusiastically learning to pilot a mech during a Steel Battalion training session or coining the term “PAX-ed out” to describe fatigued attendees after spotting one gamer sprawled out in a corner of the Console Free Play room for a nap. But growing up in South Central Los Angeles also made Murs incredibly observant, in ways you wouldn’t expect from the average gamer.
After stepping outside for a bit of fresh air, Murs noticed the number of police officers wandering around the convention center. He mentioned a recent December 2015 report from Watchdog.org that revealed the San Antonio Police Department is having real trouble maintaining a properly-sized police force. According to the report, San Antonio PD is approximately 200 officers undermanned. And yet, multiple officers were stationed at every door to the Henry B. Gonzalez convention center, with others wandering the floor, posted at most nearby intersections and even walking paths around the building.
“190 officers understaffed…You could have fooled me,” Murs said.
Of course, age and perspective aren’t the only things that set Murs apart from the average Twitch streamer. The 37-year-old rapper has been creating music for two decades, touring the world in the process and releasing nine solo albums along the way. He’s also released collaboration albums as part of the 3 Melancholy Gypsys, Felt and the Living Legends. Right now, Murs is focused on building his channel. But he has no intention of hanging up the microphone. At some point, he’ll begin working on a follow-up to Have A Nice Life, which will almost certainly be followed by a tour to support it. But the rapper says he plans to bring the stream on the road, too.
“When I’m on tour, I talked to the guys at Twitch, and they’re going to find games I can play,” Murs said. “They said, if I can, just check in from sound check and I’ll be doing stuff like that as well.”
Right now, Murs is focused on building up his channel, both in terms of audience size and the amount of content he’s generating on a weekly basis. His streams tend to run about three hours each, but he’s hoping to increase the duration as time goes on. In a few years, his son will start school, freeing up a few extra hours each day. But Murs is quick to acknowledge that having the time to stream for long periods and being able to stream for long periods are two different things.
“I hope to get [my stream] longer,” Murs said. “But also, doing it, I gain a lot of respect for people like Vern or Lirik or people who do it for 12 hours. My eyes are hurting after three.”
For now, Murs is enjoying the time he does have each day, swapping back and forth between single-player titles like Fallout 4 and multiplayer games he can play with his community. Recently, he’s been dipping his toes into the MOBA waters, playing Heroes of the Storm to get better acquainted with the genre. It also gives him a chance to interact with his fans which, as an independent recording artist, has always been important to Murs. And he wants to increase that level of interaction as time goes on.
“As somewhat of a celebrity, kids really get a kick out of playing Heroes with me,” Murs said. “Right now, I’m just playing with whoever because we’re just starting. But when we get subscribers, I think I’ll probably do it more than one day a week because it would take some of the pressure off me.”
But don’t expect to see studio sessions anytime soon. Despite the rising popularity of the live studio feeds we’ve seen from Deadmau5, and other musicians who’ve hopped on Twitch in recent months, Murs says he’d rather spend that time playing video games and talking to people. He understands the appeal, for some, but it’s not necessarily something he (or his audience) is interested in right now.
“I just want to play,” he said. “If it turns into [studio sessions], cool. But a lot of people were saying it’s just refreshing to see someone just playing games. And, especially coming from the independent scene, there’s a lot of independent games. And if it comes to just me playing indie games, to give indie developers a little light…you know, people just want to see it.”