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"He was telling me stuff he went through, stuff to look out for," says Tucker, of a meet-'n'-greet with Murphy at his palatial New Jersey abode.
Included with advice were warnings to stay away from Hollywood Boulevard.
"Yep, definitely," nods Tucker, chuckling, of the road Murphy was stopped on by police, and gleefully reported on by the tabloids, as he rode with a transvestite in the passenger seat of his car.
Brought up a nice church-going boy from Atlanta, Tucker, who co-stars with Jackie Chan in the Beverly Hills Cop-meets-Bruce Lee comedy, Rush Hour, had already been warned by his mama that's the kind of wayward road not to be taken.
Starting out a stand-up comedian at age 19, Tucker's church missionary mom thought the family cleaning business was more God's work for her son than showbiz.
"She'd say: 'Chris, you can't be cussing like that!' " he recalls of his peppery, on-stage routines.
But since last year, when Vanity Fair dubbed Tucker (along with fellow comedian Chris Rock) one of the new "Six Million Dollar Men" for their price tag per film, cussing has became very lucrative.
"I bought her a new car," says the actor, of his concerned mama, "And now she's like, 'Well, go ahead then ...' "
After noticeable performances in films like Money Talks and Jackie Brown, and a hilarious turn as a gussied-up entertainer in The Fifth Element, Tucker, 26, considers Rush Hour to be a mass introduction vehicle like "when Eddie had his breakout role in Beverly Hills Cop."
In it, he plays a smart-talkin' L.A. cop who is teamed up with Chan's more Zen-like type.
With the two actors' peculiar clash-culture blend of "blackanese," as they call it, and opposites-attract chemistry --"He's funny physically, I'm funny verbally," says Tucker -- they hope to make a good team at the box office.
But there were times on set when the culture chemistry over-clashed, he jokes.
"Jackie would order Japanese food every day. Shrimp fried eel and snake and all that stuff," whines Tucker, good-naturedly.
"So I said, 'Jackie, I want some soul food!' And he tried to swing at me, but I knocked his teeth out. Every day from then on, we had soul food."
Tucker taught Chan a few other African-American staples too, like how to rap-dance for a sidewalk sequence in the film.
"I kept telling him: 'Loosen your neck up! Loosen your neck!' " he laughs, "but he couldn't. And I couldn't stop laughing."
His own brand of making people laugh began as the youngest of six kids who used jokes as a defence against bullying older brothers.
"My brothers would put me in headlocks and their friends would come over and slap me around," he says, "so I'd tell jokes and make them laugh so they'd let me hang out with them."
His shtick stuck through highschool talent shows and classrooms, where "I did whatever it took to distract the teacher. She'd say turn to page 10, and I'd yell out, 'Turn to page 15! "'
As a teen, he couldn't drink in bars, but they let him onstage to humour the patrons.
"Stand-up comedy was my classroom," he stresses.
"It really hones your skills. You take the crowd up and you take them down."
Good practice for his role in Rush Hour, where he attempted to perform some minor up-and-down stunts to impress his lithe and limber co-star.
"I was trying to show off in front of Jackie by jumping on the back of a bus that was going 5 miles an hour," he says.
"I did it five, six times, but he wasn't impressed," he shakes his head. "Well, maybe it was going more like 15 miles per hour."
Tucker wants to take more risks in his career, but he means to stretch his acting muscles, not physical ones.
"I want to do something like Forrest Gump or The Color Purple, one of those good five-hankie movies," he says.
"I've already done my action movies with the best, now it's time to move on."
He also intends to get back to his comic roots of stand-up, opening a comedy club in his native Atlanta, and work on a one-man comedy show that will be filmed for a feature release next year.
In the meantime, he's prepping to shoot Double-O-Soul, in which he plays "a black James Bond."
"I start out as a single '0' agent, and then they promote me," he says.
The film co-stars singer Mariah Carey in her film debut.
He wasn't concerned about Carey's acting skills, he says (think Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard), because, "It don't matter. She has a good personality, so I knew she could do it."
That's what his old friends say about him.
Even his former high-school principal, whose office he knew too well, recalls a success-bound young man in hindsight.
"He once sat my girlfriend down in his office and told her: 'Don't mess with him, he's a bad boy.' "
But badness did him well.
"Now, when I see him on the street, he says: 'Yo, baby. You was my best student!' "
THE FIRST LAST FILE
ON A RUSH HOUR SEQUEL: Maybe one or two. But, "me and Jackie made a pact. We're not going to be 90 years old and doing another."
THE ENTERTAINER OF THE CENTURY?: "Bill Clinton."
ON FAME AND FORTUNE: "I have a house and a truck. That's all I need."