The Biggest and Blackest!

The shot across the bow was BRING THE PAIN (HBO, 1996). A rising comedian then, now Chris Rock has honed his standup act to a knife-keen incisiveness in his third HBO Special, BIGGER AND BLACKER.

Chris Rock: The New Black Leader that moves us?

On the famed Apollo stage in Harlem, New York, attired in shiny black leather, Rock paces like a jungle cat, spitting like a raptor, his lexicon that of the mean streets, shotgunning his social commentary like an American prophet.

It’s still current! Rock’s type of observational humor interwoven with politics has the danger of becoming outdated, but – shockingly – his 1999 topics still resonate in 2014!

School shootings, gays in the military, gun control, health insurance, irresponsible mothers – even the Clinton Lewinski scandal (which Senator Rand Paul has dredged from the cobweb past in an attempt to undermine Hillary’s 2016 run, and also to prove, I dunno, that he’s a giant dick?)! It’s eerie that society is still death-locked in these same issues. And it makes Rock look like a soothsayer. He was even right about Ricky Martin’s Living La Vida Loca: “That ain’t goin’ nowhere! That gonna be around for a looong time!”

On school shootings, he asks the same pertinent question that political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry voiced a few years ago, but in his own way: “Everybody wants to know, What kinda music was dey listenin’ to? What kinda movies was dey watchin’? Who gives a shit?! Whatever happened to ‘crazy’?” (Harris-Perry: “People are always talking about gun control. What about nut control?”)

And Rock has his own (excellent) theory on “bullet control”: they should cost $5000 a bullet, “cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars, there’d be no mo’ innocent bystanders!”

He drinks in the adulation, the crowd eating from his hand, his accent becoming bigger and blacker as he smoothly transitions to irresponsible mothers: “If the kid call his grandmomma ‘mommy’ and his momma ‘Pam,’ he goin’ to jail!”

He gives a little sugar to Daddies – the real daddies “that handle dey business.” Yet – “What does daddy get for all his work? The big piece o’ chicken!”

On the Lewinski scandal, he brings his refreshing take on the juvenility of focusing on it as if it was important. And how it was mainly Hillary’s fault for not taking care of her man in the first place. He lets us in on a truth that every man knows, that he will not disclose to any woman closer than girlfriend-status: “A man is basically as faithful as his options.”

“Every woman in here, every guy you meet is trying’ ta fuck you: Can I help you with that? Can I help you to some dick? Can I get that for you? Can I get you some dick?!’ Again, it’s an old trope that comedians fall back on, but Rock nails it to the wall.

“Insurance should be called ‘In Case Shit’…I give a company money In Case Shit happens – but if shit don’t happen, shouldn’t I get mah money back?!”

“You get paralyzed, doctors don’t got shit for you. Look at Christopher Reeve – paralyzed. What kinda sorry-ass shit is that? Superman can’t walk! What kinda injustice is this?”

“Everybody’s got to chill out on racism. Nobody’s got it worse than the American Indians… I have seen a polar bear ride a fucken tricycle in my lifetime; I have never seen an Indian family just chillin’ out at Red Lobster.”

The Apollo didn’t land on him. Chris Rock landed on the Apollo!

Then there is a quirky, retrospective moment for us in 2014, as Rock (back then in 1999) reflects on how he is waiting for a new black leader to really move him, running through a short list of potentials: Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan… And we smartypantses in the future wishing we could call back through time and tell Rock, “Just wait 5 years for the Democratic National Convention and watch for a young black man named Barack Obama…

More classics: “Man’s needs: food, sex, silence; feed me, fuck me, shut the fuck up!”

“Men lie the most – Women tell the biggest lies… The visual lie: look at you: you got on heels – you ain’t that tall; you got on makeup – your face don’t look like dat; you got a weave – your hair ain’t that long; you got a wonder bra on – your titties ain’t that big! Everything about you is a lie and you expect me to tell the truth? Fuck YOU!”

Distilled honesty, raw exposition, simplifying the complicated, prosecuting the adjudicated, vindicating the prognosticated, Chris Rock, unintentionally or not, may just one day be that New Leader that moves us. And after all he’s given us, all the knowledge and insight and laughs, after opening our eyes to the pitfalls of hubris, the duplicity of society, the system built on fear, what does daddy get for all his work?

The big piece o’ chicken.

END

Fearless and Peerless.

A touch of Cosby, a sprinkle of Pryor – and a slam of Rock.

CHRIS ROCK: NEVER SCARED is the comedian’s fourth HBO Special, recorded in March 2004 at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. And I almost feel guilty making the inevitable comparisons to his predecessors. Because he’s better than both of them. Yeah, I said it.

Not the ‘next Pryor’ – the first Rock!

Chris Rock has matured. He is his own man. No more sideways association with supposedly greater men. Since his second HBO special, 1996’s BRING THE PAIN, he has worked through blood and bone to become a great man himself. His film career has still not scaled the heights of Eddie Murphy’s (whose standup movies and comedy albums in the mid-80s caused tectonic shifts in the comedy universe), but as a standup comic, he is untouchable.

Cosby had his family tales and his transcending of race and gender – the first white black comedian; Pryor brought the snarling street; Murphy brought simplistic funny anecdotes and impressions of Pryor and Cosby – and Chris Rock brings the pain. His sociological, deep-cutting, observational humor can best be described as “the black George Carlin.”

And his onstage presence is magnetic, a prowling jungle cat, still opting for a corded microphone (which he drops intentionally callously or slams to the ground at the end of every set – a rugged move!); his delivery a two-fisted attack, biting off every phrase like raw meat, hitting those hard consonants from his diaphragm (someone described it as “chiseled”); a little emphasis here, a lazy ghetto phrase there, voice rising and falling in frustration, anger, amusement of mankind’s foibles.

Written and executive-produced by Rock, he opens the show talking about his daughter. Now usually when a comedian starts in on pets or kids, it’s a death knell for the bit, but Rock goes in a direction that doesn’t bore us with cute idiosyncrasies that only a parent could love – he speaks of his daughter in relation to his role in her life: “My only job – is to keep her off the pole!” Which leads to strippers, and pondering how “clear heels” became their fashion statement of choice… And into the wild black yonder we go!

Relationships, affirmative action, gay marriage, President Bush, his lean on political issues (“Crime, I’m conservative; prostitution – I’m liberal!”), indefensible rap music lyrics (“Slap her with a dick, slap her with a dick, slap her with a dick!–“), Michael Jackson’s child molestation charges (“Remember there was that argument over who’s better – Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won!”), the difference between rich and wealthy (“Shaq is rich. The white man who signs his check is wealthy!”); the war on drugs (“They say drugs are illegal for your safety. But they don’t give a fuck about your safety: They sell guns at Wal-mart! They don’t give a fuck about you.”); and of course, the ubiquitous takes on racism woven into almost every bit.

Of course, trying to convey one-liners out of context is akin to Eddie Murphy’s caveat that foreign audiences’ only take from his shows are the swear words (“Hello Eddiieee! Mr. Fuck-You Man!”). Rock’s act is also liberally sprinkled with all Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words and more, the mitigating factor being that he’s got his finger on the sociological pulse of a generation, and any prophet must necessarily speak in the parlance of that generation.

There are many good and great black standups (Martin Lawrence, Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, et al), but let’s just ‘fess up and say out loud that there is only one contender to be the new Richard Pryor.

Nay, the one and only – Chris Rock.

END