He's Too Funny For His Cat
Saying Chris Rock is funny is like saying ... well, it's like saying George
Carlin or Richard Pryor are funny. He's earned his place alongside the great
stand-up comics that came before him and is definitely among the best
working today. And in true '90s synergistic fashion, he's become something
of a cottage industry -- his self-titled HBO talk show will enter its fourth
season later this year, he has two CDs and one book, and currently he's
developing The Illtop Journal,a humor magazine at Howard University
that he hopes will be a launch pad for the next generation of black comedy
writers.
Bigger and Blacker draws much of its material from his HBO special of
the same name and augments it with new sketches and song parodies. Taken
together, it's as blisteringly funny as often as it's weirdly
self-indulgent, and amounts to a record that's almost as frustrating as it
is hilarious.
Rock's real strength as a comedian is his ability to break an argument down
to a brief, cutting line. In an extended riff about the flap over gays in
the military, he deftly takes the wind out of any protester's sails:
"Everybody out there," he says in his insistent half-shout, "got a gay
cousin." It's no knee-slapper, but it instantly communicates the point --
that none of us can claim to be outside the discussion. That kind of shock
of the familiar is the observational comic's biggest weapon -- it's one that
George Carlin perfected, and Rock has mastered it.
Which makes it all the more annoying when he goes for the easy laugh -- as
on the reductionist "Snowflake" (RealAudio excerpt), a parody starring Biz Markie of the Rolling
Stones' dumb, racist ode "Brown Sugar." On tracks like this, or when his
stand-up goes off track, you get the feeling that Rock is smarter than the
material. It's frustrating, but no one, not even Dennis Miller, has been
able to win by being high-brow all the time. (You haven't seen Rock doing
10-10-220 ads for a while, have you?)
Rock has called in plenty of friends for his latest. Prince Paul, Mr. Hip
Hop Sketch, co-produces (you can hear his influence in a stoopid-funny bit
about Savion Glover); ODB offers "words of wisdom"; and Ice Cube also show up. Of the sketches and songs, "No Sex in the Champagne
Room" (RealAudio excerpt)
-- a parody of Baz Luhrmann's "Wear Sunscreen" -- and an interview with Monica Lewinsky in which her answers are all taken from nasty female rappers are the funniest. "No Sex" is the first single; the horoscope
("Leo: You're gonna die. Aries: You're Gonna die") alone should generate
plenty of airplay.
So for all the duds, and there are a few, Bigger and Blacker still
pays off. Rock is sharp as a tack, at least when he's trying. And we could
use more subversive, articulate and funny voices like his.