He’s out now. An HBO stand-up concert called “Bring the Pain” that first aired last June raised Rock from semi-obscurity to the ranks of Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. An album version of this edgy, killingly funny concert, titled “Roll With the New,” will be released by Dream Works Records next month. He’s got his own half-hour talk show on HBO, kicked off with Johnnie Cochran and Prince last week. Hyperion paid him a reported $1 million for a book due this fall. Which is probably a lot more than the juvenile Buttafuocos who used to beat him up in high school are making. “Life is long,” the 31-year-old comedian says. “I think I won.”
Like they say: he who laughs last gets to date Tyra Banks. Rock is happily married, but Little Penny–whose obsession with supermodel Tyra is a running joke on the Nike ads -has made it clear that he’s available.
Hunched over his scrambled eggs, Rock seems tired. He’s wearing gray Nike sweat pants, a gray Ralph Lauren sweater, a hat pulled backward-a just-rolled-out-of-bed ensemble. Clearly bored with media attention, he still answers questions with more eye contact and thought than many famous people bother to do. He bristles at Eddie Murphy comparisons (Murphy discovered Rock at the age of 18 in a comedy club and gave him a bit part in “Beverly Hills Cop 2”) but engages if you flip the script. Told that his stand-up style has the oratorical force and cadences of a preacher, he lights up. “My grandfather was a preacher,” he says. “When I was a kid I used to listen to records of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and study them.”
Raised in Brooklyn, the son of a truck-driver, Rock dropped out of high school, but he’s been a lifelong student of comedy, black and white. “Bring the Pain” opens with a montage of classic comedy albums: Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, the slightly more obscure Pigmeat Markham. (Cosby, not a fan of Rock’s X-rated humor, has complained publicly about his inclusion in this pantheon.) Growing up in the ’70s, Rock loved Flip Wilson, and Dean Martin’s roasts on TV. He still goes to the Museum of Television and Radio to look up vintage Woody Allen clips. “The young comics, all they listen to is Pryor and Eddie,” Rock complains. “It’s corny, but I knew if I put those albums up there, there’d be people who’d go out and buy all of them.”
Putting himself as the next big act in stand-up comedy’s line of succession may seem cocky. It is. But it’s not undeserved. Eddie Murphy cashed in on white liberal guilt, exploiting genteel Beverly Hills racism or joking about deflowering Brooke Shields. Rock goes beyond Eddie, beyond liberal guilt. He makes equally scathing fun of white people and black people. “Bring the Pain” and his album both have a long section on “Niggas vs. Black People.” Coming on like a right-wing black sociologist, he blames “ignorant-assed niggas” for glorifying jail over college (“Books are like kryptonite to a nigga?), for stealing his TV and making him want to sign up for the Ku Klux Klan. “Niggas are always trying to take credit for some s–t they’re supposed to do,” he berates the predominantly black Washington, D.C., audience in the HBO special. “I take care of my kids,” he says, shifting into character. Then answers: “You’re supposed to, you dumb motherf—–! What kind of ignorant s–t is that?” The rage is real. For Rock, there is no deadlier sin than ignorance. It brings out the preacher in him. “I’m tired of this s–t. Tired, tired, tired!”
Amen. Almost overnight, Rock has graduated from $00-seat clubs to 3,000-seat theaters. In a 1994 HBO special, “Big-Ass Jokes,” Rock was stuck in the kind of four-letter stand-up that brings down the house on “Def Comedy Jam.” His Nat X character on “Saturday Night Live” had an inspired Afro, but it seemed like the Man (or Lorne Michaels) was toning down Nat’s rants for “SNL’s” Wonderbread audience. “I’m a much better performer now,” he says. “I’m older. I look older. I’m smarter, taller.” The skinny kid with the menacing smile was always funny. Then all of a sudden he got smart, doing AT&T ads to raise his visibility and sending subversive dispatches from the conventions for “Politically Incorrect.” (“As usual, I’m the only black man on the floor.”)
No limos: He admits he “let stuff slide” during his three years on “SNL.” There were distractions: “I bought a Corvette. I had a different girl every week. I was running around in limos with models.” But the limos and models are out of his system now. He got married three months ago, to a woman he met three years ago at the Essence Awards. “Where else would a black guy meet his wife?” he says. He still lives in Brooklyn. He works all the time because, he says, “I don’t really have another talent.” He’s become extremely focused. Doesn’t drink. Doesn’t plan to do any more bad bit parts in movies like “Beverly Hills Ninja.”
The danger, now that Rock is rich, a Big Willie with his own talk show, is that he’ll go soft and turn into Arsenio. Asked whether he’d gotten any flak from the black community for his harsh material, he backpedals a little. “The only thing that might be wrong about that bit is the word ’nigga’,” he says. During a rehearsal of the HBO show last week, model Veronica Webb was his guest. When she tried to goad him into playful argument, he seemed ready to cut her down to size, then censored himself. “I’m the host now,” he said. “I have to be nice.” The only thing wrong with that bit was the word “nice.” Chris Rock should not be nice. He should keep bringing the pain.
