Seriously Funny

DAVID LEE -- HBO
This summer Chris Rock filmed his acclaimed HBO special, Bigger and Blacker, at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, below. Rock's comedy is sometimes blue, but, says Dick Gregory, "if you took out all his profanity, it would still be funny"

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The show's title came from a song by rapper Method Man; the show's spirit came from hip-hop too. Rock, dressed in black, stalked the stage, barking jokes in a rough cadence somewhere between a Baptist preacher and RUN-D.M.C. Like a hip-hop deejay, Rock sampled the personas of the comic greats he admired--Gregory's political smarts, Richard Pryor's scatological eloquence, Allen's nebbishy charm--and mixed them into something new. "I'm a rap comedian the same way Bill Cosby is a jazz comedian," says Rock. "Cosby's laid back. I'm like, bang, bang bang, right into it."

The material was angry, real, so funny it hurt. Colin Powell will never be Vice President, Rock cracked, because white people know what will happen: "If we had a black Vice President right now, I couldn't wait to kill the President." He argued that O.J. Simpson got off because of his fame, not his skin color: "If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J.--he'd have been Orenthal the bus-driving murderer."

But Bring the Pain's most talked-about bit was Rock's searing riff on "black people vs. niggas." It was a caustic comic commentary that contrasted the values of upwardly mobile blacks with those who had given in to a kind of gangsta nihilism. "There's like a civil war going on with black people," Rock declared. "There are two sides: there's black people, and there's niggas. And niggas have got to go." Niggas, in Rock's view, were a source of ignorance, violence, family dysfunction. It was a riff that resembled traditional stand-up comedy in the way that an open wound sometimes resembles a smile.

"The taboo he shattered was exposing the secret, closeted discourse among black Americans about their own," says cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson. "Rock signifies an unwillingness among the younger black generation to abide by the dirty-laundry theory. That theory suggests you don't say anything self-critical or negative about black people where white people can hear it. But the hip-hop generation believes in making money off the publication of private pain and agony."

The bit could have been seen as a sellout: the mainstream press suddenly embraced Rock as a tough-talking truth teller, unafraid to critique his own race. Says hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, an early fan of Rock's: "The white media chose pieces of Rock's performance that made them feel comfortable, and they wrote about it and they loved him."

But something more interesting was going on: the bit was significant in part because it wasn't aimed at the ears of whites. Blacks have long complained about being ignored by the larger community, unheard, unseen. Rock's riff aired on HBO, not BET, but it was about black folks, for black folks. He didn't care what whites thought or whether they were even listening. Suddenly whites were the ones rendered invisible, inaudible.

As minority communities swell, no doubt more conversations on the national stage will take place without reference to whites, as darker Americans bounce to hip-hop and live la vida loca without caring how it affects their image in the eyes of the white community. "Now [members of the mainstream media] have to live with [Rock] even though he makes them uncomfortable," chuckles Simmons. "And I think that's fabulous."

Wit-making is not at the disposal of all, in general there are but a few persons to whom one can point and say they are witty. --Ibid.

You are standing in front of Chris Rock's home: a carriage house in Brooklyn, ivy hanging from the front, a quiet street except for a kid a block or two away blasting Bob Marley's Is This Love from the open windows of his van. Malaak, Rock's wife, answers the door, and a rat-size terrier explodes out, yapping. "That's Essence," says Malaak. Named after Essence, the magazine? "Named after the [1993] Essence Awards, where Chris and I first met," she corrects.

Malaak leads you up the stairs, past three framed posters of Miles Davis, past a shelf containing pictures of Rock's family and copies of books like Dorothy West's The Wedding, into the kitchen, where Rock, dressed in a Phat Farm T shirt, sweat pants and white gym socks, is watching the world track-and-field championships on TV and flipping through the sports section of the Daily News. Some of Rock's friends suggest that the couple have experienced domestic difficulties of late, but right now they look comfortable together; relaxed, laid back. Still, there's a little work mixed in with this lazy Sunday afternoon--Rock's searching for material in the paper for his jokes for the MTV Video Music Awards.