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So here's what Rock said about the "assassination" of rap stars Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls: "Malcolm X was assassinated. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Them two niggas got shot." His take on white poverty: "There's nothing scarier than a broke white man. The broker they are, the madder they are. That's why white people start forming groups and blowing up s___. Freeman. Aryan Nation. Klan. Poor, pissed-off white people are the biggest threat to the security of this country." And his view on single moms: "It doesn't take a scientist to tell when you're gonna have f_____-up kids. If a kid calls his grandmama Mommy and his mama Pam--he's going to jail."
Rock is like a hotel shower: his controls are hard to understand, and you never know whether what's going to come out of him is going to be soothing or scalding. "It's good, it's intelligent," says Allen about Rock's stand-up. "He sucks the audience in quickly and keeps them." And his unpredictability is part of what makes his comic take so fresh. "Somebody should always be offended," Rock says. "Somebody in your life should always be like, 'Why did you have to do that?' Always. That's just being a real artist. That's the difference between Scorsese and Disney."
A new joke operates almost as an event of universal interest. It is passed on from one person to another, just like the news of the latest conquest. --Ibid.
Rock's office in midtown Manhattan has a crisp, professional cool to it, as if he were running a start-up Internet company instead of a comedy talk show. Still, his eclectic personal taste is revealed in the decor: there are several Woody Allen posters on the walls, including one for Take the Money and Run, a small table with a couple of Jean-Michel Basquiat art books on top, a CD rack with a few old Prince albums. The Chris Rock Show starts its fourth season next Friday, and rows of index cards on a board next to Rock's desk chart out the show's upcoming guests. It's a varied list, featuring such not-so-celebrated celebrities as Ken Hamblin, a conservative black talk-radio host; and Les Nubians, a terrific but little-known French-speaking hip-hop/R.-and-B. duo. These are the kinds of off-center guests that would get on Leno or Letterman only if Pamela Anderson Lee canceled at the last moment.
Rock sits at his desk, flipping through a manila folder with scripts from his writers for proposed sketches. This is the most important moment of the day--deciding what makes him laugh. "I like humor that's not really funny," he says. "I like talking about subjects that aren't funny in the first place and making them funny. So anything down and depressing is something I'll talk about." He accepts a sketch about a hate group (the wrinkle: the group hates its leader too). He rejects a documentary parody called Scared Straight in which gay men scare kids "straight."