23 Times Chris Rock Was A Comedy Genius

Comedy isn't a game for the conservative, but Chris Rock has built a career on taking it to the next level. His comedy is confrontational and controversial; just listen to his standup and you'll regularly hear people in the audience gasping in offended disbelief while others laugh uncontrollably. A white man could never repeat most of his best bits without getting canceled, or at least beat up afterward. His racially charged, male-centric humor makes you laugh and feel squeamish at the same time.

Chris Rock is also one of the greatest comedians of the last few decades. His standup is full of the raw edginess of Richard Pryor, yet he also voices a beloved zebra in a kids film series ("Madagascar") or plays a sensitive artist ("Top Five"). He was a cast member and host of "Saturday Night Live," was on "In Living Color," and even had his own comedy show. Rock is brilliant when reading or writing a script, ad-libbing, or telling jokes on stage; he's also hilarious just when he's getting interviewed. In fact, to narrow it down to 23 moments was a bit difficult for a top-10 comedy legend like Chris Rock. But we'll give it a go.

Chris Rock has aired his grievances with the institution of marriage often over the years. In his 2004 standup "Never Scared," Rock has a lot to say about marriage: about the boredom, about how there's no such thing as a soulmate, so on. Possibly his funniest observation is about hanging out with other married couples when the women bring together their men and they're all supposed to just become friends. Even better, he describes how boring these meetings are, though he suggests a way to cure it: "Whenever I go out with other married couples, I like to bring along a single crackhead. Just spicin' up the activities. 'Come on, tell us some of your cracky tales.'"

Most people don't remember that Chris Rock had a show, especially since it only ran for 3 seasons and ended over 21 years ago. This talk show with comedy skits and music acts, though, also had some true comedy gems, many of them starring Rock. One was "How to Not Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police" — a skit that seems to have only become more relevant with time. This skit contains such great advice as, "If you jump a subway turnstile, you might just get off with a warning from the police. But if you jump a turnstile carrying a loaded gun and smoking a joint, then maybe you need your ass kicked."

In Chris Rock's HBO special "Kill the Messenger," Chris Rock has a bit that does such a good job encapsulating inequality that it spawned some serious analysis. He explains that he lives in a very nice New Jersey neighborhood that counts among its residents only four Black people: him, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z, and Eddie Murphy. Everybody cheers until he explains his Black neighbors are, respectively, the most successful R&B singer, rapper, and comedian around. "You know what the white man that lives next to me does for a living? He's a dentist." This is the brilliance behind Rock's comedy. He can make you laugh while making a cutting social critique. A Black man has to literally be the best at what he does to live alongside a white man who's simply good at his somewhat mundane job.

With his first appearance on "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," Chris Rock's Cheap Pete is truly a great cheapskate. In the Wayans Brothers' "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," he tries to order a single rib and asks if he can get some soda poured into his hand for 10 cents. When he has to pay, he asks for change for a $100, prompting the cook, played by Isaac Hayes, to attempt to throttle him. 

Cheap Pete goes on to be a fantastic recurring character on "In Living Color," another Wayans Brothers production. It's tough to pick just one great moment, but a classic is when he asks Tommy Davidson, the bartender in an "In Living Color" skit, how much a virgin daiquiri costs. Davidson replies it's $2.50. Rock flatly intones, "$2.50, good lawd. How 'bout I give you 30 cents you give me a Kool-Aid with six kids."

In a vintage SNL Weekend Update from the 1992 season opener, Chris Rock talks about how the first day of school was always rough because he was the only Black kid in an all-white school — just like Franklin from "Peanuts," he muses. This leads him to observe that Franklin was on the cartoon for 25 years and had not one line. Everybody has their thing, Rock points out: "Linus got the blanket, Lucy's a b***h, Schroeder plays the piano, Peppermint Patty's a lesbian. Everybody got their thing except Franklin. Come on, give him a Jamaican accent or something!" It should be added that Franklin's presence in the original comic strip is considered a landmark of inclusion, but Rock's point stands. 

In his 1996 "Bring the Pain" HBO special, he makes fun of how women have platonic friends. Men don't have platonic friends, he adds, they have women they haven't slept with yet. He goes on to add that for a woman, that friendship isn't fully platonic. "They keep the platonic friends forever. Why? Because you never know," he says. "You know what a platonic friend is to a woman? It's like a d**k in a glass case. In case of emergency, break open glass." This bit is not to be confused with the later Lonely Island hit song, "D**k in a Box."

Following up his fantastic turn as Rufus in "Dogma," Rock appears in Smith's "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," though only briefly. He plays Chaka Luther King, an angry Black director making a comic book movie surrounded by an all-white crew and actors. He thinks they're out to get and undermine him because he's a Black man making it in a white game. As he says to his PA after asking the kid if he put boogers in the director's coffee, "It must piss you off to see a Black man directing a big production like this. You went to film school. Does your daddy know that you give a n***a his coffee? It would kill him." Then he asks the kid to taste the coffee, "taste that booger flavor, I know it's in there."

Here's a standup bit that white people will never be able to even think about out loud. It has to be included because it's the type of courageously confrontational stuff that only comedy legends attempt. In this bit from 1996's "Bring the Pain," he explains how Black people keep being dragged down by the other subset of Black people who live a life of crime and stupid actions. He says, "I wish they let me join the Ku Klux Klan." It's really tough to get into this one without being able to say the punchline, but Rock does talk about how the n****z take credit for basic stuff, stuff like "'I take care of my kids.' 'You're supposed to ya dumb...'" and "'I ain't never been to jail' 'Whatchu want, a cookie?'" A comedy touchstone, (Barak Obama mentioned it in a speech about Black fatherhood), you have to wonder if he could deliver such a bit in the current climate.

"Top Five" is a movie Chris Rock wrote and directed full of seemingly all the funniest Black comedians in the game, and even several funny white folks. The movie, as you can imagine, is full of absolutely fall-down-laughing scenes and arguably is a sign of his comedy genius from start to finish. One of the best scenes involves Rock talking to his agent, played by Kevin Hart. Hart's character discusses a past occasion in which he told Rock's character not to do a movie, even dropping the N-word to show how serious he was that Rock had to drop the role. Hart claims the incident almost got him fired. Rock responds, "A n***a can't be fired for calling a n***g a n***a," leading to a hilarious bit of wordplay. 

Possibly one of the greatest random comedy pairings of all time is Joe Pesci and Chris Rock in "Lethal Weapon 4." When they get started on conspiracy theories about cellphones (hey, it was 1998, handheld cellphones were still a relatively new technology), it's pure manic gold. After ranting back and forth about service, Rock says they keep making them smaller so you lose them. "I never lost my mother's phone. Took you 2 hours to make a damn long distance call... I never lost my sport Illustrated Swimsuit phone..." and it continues back and forth like this for about two solid minutes of pure comedic gold.

Again, Chris Rock is gold on talk shows, and he and Letterman really seem to have a special bond. In a 2010 appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman," the host has a hoarse voice. Rock uses it to give him a jab about the scandal that was hitting Letterman's life at that point. He asks why Letterman's doing the show since he's rich and could take a few days off if he's sick. "Wife still mad at ya, ain't she? Why drive back to Connecticut to a mean woman? 'I may as well just stay here and do the show with no voice.' I love ya honey. I been there, Dave." "I do get sick on the road," Rock adds, "and if my wife is mad at me I add a few shows."