Published: July 18, 1999
CHRIS ROCK'S NEW ALBUM IS BIGGER & BLACKER; DUE JULY 13, DISC FEATURES ICE CUBE, OL'DIRTY BASTARD, BIZ MARKIE AND GERALD LEVERT
LOS ANGELES, June 10, 1999 - "You gotta hit it hard," says Chris Rock, and that's just what the Grammy and Emmy winner does on Bigger & Blacker, his second album on DreamWorks Records. Released July 13, 1999, Bigger & Blacker finds Rock taking off the gloves and hitting hard about everything from race to relationships, from Social Security ("The average black man dies at 54. Black people should get Social Security at 29. Black people don't live that long -hypertension, high blood pressure, NYPD.") to President Clinton's sexcapades ("Everybody lies about sex. People lie while they're having sex!").
"The album title actually came from LL Cool J's Bigger & Deffer," Rock explains. "It's a title that puts pressure on me to be 'bigger and blacker."' Overseen by Rock and legendary producer Prince Paul, the disc features Ice Cube, 01' Dirty Bastard, Biz Markie and Gerald Levert. Says Rock, "I love great singers and rappers. So instead of trying it myself, I've invited some great people to join me on the record."
While the live stand-up elements of Bigger & Blacker were recorded during Rock's recent national tour, its sketches and song parodies were tracked in the studio. Among them are a reworking of The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" - which becomes "Snow Flake" - and Rock's version of Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)," which also serves as the first radio track off the album.
The record shares its title and some material with Rock's third stand-up comedy special for HBO. That program debuts July 10, immediately following the cable premiere of Lethal Weapon 4, which co-stars Rock. The HBO special will be shot at the famed Apollo Theatre in Harlem June 18-19.
Bigger & Blacker is the much-anticipated follow-up to Rock's previous DreamWorks album, Roll With the New. Released in April of 1997, it won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. The upstart comic is clearly a magnet for such prizes: Roll With the New was preceded in December 1996 by the gold-certified DreamWorks home video "Bring the Pain." That work was largely based on Rock's second HBO special, which copped two Emmy Awards, including the statuette for Outstanding Special. Rock's first HBO jaunt, 1994's Big Ass Jokes, garnered the CableACE Award for Best Comedy Special. And "The Chris Rock Show" earned a 1998 Emmy nomination for Best Writing. A highly acclaimed star in the HBO firmament, the program begins its fourth season in September.
The New York Times has described Rock as "probably the funniest and smartest comedian working today"; Vanity Fair likewise deemed him "young, gifted and the funniest man in America." Rock came to prominence in 1989, spending three years as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live." He went on to write, produce and star in the rap satire CB4 and has since appeared in such films as Beverly Hills Cop 11, Dr. Dolittle, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka! and New Jack City and will grace the forthcoming pictures Dogma (with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) and Nurse Betty (with Morgan Freeman and Renee Zellwegger). Rock is also executive producer of the hit ABC sitcom "The Hughleys." His 1997 book Rock This! was a New York Times best-seller. Other evidence of Rock's versatility can be found in the creation of The IIItop Journal, a humor magazine based at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University. Modeled after the Harvard Lampoon, the journal will serve as a training ground for young black comedy writers.
Rock will promote Bigger & Blacker on "The Late Show With David Letterman" (July 6) and the cover of TV Guide (hitting newsstands July 6). He's scheduled to visit "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" on July 13th (the day of the album's release) and Howard Stern's show on the 14th. While holding forth in these arenas, Rock will no doubt dispense the kind of truth-telling he serves up on Bigger & Blacker. Among the many pearls of wisdom: "No matter what a stripper says, there's no sex in the Champagne Room. None."
DreamWorks Records is a division of DreamWorks SKG, which was formed in October 1994 by its three principal partners - Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen - as a single company to produce live-action motion pictures; animated feature films and television programs; network, syndicated and cable television programming; records; books; toys; consumer products; and interactive entertainment.
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