Published: July 18, 1999
CHRIS ROCK ON BIGGER & BLACKER
Bigger & Blacker is Chris Rock's second album for DreamWorks Records (his first, 1997's Roll With the New, received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Comedy Album). Released July 13, 1999, Bigge 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 disc was co-produced by Rock and revered hip-hop artist and producer Prince Paul, who was behind seminal works by De La Soul, Gravediggaz, Stetsasonic and many others. Bigger & Blacker, which shares its title and some material with Rock's third stand-up comedy special for HBO, expands considerably on that program with exclusive song parodies, sketches and guest appearances by Ice Cube, 01' Dirty Bastard, Biz Markie and Gerald Levert.
Q: What the significance of the title Bigger & Blacker?
CR: It's a play on words referencing LL Cool J's album Bigger & Deafer, which is a record I love. In a lot of ways, I'm at the same spot LL was after his first album. Roll With the New was big, so I had to come back and top that. I picked a title that would put pressure on me. I knew everybody was going to say, "Bigger and blacker? Who the hell are you?" So it was a challenge to myself.
Q: Is the challenge at this point in your career more from within, from you, or without, from the media or the public?
CR: The biggest challenge in my career - I guess it's comin' from me - but it's also comin' from my comedy ancestors. It's comin' from Richard Pryor, it's comin' from Bill Cosby, it's comin' from Red Foxx. I'm tryin' to represent them. I'm tryin' to sit at that table. It's not like I'm lookin' around trying to compete with anyone. I'm lookin' at Richard Pryor and goin', how do I get closer to that?
Q: How do you define this album?
CR: It's like a gumbo - there's a lot of stuff in it. You got stand-up, you got ill stand-up, you got sketches, you got really off-the-wall stuff with Ol' Dirty Bastard. It's a mishmash of things.
Q: And then there's Gerald Levert. There are not a lot of comedy albums with love songs. Why did you decide to include him on the project?
CR: Everybody I worked with on this album just happened to be there. There was a core crew, and we were working at this studio and Gerald Levert just happened to be upstairs. So I said, "Hey, you wanna do somethin' on the album?" He said, "Sure," and he's on the album. I did somethin' on his album, too. Ice Cube happened to be upstairs one day. He said, "Sure," so we got him. Biz Markie was also around. That's kind of how I do my TV show, too [HBO's "The Chris Rock Show"]; sometimes a delivery guy'll just be walkin' in the office and he'll end up in a sketch 'cause he just has the right look.
Q: What about [first radio track] "No Sex?" What inspired that?
CR: "No Sex" started out as a parody of that Baz Luhrmann record "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)." For the last two years, I've been sayin', "There's no sex in The Champagne Room [at gentlemen's clubs]," just all the time, as a saying. Just as I would say to a kid - "And remember, son, there's no sex in The Champagne Room." It's a cautionary word for every guy who's goin' to a strip club. So somehow we were in this strip club mindset and we thought we should just do a strip club song.
Q: What's up with the video?
CR: The director is a guy named Little X who did a video for Redman that's real funny. So in the video, we're in The Champagne Room, and there's no sex. That's the best way I can describe it.
Q: Tell us a little bit about "Snow Flake."
CR: "Snow Flake" is talkin' about white women. It's a parody of the Rolling Stones song "Brown Sugar." One day we were listenin' to it on the bus and talking about how racist it is, how offensive, how politically incorrect "Brown Sugar' is as a song. So we came up with the ignorant black man's version of "Brown Sugar," singin' about white women and how great they are. It's so politically incorrect.
Q: What exactly is "Brown Sugar' about?
CR: It's basically saying how much men love black pu ssy. We love fucking black girls. The Stones made a song about it - genius. You gotta love Mick Jagger for that. I just can't believe no one has made a response to it until now. I can't believe Prince didn't do a record about how much he loves white women. I mean, in a good, jovial way. We wanted him to sing on it but we figured he'd never do it.
Q: Prince Paul co-produced 1997's Roll With the New and the new album. Why do you like to work with him?
CR: He's the only funny producer I know. He does humor in everything he does, in the De La Soul stuff and his solo stuff. I really wanted to work with someone who has a sense of humor about hip-hop and hip-hop culture.
Q: Is comedy an intrinsic part of hip-hop culture?
CR: Actually, comedy's not a really big part of hip-hop culture, but hip-hop culture is so serious that it's ripe for comedy - nothing is more ripe for comedy than hip-hop culture.
Q: Let's turn that around - is comedy ripe for hip-hop?
CR: I think the new breed of comedian is very hip-hop influenced. Like Chris Tucker or me, guys that get to the point right away - lots of jokes, stalking the stage, really influenced by the rhythm. I think hip-hop gets into comedy that way, whereas a guy like Bill Cosby listens to a lot of jazz and takes his sweet time getting to his points. Hip-hop is immediate and my comedy's immediate.
Q: Why did you decide to expand beyond straight stand-up on the record?
CR: People are like, "Why don't you just do a stand-up album where it's all stand-up?" Well, it's a different era. It's 1999 and we have HBO and we have VCRs and people aren't gonna just buy an album with nothin' but stand-up on it. They want some other stuff, and since we have the technology to create all these different atmospheres in the studio, why not take advantage of it? My albums are for the fans more than anything else. They're for the hardcore silly comedy fan. In every medium you tackle, you have to give the fans something exclusive to that medium. Even in my book [1 997's best-selling "Rock This"], there's stuff there you're never gonna get anywhere else, so that's why I wanted to take the album to another level in that sense. So you have to buy the album.
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