The Weekday Rush Comedy Spotlight (March 9): Chris Rock

Rock began doing stand-up comedy in 1984 in New York City’s Catch a Rising Star. He slowly rose up the ranks of the comedy  circuit in addition to earning bit roles in the film I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and the TV series Miami Vice. Upon seeing his act at a nightclub, Eddie Murphy befriended and mentored the aspiring comic. Murphy gave Rock his first film role in Beverly Hills Cop II. Rock became a cast member of the popular sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1993. He and other new cast members Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and David Spade became known as the Bad Boys of SNL. In 1991, he released his first comedy album, Born Suspect and won acclaim for his role as a crack addict in the film New Jack City. His tenure on SNL gave Rock national exposure. Rock has hosted SNL three times; in 1996, 2014 and 2020. Rock’s subject matter typically involves family, politics, romance, music, celebrities, and race relations in the United States. Though not strictly autobiographical, much of his comic standpoint seems rooted in his teenage experience; his strict parents, concerned about the inadequacies of the local school system, arranged to have the adolescent Rock bussed to a nearly all-white high school in Bensonhurst (an Italian-ethnic neighborhood of Brooklyn known at the time for poor race relations). In his memoir Rock This, he recalls, “My parents assumed I’d get a better education in a better neighborhood. What I actually got was a worse education in a worse neighborhood. And a whole bunch of ass-whippings. “You can catch Chris Rock live at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia on July 29th!