Chris: No, my first album was a comedy album. I put out a comedy album eight years before I got on SNL. At one point, I did have a record deal, though. I had a deal for a rap record before I had a deal for a comedy record. I used to rap. I used to be a DJ. I sucked at it. I sucked at rapping. I sucked at DJing.
Judd: What’s your connection to hip-hop? Are there rappers you’ve been close with?
Chris: All the old-school guys, yeah. We’re like the same age. Me and Run are literally the same age and we’ve lived near each other. Jay, Doug E. Fresh, Flash is an old friend. MC Lyte, Kid ’n Play, Latifah, Busta. We’re all the same age, hung out at the same clubs. It’s like we went to high school together, in a way. I’ve known Queen Latifah for twenty-five years—as long as I’ve known Sandler or any of those guys. Now we see each other at funerals.
Judd: It’s freaky.
Chris: Yeah. When I was on SNL, and even when I started doing stand-up, there were no young black stand-ups around. George Wallace was it. George Wallace, Mike Ivy. No one was hanging out with me. Everyone was like, “Get away from me, kid.” So I would do sets and then I would go to the Latin Quarter or wherever the younger black people were at—and they were mostly these rap clubs. There was nothing else. Stand-up was—me and Sandler were younger than everybody for a long time. It was not a thing a twenty-year-old would do.
Judd: How does it feel hanging out in the clubs now?
Chris: I’m the oldest guy at the club every night now. Sometimes the guys are into me and sometimes they’re just humoring me. Sometimes I can tell they think I suck or I’m a hack or it’s like, “Fuck you and your Maserati out front.” I can feel it sometimes. You know.
Judd: It is weird to be this elder statesman. You feel this need to really show them why you’re in this position.
Chris: Oh, I totally feel that. I love going to the Cellar and spanking the shit out of everybody. I love going there, at my age, and having an act that’s better than the guys who are fifteen or twenty years younger than me. I’m like, “This is my seventh special. What’s your fucking excuse? I got rid of six hours of shit. Why aren’t you funny yet?”
Judd: Do you feel like comedians have gotten better? Are people funnier now?
Chris: I don’t know. In some ways, they are better. There’s more comedy to choose from, I would say. Hannibal Buress is kind of weird and Demetri Martin is kind of weird and, you know, Sarah Silverman has a totally different act than Kathy Griffin. So in that aspect, yes, I think there’s more variety in comedy today. People are talking about different things. On the other hand, I don’t know if comedians know how to work an audience anymore.
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: You know, that thing where it’s just like, it literally doesn’t matter who’s in front of you. I find more and more comedians complain about the crowd these days. Or they’re always asking, “How’s the crowd?” And I’m like, “Why do you give a fuck about the crowd? I mean, if you kill tonight, is the crowd going to get the credit? And so don’t give it to them if you bomb. It’s not them, it’s you.” But I don’t know. We have a lot more comedy, I would say that. There’s a lot of risk taking.
Judd: Are you still engaged, creatively? Do you still feel as enthusiastic about your work as you always have? Are you on fire right now, or do you have a sense of fatigue, of just, Wow, I’ve done this for a long time. It’s hard?
Chris: The only time I ever feel fatigue is the fact that it’s really hard being up with kids early in the morning and being at a club late at night.
Judd: It’s brutal.
Chris: I’ve got to make myself take a nap during the day if I’m going to properly do stand-up. So I do feel that fatigue. But as far as creativity? I honestly feel the energy even more now, I think. It’s like that Tiger thing. Tiger is chasing Jack Nicklaus. He just is. And what is it, how many Masters does he need? I’m chasing Richard Pryor, man. I have not done—I still haven’t done my version of his Long Beach concert. I’ve done some good stuff, but Richard Pryor in Long Beach? It’s the greatest piece of stand-up ever done. It just is. I haven’t got there, in my act. I got some stuff—you know, some of it is good and some of it is good in comparison to other people of my era. Pryor’s special was kind of late in his career. He’s not a kid doing it. That’s what I’m going for.
Judd: What was your relationship like with Pryor?
Chris: I met him on the set of Harlem Nights. It was quick and funny. I was just hanging out and we were talking about Eddie and he was like, “Yeah, he’ll get married as soon as he find a pussy that fits.” It’s like exactly what you want to hear from Richard Pryor. But I had no career then. I might as well been the water boy. I met him again, years later, when I was getting ready to do the Bring the Pain special. At that point, he was in a wheelchair, full-on MS—helped onstage, helped offstage. We were both performing at the Comedy Store every night for a month, and I would follow him.
Judd: Wow.
Chris: And a lot of nights he would actually watch my set and he would say nice things afterwards. One of the last times I saw him was—oh, I wish I could find this picture. The last time I saw him, he came and saw me at the Universal Amphitheatre. I was coming offstage and there’s Richard Pryor, in a wheelchair, telling me I did a great job. It’s one of the highlights of my life. One of the greatest stand-ups—you know, the Willie Mays of comedy. You know, Pryor’s Willie Mays, and Cosby’s Hank Aaron. Because Hank Aaron has more hits, more home runs, more RBIs than anybody. He’s number one or two in every freaking category.
Judd: I was listening to the Richard Pryor box set that they put out last year. It has one disk, which has all sorts of odds and ends on it, and there’s a lot of stand-up that he did about being sick. It’s remarkable.
Chris: He was funny, even then. That’s the crazy thing.
Judd: He was doing a bit about a girl walking up to him in his car—he’s flirting with some pretty girl and he’s pissing himself because he’s sick and he can’t control himself. He’s trying to act cool as he pisses his pants.
Chris: Wow.
Judd: It was amazing. But even the great stuff he was doing around 1976—about, you know, the Bicentennial and Patty Hearst—it all sounds like he’s playing for a hundred people, in tiny clubs.
Chris: That was the genius of the guy. The guy believed in working it out. He was like, “Okay, so I’m going to have a bad set tonight, big deal. But when you pay to see me, it’s going to be right.” Most comedians just don’t have the guts—especially famous comedians—to get up there and not be funny, to just feel your way around this thing.
Judd: How tragic is it that Eddie Murphy won’t do stand-up anymore?
Chris: Tragic. Because he can do it, you know what I mean? It’s like, what if Mike Tyson could still knock people out and didn’t fight? That would be sad, right? Eddie Murphy, right now, would be top three in the world. Probably number one if he worked at it. But he doesn’t want to. Only financial ruin will get that guy back onstage.
Judd: I do understand how it happens, though. You feel like, I’ve made a lot of stuff and I don’t feel the need to get up there and go through that again. But as somebody who hadn’t done stand-up in twenty-two years and then just started doing it again, I see instantly why it’s necessary for people like him, if they want to do interesting work in whatever medium they’re doing. You have to force yourself to experience it again, and to connect with the crowd.