Word: bitted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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NAME: Serena "Not Esther" Williams OCCUPATION: Teen-age tennis phenom BEST PUNCH: The high school graduate noted that Hingis' habit of speaking out might have "a little bit to do with not having a formal education...
...used to always tell me he needed another joke like 'Bitch, paint my house!,'" says Mario Joyner, a comic and friend of Rock's. "He thought that was a big bit for him." Rock, frustrated that crowds wouldn't laugh, once poured a drink on a man's head. Clubs refused to give him much stage time, agitating him further...
...Bring the Pain's most talked-about bit was Rock's searing riff on "black people vs. niggas." It was a caustic comic commentary that contrasted the values of upwardly mobile blacks with those who had given in to a kind of gangsta nihilism. "There's like a civil war going on with black people," Rock declared. "There are two sides: there's black people, and there's niggas. And niggas have got to go." Niggas, in Rock's view, were a source of ignorance, violence, family dysfunction. It was a riff that resembled traditional stand-up comedy...
...bit could have been seen as a sellout: the mainstream press suddenly embraced Rock as a tough-talking truth teller, unafraid to critique his own race. Says hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, an early fan of Rock's: "The white media chose pieces of Rock's performance that made them feel comfortable, and they wrote about it and they loved...
...something more interesting was going on: the bit was significant in part because it wasn't aimed at the ears of whites. Blacks have long complained about being ignored by the larger community, unheard, unseen. Rock's riff aired on HBO, not BET, but it was about black folks, for black folks. He didn't care what whites thought or whether they were even listening. Suddenly whites were the ones rendered invisible, inaudible...