Word: blackly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...taboo he shattered was exposing the secret, closeted discourse among black Americans about their own," says cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson. "Rock signifies an unwillingness among the younger black generation to abide by the dirty-laundry theory. That theory suggests you don't say anything self-critical or negative about black people where white people can hear it. But the hip-hop generation believes in making money off the publication of private pain and agony...
...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...
...Still, when a subject strikes a chord with him, Rock will go off on a comic jam session. Take white rap-rock. "It's kind of sad that when you watch MTV, you don't see a lot of cool white guys anymore that are cool without acting black," he says. "Like when I was a kid, Axl Rose was cool. David Lee Roth was cool. And they were cool and white. And acting white. Comfortable in their whiteness. Now everybody tries to act black. Kid Rock looks like he sleeps in RUN-D.M.C.'s closet...
...comedy writers of color," says Stepsun Records head Bill Stephney, an adviser on the journal. "So this is the best way to address that. He also noticed that many of the writers at SNL, at Conan and Letterman came from the Harvard Lampoon. What better way to create more black comedy writers than to replicate what happens at Harvard at Howard...