Joe on Martin Lawrence Being Underrated

Chris Rock got so big for a while that I think people stopped paying the respect he deserved. 100%. And when he got COVID, I realized just how important Chris Rock was to me. I think Norman just passed, and I was the biggest Norm fan in the world. And then Chris Rock got sick, and I did a deep dive on my own head of just how fucking great that guy is. Well, if you go back to bigger and blacker, or you go back to... Bring the pain. Bring the pain. Those are two of the best specials of all time. If you want to look at your top 10 comedians of all time, in my opinion, you have to have Chris Rock in there. Without a doubt. There's no questions about it. You know who's the dark horse? Hold on. Give me a second. I have a lot of dark horses, but I don't know... Martin Lawrence. Martin Lawrence in the 1990s. People forgot. You must be crazy. Are you so crazy, brother? You so crazy? And he had a couple other specials that were on that same level. He had two or three specials that were lightning bolts. And it's hard because you've got to compare them for the time. Comedy's a weird thing, man. Even comedy movies from the 80s or 90s that you thought were the shit, some of them just don't hold up for whatever reason. And stand-up comedy, a lot of it just seems different because the culture's so different. Everything's evolving and changing so fast. It's hard. But there's a few guys from the 1990s that would just obliterate. You forgot how good comics can be. And I remember I saw Martin Lawrence at the comic store many times. Seven, ten times when he was in his prime. Somewhere around then, I remember he would come by and just sell out the main room and you would just sit there and watch him murder. I mean murder. I wish I'd seen that. People falling out of chairs. I mean screaming in agony because they're laughing so hard. And it was, you know, this was 1994. Martin Lawrence was the king, dude. I'm telling you. The thing that Chris Rock brought, and once again I'm- But hold on, let me tell you something. Please. Before we go any further. One of the things that happened to Chris Rock was he had to follow Martin Lawrence. At the store? No, no. They did a show together. Chris Rock talked about it. He talked about it and how it forced him to tighten up his act because he had to follow Martin Lawrence. And he realized, no disrespect intended white people. He realized that he said that he'd been playing in too many white rooms. And he realized he had gotten a little bit lazy or maybe a little slower than he should be. Whatever. He had to develop a style that maybe wasn't- he saw Martin crush and then he had a hard time after him. And then after that, you get some of the greatest Chris Rock performances of all time. After that you get Bring the Pain. After that you get Bigger and Blacker. After that you get some of the greatest bits ever. So he saw- like we all- like every time you've bombed, how many times- here it goes right here. He goes one night in Chicago, as usual, I was a headliner. And on this night my opening act was an up and coming comic named Martin Lawrence. Now normally I never used to watch the opening acts but I was in my dressing room and I heard a roar. I got up to see what was going on. I thought it was a fight or something. So I got up and went to the side of the stage. When I got there I realized it wasn't a fight. It was people laughing so hard that the building was shaking. People were crying, standing, stomping their feet, screaming laughter. I was terrified. It was like watching somebody fucking your wife with a bigger dick. That's how good Martin Lawrence was. I followed Martin Lawrence almost every time I worked on A Night with Martin Lawrence. Mitzi always made me follow Martin Lawrence. I never bombed harder in my life. With three quarters of the audience is walking out as you're going on stage. I mean three quarters. That's how good Martin Lawrence was in the 1990s. I'm telling you dude, I'm telling you, I would watch him and I was like this guy is- like he's hitting some crazy RPMs. You know if you have a sports car, like 8,000 RPMs is crazy. Some of them go to nine. Some of them are like bam, bam, bam. How long can you go at that RPM? Martin Lawrence was on this wild RPM where he was crushing so hard but then he had a bunch of issues and then he had a show Martin and then he had a bunch of issues. He had like a breakdown. I do. I think a lot of that comes- Is that a stroke or something? No, no, no, no. I mean maybe. I don't know about that. I think he had a stroke in a sweat suit or something. No, no, no, no, no, no. I think he had like some sort of a manic attack and he got arrested from wearing like a sweatsuit. No, no, it was like a wetsuit. He fell into a coma. He fell into a coma. He had a stroke. He had a stroke. He had a stroke. He had exhaustion. From heat exhaustion. For preparing for Big Mama's cells. So he was losing weight? Is that what he was doing with the wetsuit on? He had to go on a ventilator. Jesus Christ. For real? But then they think that he had some episode. Am I making that up? Well his body temperature went up to 107 degrees so something that could have caused a lot of problems. No, I mean like a mental episode. I mean that made him think that that was a good idea to do maybe I think. I don't want to judge him. Maybe we ought to edit this. Shit. Too much editing. See my thing with Martin Lawrence is, and is that Martin Lawrence seemed like someone that was a God gift to him, right? Like the guy who just meant entertainment. He was super duper talented but he also worked really hard man. But that's the thing with a guy like Martin Lawrence or Jay-Z. It doesn't seem like they work hard. Richard Pryor or Eddie Griffin. Seems like it just is what they do. Well it's that too. You know there's a lot of those just what they do guys that never get to that level. Like what separates a guy like that from a guy who's just a funny dude that we all know that we hang around with at the store. There's always a guy who's just like really good. And they go on stage and they're really good but they never figure out how to get to a place like those guys. What's the difference? Well the difference for me, I mean I know for a fact my difference is when I saw Chris Rockton he talked about how he trained for a special. I was like oh yeah that's- Oh he would bring in comics and pay them to watch his set and give him notes. Like he was working in collaboration with other people. He had like a group of peers and he would throw his ideas at them and say you know like what do you think about- Depaulo maybe? Depaulo, Rich Voss, Richard Jennings was a big one. Where was the thing that happened? Oh it says Lawrence rented traffic in Los Angeles screaming and acting like a madman. That's what I remember. Okay according to yes that's right. Big Mama's house after also had a loaded firearm in his possession. Lawrence was removed from the scene by law enforcement and hospitalized. Martin was yelling fight you know don't give up fight the power or something like that. A witness told a witness told K-Cal he was shouting some obscenities or something maybe he's just doing his act maybe he's working on a bit. Yeah anyway I'm a Martin Lawrence fan up and down. Listen dude I'm telling you I am too but I just think it's hard to be that good. I think there's something about being that good as a guitarist or something to be about good as a tennis player or what a bike ride or whatever the fuck you are. I was just talking to a friend of mine about Tour de France and about Lance Armstrong like how crazy you have to be to be that good. Like does it be that good against other people who are just like you? Like you have to be so goddamn driven that you're better than all these other insanely driven motherfuckers like you're dealing with like insane RPMs man. Fucking insane. Insane. Insane. Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.