Name: Joe on Martin Lawrence Being Underrated
Uploaded: 2021-09-29T17:48:49.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe on Martin Lawrence Being Underrated' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe on Martin Lawrence Being Underrated' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-29. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- 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
how just how important Chris Rock was to me.
Like, just, you know, 'cause I think Norm had just passed
and I was the biggest Norm fan in the world.
And then Chris Rock got sick and I did like a deep dive
on my own head of like, just how fucking great that guy is.
- Well, if you go back to like Bigger and Blacker
or you go back to--
- Bring the pain, bring the pain, bring the pain.
- Those are two of the best specials of all time.
Like if you wanna look at your top 10 comedians of all time,
in my opinion, you have to have Chris Rock in there.
- Without a doubt, 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.
- So.
- People forgot.
You must be crazy.
- Dude.
- Are you so crazy, rather?
You so crazy?
And he had like a couple other specials
that were on that same level.
He had like two or three specials
that were like lightning bolts.
And it's hard because you gotta compare 'em for the time.
Like comedy's a weird thing, man.
Like even like comedy movies from the 80s or 90s
that you thought were the shit,
some of 'em just don't hold up for whatever reason.
And standup comedy, a lot of it just seems different
because the culture's so different.
'Cause the world's so, like everything's evolving
and changing so fast.
It's hard.
But there's a few guys from the 1990s
that would just obliterate.
Like you forgot how good comics can be.
And I remember I saw Martin Lawrence at the Comedy Store
many times, like seven, 10 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.
- Like people falling out of chairs.
I mean screaming in agony 'cause 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
before we go any further.
- Please, yeah.
- 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
and Chris Rock talked about it.
He talked about how it forced him to tighten up his act
'cause he had to follow Martin Lawrence.
And he realized, and no disrespect intended, white people,
he realized that he said that he'd been playing
in too many white rooms.
And he realized like he had gotten like a little bit lazy
or maybe a little slower than he should be.
Whatever, he had developed 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, 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 the 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 like a sports car, like 8,000 RPMs is crazy.
Some of them go to nine.
Some of them go to nine.
But you're like, how long can you go at that RPM?
Like 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.
You know, he had like a breakdown, right?
Remember that?
I do.
But I think a lot of that comes.
Is there 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 sweatsuit 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.
Heat exhaustion.
From heat exhaustion.
For preparing for big mama cells.
So he was losing weight?
Is that what he was doing with the wetsuit on?
He almost died.
He had to go on a ventilator.
Jesus Christ.
But didn't 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.
No, I mean that made him think that that was a good idea to do maybe.
I don't want to judge him.
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe we've got to edit this.
Yeah, I don't know.
Shit!
Martin Lawrence.
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 was just meant to entertain.
He was super duper talented, but he also worked really hard, man.
But the thing with a guy like Martin Lawrence or Jay-Z, it doesn't seem like
they work hard.
Or Richard Pryor, or Eddie Griffin.
Seems like it just is what they do, you know?
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, you know, 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 like get to a place like those guys.
Like, what's the difference?
Well, the difference for me, I mean, I know for a fact my difference is,
when I saw Chris Rockne talk 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 them notes.
Like, he was working in collaboration with other people where he was like,
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?
It's brilliant.
DePaulo, Rich Voss, Richard Jenny was a big one.
There was a thing that happened.
Oh, it says, Lawrence ran into traffic in Los Angeles, screaming and acting
like a madman.
That's what I remember.
A loaded firearm?
Okay, according to, yes, that's right.
Big Mama's House Aster 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 K-Cow.
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 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 to 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.