Any up-and-coming comics you like?
My brother, Tony Rock. But comedy's a dying art. Old days, it took a guy ten years to get a shot on television. Now you get a shot a year in, so nobody develops. TV kills comedy, and movies kill rap. Ice Cube is the greatest artist of our time. Late Eighties, early Nineties, when Ice Cube hated white people and did his thing, he was the greatest. Now he just does his movies and they're all right. Comedians, coschmedians -- me personally, I stole more from Ice Cube than from any artist.
Give me one lift.
"nikkas vs. Black People" [on 1997's Roll With the New] is "Us" from Ice Cube's Death Certificate: "We will always sing the blues/Because all we talk about is hairstyles and tennis shoes." I took his song and made a joke out of it. My biggest joke is an Ice Cube album track. DMX -- he had three great records, and he started doing the movies, man. God bless him, he's probably making more money than he's ever made in his life. LL Cool J, arguably the greatest rapper who ever lived, is doing movies. No one can do two things great.
You could say the same about you. You kill in stand-up, but -
Guess what? I'm doing a stand-up show. It's good to go on tour and just be funny and be pure. Right now, with what's going on in the country, we need a mean Ice Cube album. I would love a great LL album, I would love a great DMX album. Because I feed off that stuff! I listen to them, and then I write jokes. So now, you know, I'm listening to Coldplay.