Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn't their parents'. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.
My thing is you're only as good as the people you work with. I've been blessed to work with the Wayanses and Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, and it makes you better.
I've been involved in a lot of different kinds of projects. I've been on straight hip hop tours. I've been on underground rock tours. I've been on multimillion selling rock shows. I've been in the jam band thing, and both commercial and underground hip hop. Very few people listen to one kind of music.
I'm really, really blessed. Not only am I blessed to have found that I love making films, but I'm also insanely blessed to be able to do it. I have to remind myself that when I'm complaining.
I think the biggest influence on my stand-up would be Chris Rock, in that I love that Chris is basically an essayist, in that he'll take a subject and just try and attack it from as many different angles as he can.
I'm a very fortunate actor. I'm blessed to be the position I'm in right now. Hell, I'm blessed to be in any position, you know? There are so many guys who had good lives, great lives, and blew it...I think there are some guys who think they don't deserve to have good lives. They feel they don't deserve their good fortune, so they throw it away. One of my good friends was Chris Farley. Chris blew it. He blew the whole enchilada.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn't even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that's been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
There was this whole middle time that only Chris Rock came out of, you know, 10 years ago it was Chris and a few other people, but that's about it. Chris is in a class of his own; I don't see another comedian who I put in high regard as him.
These days, rock 'n' roll is much more about rock than about roll. I don't do rock. But I'm interested in that roll part, because that's the funny little bit that makes it hip.
I had to overcome the name Rock. If I'd been as hip then as I am now, I would have never consented to be named Rock.
There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip.
My mother's records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn't hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n' roll - so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.
Every time I go onstage, it's a little less 'Chris Rock's brother.'
I think hip-hop has more to do with rock and roll. Kanye West is, in many ways, a rock artist.
The Internet, to me, is about rebel culture, and I've always loved it. When I think of rebel culture, I think of rock-and-roll or hip-hop, and for a long time now, it's been the Internet.
I was very lucky with the parents I was blessed with. I don't think it could have worked out any better. They've always been so understanding of me and understanding of what I want to do.