It’s my considered opinion that Chris Rock is a funny motherfucker. Last night at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center he was definitely a funny motherfucker. OK, there’s my review of the show.

What follows is a few of his bits, so consider this a spoiler alert if you’re going to his show tonight.

Very early in the set:

• I wanna do a good show tonight, ’cause I don’t want the authorities to come and take my children — like they did to Britney Spears. They took her kids! I’m looking at Britney Spears’ kids — they ain’t got no knots upside their heads, they don’t look hungry. It made me realize: They take white kids quick. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, they got their kids. They even let O.J. Simpson keep his kids. And he killed the mother. O.J.’s got a lotta balls; I saw him say ‘Y’know it’s hard being a single dad.’ … But you killed the mother. He said it like they just broke up, like she won’t return his calls.

This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...