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(Put on your headphones: The video above features a curse word or two.)
If Eddie Murphy won’t be hosting the Oscars, then who better than one of his direct comedy descendants, Kevin Hart?
Hart’s concert film Laugh at My Pain, in which he tells tales of his Philadelphia upbringing, his diminutive stature, his family, and his relationship with his father who battled drug addiction through his childhood, could easily be taken from the animated, but sinfully indulgent comic stylings of Murphy or his predecessor, Richard Pryor.
Hart is well-known on the standup circuit for his sharp delivery, timing and acid tongue — just the stuff the tuxedoed and gowned Oscar crowd deserves to have tossed at them, same as he did on this year’s BET Awards. He’s unguarded, completely open with his audience, and makes it clear that everyone has someone in their families like the characters in his. Not only that, but his dad’s borderline churlish catchphrase “awright, awright, awriiiight!” has become so much a part of the urban lexicon, that it’s replaced “In the house” (which was relegated to the suburbs long ago) and is encroaching on “You know how we do!”