Lewis Black: The Prophet - Comedy Album Review

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The cynic in me wants to think that because of the work ethic that Lewis Black has cultivated over the years, there is an expectation that he deliver a new stand-up album roughly every year. He's become incredibly prolific, releasing 10 albums since the year 2000. As a perpetual cynic, I have the nagging suspicion that, without a new album to put out this year, Black instead opted to release an old recording from 1990.

It still counts as a new Lewis Black album, and he doesn't have to write a new hour's worth of material.

I suspect this because I'm a terrible person, but I know that it's not the case. After all, if Black was just looking to fill some sort of self-imposed quota, I'm quite certain he could easily churn out an hour of comedy and slap it onto a CD without giving it a second thought. He's not that kind of comic, which means that he's got something else in mind when putting out The Prophet as his latest album. Sure, the title could be interpreted as some indication of his intentions -- after all, so much of what Black is railing against in this recording made over 20 years ago has either come true or is still entirely relevant that it makes him seem incredibly prescient. At the same time, politics is politics, and what was true about the system in 1970 was true in 1990 is true today. Black is maybe less a prophet than a guy who knows what he's talking about, and has chosen a subject matter which changes dishearteningly little.

What The Prophet shows more than anything else is that Black is a comic who defined his voice very early on in his career and who has spent the last two decades honing and refining that voice. There are plenty of comedians who, if you were to listen to a 20-year old recording, would be unrecognizable to the comic he or she is today. Not Black. Though many of his references on The Prophet are specific to the period -- jokes about Bush I, Gorbachev and the Berlin wall -- what he's actually joking about is timeless, making the album feel much less dated or irrelevant than you might expect. If not for those references, The Prophet wouldn't feel dated at all (save for the sub-par recording, which actually helps the whole "I'm listening to something old" aesthetic). If anything, it's heavier on actual "jokes" than a lot of Black's later work (one of my favorites is about NyQuil, which he describes as the only substance on the planet which actually tastes like "red" or "green"). Most of Black's comedy these days seems to stem from observations and incredulous rage, so it's nice to hear him experimenting with language and writing funny one-liners. I get why he outgrew it -- the same way George Carlin eventually did -- but it's still cool to hear. Though I've enjoyed his last few albums enough, this is the first Lewis Black album I've listened to in a while that had me laughing out loud quite a bit. Not bad for something recorded in 1990.

Ultimately, I don't think I would recommend The Prophet to just anyone, but Lewis Black fans and stand-up comedy junkies will find a lot to like here. What's maybe most impressive about the album is that it goes beyond just being a curiosity and actually still works as a comedy album. There are plenty of albums recorded well before 1990 that are considered classics, but those had the luxury of being released in their respective eras and aging along with their audience. For Black to put out something 20 years out of date, while he was still just a struggling club comic, is actually risky. It makes me happy to say that it pays off. I'm confident in saying that this is the best 20-year old album released this year.