Help me out, I am over 80. Who is Chris Rock and what do they mean when they say he riffs? Or is Riffs his last name? It’s capitalized in the headline. Is this the same dude who was just arrested for grabbing someone’s cell phone/camera away from them and smashing a window with it?
Apparently Mr. Riffs is a very important person because he was invited to a birthday party for the President of the United States at the White House. He must have had a good time because he said he felt like “he died and went to black heaven,”. He says the party was filled with celebrity guests like Jay-Z, Tom Hanks and Whoopi Goldberg. Who is Jay-Z?
The ABC headline reads “Chris Rock Riffs on Obama’s 50th Birthday Party”
While Rock called the party an “unbelievable experience,” he said the informal dress code made him feel like the late rapper “Jam Master Jay” at the White House.
Rock also talked about standing with rapper-producer Jay-Z in the audience and watching singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder and pianist-composer Herbie Hancock perform together.
“Me and Jay-Z looked at each other like, ‘Oh, hell no, we’re never going to do shows here,’” Rock said in the video of his club appearance. “The president is never going to go, ‘Yes, ‘Big Pimpin,’ how did you like that?’” Rock said, referring to a Jay-Z song. “That’s never going to happen. Let’s just be glad we’re invited.”
Rock went on to say that after Hancock and Wonder left the stage, the DJ slowly switched the tunes from the R&B group Kool & the Gang to funk innovator George Clinton and that the music got “blacker and blacker.”
The most surreal portion of the night, Rock said, was the moment Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” started playing. At that point, Rock recalled that first daughters Malia, 13, and Sasha Obama, 10,”came out of nowhere … and started doing the dougie” dance.
Is this our White House? Stevie Wonder is great but Big Pimpin? And if it was “Black Heaven” what was Tom Hanks doing there? It was Obama’s 50th birthday party and the Washington Post says he paid for it, so I guess he is entitled to have whatever kind of party he wants. As White House parties go, it certainly was different. It must be part of the total transformation Obama promised us.