Katt Williams’ Pimp Chronicles

According to the Internet Movie Database, comedian Katt Williams has been featured in 14 different movies or TV shows in the past four years or so, but I'll admit I haven't seen any of them. His main thing, as I was told by his publicist's publicist(?), is that he played a pimp named Money Mike in one of the Friday sequels.

I was going to interview him a few weeks ago as part of the press run-up to the premier of his HBO comedy special the Pimp Chronicles Pt. 1, but I never really got around to it. Because I'm lazy like that. Plus, I don't find interviews a particularly efficient or otherwise interesting method of writing a story about a person anyway.

I did eventually get around to checking out his HBO special though, and I found it fucking hilarious. It's been the only amusing comedy special I've seen on HBO since they brought back One Night Stand, and that's been a while. The difference between his shit and most of the d-bags they're featuring on the new Def Comedy Jam is night and day, as was illustrated when he tore the house down on this past Sunday's episode.

His schtick, which may or may not have originated with his character in the Friday movie, is that of a pimp. In the special, he sports a pretty outlandish green suit that looks like it could be made out of the material from the interior of one of Don "Magic" Juan's Cadillacs, as well as the kind of fucked up perm black women end up with when it's obvious they can only grow so much hair. And he can't be any taller than 5' 4" which is naturally pretty amusing.

In the special, he holds forth on a range of issues, including self-esteem, smoking weed, people who live to hate on people, white people, media coverage of the war in Iraq, and Michael Jackson bufu-ing kids on his Neverland Ranch. His best two jokes are one involving why self-esteemed is called that - because it's the esteem of your motherfucking self - and one involving why no one knows what an Iraqi military uniform looks like - because we're mainly over there killing civilians, or "insurgents."

I didn't find a lot of the rest of his material nearly as clever, but it's still pretty entertaining just in the way that he delivers it. He speaks in the kind of bizarre high-pitched voice you find in so many really short people, and he peppers his material with lots of amusing pimp-isms, including copious use of the term bitch to refer to women (which you'd think would be old by now but apparently isn't). I found myself laughing more often than not during the course of the 45 minute-long special.

You can check out the Pimp Chronicles Pt. 1 right now on HBO On Demand, if your cable company offers it. Otherwise, they've been re-running it periodically, and it'll be out on DVD at some point in November.