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Marlon Wayans makes a joke in his new HBO Max special God Loves Me that last year’s Oscars Slap never would’ve happened if Martin Lawrence were onstage instead of Chris Rock.

And not because Will Smith and Lawrence are “bad boys for life.”

No. Because nobody messed with Martin. You so crazy if you don’t believe that. It’s a testament to how much of a force Lawrence was to be reckoned with, as well as how big of a deal it was to see him make his HBO debut 31 years ago, on March 7, 1992, as the host of Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam. The first seven seasons have resurfaced this month on Amazon Prime Video (the two-season revival of Def Comedy Jam from 2006 is available on HBO Max). In the premiere episode, Lawrence introduces the concept to a perhaps unsuspecting HBO audience:

“We’re gonna have a good time here tonight. Welcome to the…Def Comedy Jam. Where we present young Black — no, I mean, I don’t just mean Black because I know White people are going, ‘Oh f–k! Is it a Black thing?’— where we present young comics from all over the world.”
“And when we say Def — for those who don’t know what the f–k we talking about — we don’t mean deaf like (imitates someone hard of hearing, but speaking gibberish and making faces). No. We mean, as, you know, a cool thing happening. You know, we get a lot of deaf people thinking (back to imitation, saying ‘Nuh-uh, nuh-uh, you wrong. You don’t do no shit like that, OK? You are wrong.’). So I don’t mean to offend deaf people. I’m not saying that.”

But the show was much more than that. Rappers and professional athletes sat both in the theater boxes as well as among the other audience members, getting name-checked and often roasted by Lawrence. Friends of the comedian would get beckoned onstage to receive raves from Lawrence, even if he sometimes ribbed them for their weaves or wardrobe choices. A generation before DJs prompted Ellen Degeneres to dance with her studio audience, Kid Capri was spinning the ones and twos and turning Def Comedy Jam into a dance party. It helped that the stage jutted into the crowd, putting audience members on three sides of the comedian. In that some debut-episode monologue, Lawrence encouraged people to get up jump onstage and physically let out their laughs. They would, and they did.

You can see why the show mattered in the 2016 Netflix tribute, Def Comedy Jam 25, or get a feel for how hip-hop and comedy merged and emerged to inspire the showcase on Prime Video’s docuseries, Phat Tuesdays, but to really get a feel for 1990s hip-hop comedy, you had to be there.

Going back to watch those early episodes now is a trip, indeed.

In that first episode alone, Steve White ends his short set with a rap, Derrick Fox violently shakes his head in a physical opener before making a costume change into his drag character, Shante (whom Lawrence then confesses his sexual desire for afterward) — brief aside, was Derrick Fox’s Shante THE actual Shante RuPaul was singing about in “Supermodel”??? — and Yvette Wilson goes into the crowd to dance with a guy, only to return onstage, get him to stand up, and when he grins, she zings him by saying men who grin can’t f–k.

Most of all, Def Comedy Jam was a coming-out party for young Black comedians. Season 1 gave America early looks at Bernie Mac, Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley and Eddie Griffin. The second-season premiere gifted us with Chris Tucker and his impersonation of Michael Jackson as a pimp, plus Bernie Mac’s infamous performance where he opened by boasting: “I ain’t scared of you mother-f—ers.”

That second season, debuting after the LA Riots of 1992, also featured sets from Cedric the Entertainer, JB Smoove, and a baby-faced teenager named Dave Chappelle. Season 3 in 1993 showed us Tracy Morgan three years before he landed Saturday Night Live. Joe Torry, who performed in the show’s debut episode, took over for Lawrence as host in Season 4 (with Lawrence now too big of a star thanks to his FOX sitcom, Martin, and his 1994 stand-up concert film, You So Crazy). Torry would introduce us to Mo’Nique, Donnell Rawlings, Sommore, Bruce Bruce, and Deon Cole, among others. Lavell Crawford, Mike Epps and Earthquake were among those making their HBO debuts in Season 5.

By Season 6, the show featured rotating guest hosts and the addition of “All-Star” into the title as Def Comedy All-Star Jam., including Chris Rock as host of the first episode that year in 1996 (the same year Rock leveled up with HBO in his Bring The Pain special). More than a decade later, Shaq would co-opt the “All-Star Comedy Jam” name for a slew of tours and Showtime specials.

Back to 1992-era 19-year-old Chappelle, though, for a hot minute. His very first bit on HBO involved him moving to NYC’s West Village and laughing at seeing gay men, only to realize he moved to a gay neighborhood, then revealing a recurring dream he had about a man with a gun threatening him with “click click click, suck my dick.” Remember, Chappelle was just a teen, then. See how much he has evolved on that?!

Critics of the show at the time weren’t particularly kind, either. They were put off and/or taken aback by the amount of profanity, graphic talk about sex, and pushing of stereotypes. I wonder how these critics felt when HBO welcomed The Sopranos just a few years later.

Not all of Def Comedy Jam plays quite as well in 2023 as it went over in 1992-97, though sometimes miraculously and sometimes sadly, much of it still resonates.

In an era where stand-up comedians flood TikTok with crowd-work interactions, you could just as easily take any 30-second or minute-long clip from almost any Def Comedy Jam episode, and have it go viral today either as its own video or as the sound for others to lip-sync to. Because the good times still roll.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.