Eddie Griffin: “I Was Trippin’ on U2!”

“When John Lennon did Imagine, that said it all.” The bawdy comic Eddie Griffin is rummaging through discs at As the Record Turns, a tiny Hollywood shop, where the sight of the Lennon album makes him suddenly wistful. “Imagine there’s no religion,” he muses. “One of these days, we’ll get it together. America is one big dysfunctional family. There’s no Leave It to Beaver.”

Especially not in hardscrabble Kansas City, Missouri, where Griffin, 35, grew up. That’s where his tough-love mother once tried to mow him down in her car, and where his Uncle Buckey, a pimp, got tossed in the joint.

The Scary Movie 3 star spent his youth idolizing (and impersonating) Richard Pryor, Michael Jackson and…Fred Astaire. “I’m a Fred Astaire fanatic!” he shouts. “You watch Fred, it’s like watching water!” He knows the moves, having run his own dance studio at a tender 17. It would seem Griffin has been on an accelerated track his whole life: marrying at 16, divorcing a year later and becoming a father at 18 (territory he mined when scripting his recent film My Baby’s Daddy).

In 1998, then only 30, he even suffered a heart attack after performing a vigorous salsa routine on the set of a TV show. But even that scare didn’t slow him down — he costarred in Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo the following year, a role he’s reprising in the upcoming sequel.

Before dance and comedy, music was Griffin’s first love. “Music is communication,” he says. “You know it’s a gangsta song before Tupac or Dre open their mouth, because the track is serious.”

Parliament, Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome
Casblanca, 1977
“When I was 9, I thought George Clinton was the shit. And he’s still the shit. I had a little dance group called Soul Patrol. We put together this routine and won a school talent show with ‘Flash Light.’ We got $25 each. That was a lot of money back then.”


RUN-DMC, Tougher Than Leather
Profile/Arista, 1988
“We used to get loud on the corner, 23rd and Jackson in Kansas City. After smoking a J, dropping a 40, we’d just start hollerin’ and testing out the flow skills with RUN-DMC. Lay out the linoleum and get breaking. I was all right, but I ain’t gonna break now — I might break something!”


The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold as Love
MCA, 1967
“I got into Hendrix when I started learning how to play guitar. I was about 12. I tried to play like him, and it was a disaster — it’s a disaster for anybody on Earth to try to play like Jimi. This is one you can serve up to the kids and open their consciousness.”


The Beatles, The Beatles
Capitol, 1968
“When I finally got into the Beatles, it was during the Reagan era. There was voodoo economics, the trickle-down theory, and it somehow never trickled down to the neighborhood. The social commentary of the White Album helped me relate to the international picture as far as socioeconomics.”


Nappy Roots, Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz
Atlantic, 2002
“My kid, Eddie Jr., came in and said, ‘Pops, you gotta check this out.’ Popped the CD in, and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, look out! All right!’ It was hip-hop going in a different vein. For a moment everything was about bling-bling, Cristal and ‘Shake that fat, juicy rump-shaker.’ Nappy Roots took it back to the core.”


Dr. Dre, The Chronic
Death Row, 1992
“You throw The Chronic on, and the whole dance floor is packed! I know Dre — I was in a couple of videos from The Chronic. I was in the ‘Gin and Juice’ video — I pop out of this little Volkswagen full of weed smoke with my hair standing on end. Yeah, me, Snoop and Dre, we go back a minute.”


The Dramatics, A Dramatic Experience
Stax, 1973
“My Uncle Buckey turned me on to the Dramatics. He was a pimp, he was a gangster, he did it all. This is like the predecessor to The Chronic. This album taught me that you gotta talk about shit; you can’t just say no and then sweep it under the carpet.”


Miles Davis, Bitches Brew
Columbia/Legacy, 1969
“My Uncle James introduced me to Miles. It helps with your retention skills. They should try this in schools. If the teacher would have a basic motherfucking beat underneath his lesson, and the kids could go home and play that beat back, the whole lesson would come back in their head.”


U2, War
Island, 1983
“‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ — man, you can’t do nothing but feel for your Irish brothers. I didn’t even know what Bloody Sunday was about until I did the research. At first my friends were like, ‘Man, what you trippin’ on? U2? You, too are crazy!’ Then when they listened to it, it turned them on.”


2Pac, Makaveli: The Don Killuminati — The 7 Day Theory
Death Row, 1996
“I knew ’Pac. [Long pause] You put on Makaveli, it’s kind of like he’s still here. In death, you gotta celebrate how somebody lived. In that short life, he lived more than most people who live to be 90. I think you close it right there. That’s some deep, heartfelt shit.”