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Under Rated & Never Faded

Mike Epps

YouTube · 2009 · 79 min

A loose hour of crowd work and relationship paranoia in Detroit.

Watch it free on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Mike Epps knows exactly how to exploit the paranoia of married men at a comedy club. He spends a significant chunk of Under Rated & Never Faded scanning the audience, pointing out guys who look terrified their wives just pulled up outside the venue. Epps operates less like a guy delivering a rehearsed monologue and more like a chaotic host, tracking modern R&B’s shift from romance to outright vulgarity and testing the room’s threshold for guilt with a joke about a disabled singer.

The 69-minute set was filmed at Detroit’s Fox Theatre in 2009, the same year Epps entered the blockbuster comedy tier as Black Doug in The Hangover. Despite the career bump, his stage presence remains grounded in heavy crowd work. He even brings out beatboxing pioneer Doug E. Fresh for a mid-show appearance, giving the theater gig the unpredictable energy of a local club night.

The set list

5 bits

  1. Spot-on impersonation of a crime scene investigation television series

    Comedic parody and dead-on character mimicry of popular procedural drama tropes

  2. Girlfriends raiding and snooping through cell phones

    Riffing on modern relationship paranoia and catching men with suspicious calls

  3. Impression of his grandmother smoking cigarettes on the toilet

    Affectionately absurd and vulgar physical imitation of older family members

  4. Imitations of TV judges Mathis and Joe Brown

    Sharp, exaggerated character impressions of daytime courtroom television figures

  5. Being placed in Special Ed classes as a child

    Self-deprecating reflection on school experiences and childhood labels

How it plays

Tone
Raunchy, irreverent, and uncensored.
On stage
Devilishly handsome, relaxed, silly, and self-deprecating with an innate ability to mimic neighborhood archetypes.
Pace
High-energy delivery that rocks the house with rapid observations and physical mimicry.
About
Married life and married men, Black and white family dynamics, Relationships and infidelity, Pop culture and television, Childhood and growing up

What the critics said

Praised by viewers as an underrated classic of Black stand-up comedy and a significant step up from his prior HBO hour, celebrated for its mimicry, charisma, and quotable routines.

In the room: Playing to a high-capacity, sold-out Detroit theater crowd of thousands that fed into an electric, rocking atmosphere.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: themoviedb.org, letterboxd.com, netflix.com, plotexplained.com, imdb.com, critifan.com, en.m.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

Performed during the cultural transition of a post-Bush, early Obama collective consciousness, serving as a time capsule of Black American culture.

Details

Released
Taped
Fox Theatre, Detroit
Runtime
79 min
Where
YouTube
Director
Marcus Raboy
Topics
After
Don't Take It Personal (2015)

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