Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!

Reviewed by:
David Peisner

Basically, comedy albums suck. This is not an opinion, but a fact—or at least it’s increasingly become a fact in the last five years. Sure, back in the day, people like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Eddie Murphy made records that were both funny and incisive, but today, most comedy albums strain just to get a few chuckles. Which is what makes David Cross’ audacious double album, Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, such a revelation. Cross, who’s known mostly for his late and lamented HBO sketch comedy series with Bob Odenkirk, Mr. Show, comes out swinging on his first album. His assaults on California, the South, morning-radio disc jockeys, Judaism, Christianity, and George W. Bush are foul-mouthed, smart, and guaranteed to offend many, but he saves perhaps his best line for the “war on terror”: “If I don’t sit here in my apartment in the dark and jerk off to Internet porn tonight, than the terrorists have truly won.”

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