Eddie Murphy put out just two stand-up specials in the 1980s, and people still can’t stop talking about them all these years later. 1987’s Eddie Murphy: Raw showcased the comic in full rock star mode, performing for a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden in what would go on to become the highest-grossing stand-up film ever. But when you’re dealing with over 90 minutes’ worth of material, cutting some jokes from your set is unfortunately unavoidable. Thankfully, for all the fans who have been pining for something new from Murphy, unreleased footage shot while he was touring in 1987 has been uploaded online in recent years, preserving some long-lost jokes that only the audience saw.
The source of the video is unclear, but based on the locations referenced, it would appear to have been recorded at the Centrum in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 23, 1987, making it part of his Raw tour. The eight-minute clip starts off with Murphy, who’s decked out in a black leather outfit, complaining about critics trashing his shows. “You don’t realize, when entertainers get f—-d up reviews, that s–t…you wanna f–k somebody up, man,” he tells the crowd. “And they was talking all this s–t about…ghetto humor, and I grab myself too much,” Murphy continues. “I’m gonna grab my d–k more times than ever tonight,” he promises.
From there, the footage cuts to Murphy talking about meeting one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sons, who talks exactly like his father. He then jokes about hanging out with the son at a nightclub, and how weird it is to hear someone with MLK’s voice say, “I believe if we’re lucky we might get some p—y tonight.” Murphy also touches on the backlash he got after he told Oprah Winfrey that he preferred dating Black women. The reason, he says, is that he has more to talk about with them after sex, whereas with white women, all he can think to say is, “Remember when y’all used to chase us?”
In the second half of the clip, Murphy sets his sights on celebrities like Sean Penn, who he suggests would get raped in prison if he ever had to do any real time. On the subject of Michael Jackson getting surgery on his face, he says he doesn’t have anything against it, but he thinks “you should fix it, not f–k your face up.” Finally, Murphy does an impression of Larry Holmes doing commercials for different products, saying things like, “I love Campbell’s Soup. It’s a good soup, it’s a hot soup, it’s a tasty soup, it’s a liquid soup…it’s a chunky soup. It’s both chunky and liquid at the same time.”
Check out the full uncensored footage below.
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