Rodney Carrington Greatest Hits CD

2cds-Parental Advisory.Disc 1= Stand Up, Disc 2=Music

Personnel includes: Rodney Carrington (vocals).
Producers: Rodney Carrington, Carson Chamberlain, Gary Harrison.
Compilation producer: Rodney Carrington.
Country comedian and comic singer Rodney Carrington hasn't had any hits, greatest or otherwise, in the conventionally accepted sense of the term. But Greatest Hits is a two-disc compilation drawn from four albums -- Hangin' with Rodney (its tracks licensed from Mercury Records), Morning Wood, Live: C'mon Laugh You Bastards, and Nut Sack. The first disc features Carrington's non-singing standup comedy, the second songs. Carrington has enjoyed commercial success with his albums by presenting redneck humor with a heavy complement of vulgar sexual commentary, poor taste (in "Growing Up Poor -- Toughskins Jeans," he makes fun of the Kennedy assassination), and bouts of intolerance toward Asian-Americans and, especially, homosexuals. Indeed, his obsession with gay people evidences an extreme homophobia that might benefit from therapy. But then, his comedy routines probably are that therapy, though they don't help him overcome his problems. He covers much the same ground in his songs, while introducing musical satires as he sets his lyrics to everything from Tex-Mex to Frankie Laine-style Western pop, and even (on one of two versions of "Letter to My Penis"), Frank Sinatra-style traditional pop swagger. Despite his vulgarity, Carrington reveals a wide streak of sentimentality, making it clear how dependent he is on his wife, and on the album-ending song "Things We Didn't Know," one of two new tracks, he drops the joking completely in favor of a sincere, and cloying, tribute to his family. But maybe that shouldn't be a surprise; he's spent a lot of the album demonstrating that, despite his potty mouth, he's really just a softie. ~ William Ruhlmann
While the phenomenon of the country-bumpkin comedian is probably as old as comedy itself, the 1990s saw a surge of popularity for country comics like Rodney Carrington, Cledus T. Judd, and Jeff Foxworthy. Carrington's act is a combination of Foxworthy's redneck humor and Judd's biting country music satire. Accordingly, his two-disc GREATEST HITS collection is split down the middle between a "Stand-up" disc and a "Music" disc. In both his musical and verbal comedy routines, Carrington moves a step beyond many of his peers by adding an X-rated flavor to his work. Throughout GREATEST HITS, he freely inserts expletives and "adult" situations into the stand-up material he delivers to a hardy audience, and offers no-holds-barred musical odes to his genitals and the female anatomy. It's definitely not for children or the easily offended, but GREATEST HITS plainly has a tailor-made audience ready to snap it up.