Jamie Foxx - The Foxx Boxx Collection (Unleashed/I Might Need Security/Straight from the Foxxhole)
The Foxx Boxx Collectionoffers not only some topnotch stand-up comedy, but also the rare opportunity to see a rising star at three very different points in his career. InStraight from the Foxxhole(from 1993), Jamie Foxx is still raw, still refining his comedy, but also hungry for success and throwing himself into his act with full abandon. His physical and vocal talents are in full display with his breakout character Wanda from the sketch comedy showIn Living Color, his impersonations of different famous men telling a woman to leave after sex (including James Brown, Prince, and Bill Cosby), and a routine about a paraplegic getting into fights and being knocked out of his wheelchair (you may have guessed by now that Foxx doesn't shy away from controversial subjects). Tweaking black celebrities is a favorite theme; inUnleashed, he imagines a Biggie-Tupac-style feud between Morgan Freeman and Cosby, skewers OJ Simpson and Mike Tyson, and depicts Bill Clinton as "the closest thing to a black president we're going to get."Unleashedwas shot in 1997, when Foxx's movie career was just budding; Foxx is a comic juggernaut at this point with the audience eating out of his hand. By the timeI Might Need Securitywas shot in 2002, his movie career had taken off. Foxx clearly still enjoys doing stand-up, but it doesn't consume him the way it did in the previous concerts. Make no mistake, there's still plenty of humor, fueled all the more by Foxx's fresh stardom. He gets a lot of mileage from a squabble with LL Cool J on the set ofAny Given Sundayand finding himself uncomfortably attracted to Prince. (Warning: Many of Foxx's routines are extremely sexually explicit, which may jolt viewers who only know him as an actor.)--Bret Fetzer