The Barbecue

"Raw" is Eddie Murphy's second stand-up special, filmed at the Felt Forum in New York City in 1987. If "Delirious" was a young man showing the world what he could do, "Raw" was a rich man trying to figure out what being rich had done to him.

The relationship material in "Raw" centers on a barbecue—or rather, on the kind of conversations that happen at barbecues.

"Every man in this room has thought about what would happen if his woman left. And every woman in this room has thought about what she'd take."

Murphy voices both sides with equal skill and equal sympathy. He's not taking sides—he's reporting from the front lines of gender warfare with the neutrality of a war correspondent who happens to find the carnage hilarious.

"Your boy pulls you aside at the barbecue and says, 'Eddie, I'm telling you, man. Half. She gets half.'"

What makes "Raw" hold up is Murphy's willingness to show his own vulnerability beneath the bravado. The barbecue became a frame for an honest conversation about what happens when love meets money. And Murphy, at 26, was already wise enough to know that the conversation has no good ending.