Patrice O'Neal Essentials

With an approach to standup comedy that was simultaneously casual and confrontational, Patrice O'Neal made a successful career out of revelling in taboo topics while injecting enough laughs into them to shoo the social stigmas away. O'Neal, who started his comedy career in the early '90s, saw his star rise in the ‘00s as he gleefully took racial tensions to absurd extremes in controversy-courting routines like "Race War" and "I Like Being Racist." He took an equally unapologetic approach to expressing his convention-flouting thoughts on the battle of the sexes, as heard in bits like "Threesomes" and “Marrying My Girl.”