Current “Celebrity Apprentice” star, Lisa Lampanelli, recently released her latest album, “Equal Opportunity Offender: The Best of Lisa Lampanelli” on April 17th via Warner Bros. With reality television and millions of Kim Kardashians clouding the entertainment air, it might alarm you that Lampanelli’s claim to fame isn’t her mean streak on “Celebrity Apprentice”; it’s her tact for discussing social and political topics so eloquently.
With the jokes aside, you, Shockya readers, should be warned that the CD casing for “Equal Opportunity Offender” is slapped with a big “Parental Advisory” label on it, which is not meant to add more cover art. Lampanelli is joyfully missing the filter from her brain to her mouth and it is important your children don’t click play on the cartoon-covered album.
“Equal Opportunity Offender” is the potty mouth’s first greatest hits compilation, featuring tracks from 2005′s “Take It Like A Man”, 2007′s “Dirty Girl”, 2009′s “Long Live The Queen” and 2011′s “Tough Love”. “Long Live The Queen” was Lampanelli’s first ever- one hour HBO comedy special. In that same year, her autobiography, “Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks,” hit bookstores. Lampanelli continues to put the fingers to the keyboard as a columnist at Playboy magazine. In the fall of 2012, she will be taking her graceful ways to Broadway with the one-woman show, “Bring Back the Fat Chick” and to the big screen in the upcoming film, “Not Fade Away”, alongside James Gandolfini.
If you mostly know Lampanelli from “Celebrity Apprentice” then listening to her greatest hits album is the perfect way to get to know her as a comedian. Also, it will prove to you reality TV-ers that Lampanelli isn’t pulling an act on Trump’s television show, like the weekly spectacles from “Making The Band” alum, Aubrey O’Day. Lampanelli doesn’t care about your celebrity stature, your income, the color of your skin or your sexual preferences. She will disseminate her evil words uniformly throughout the crowd. Who actually deserves her harsh critiques? Those listeners who are too stubborn or too “offended” to loosen up and laugh. If you are a comedy “newbie”, don’t think you are popping in an album that will give you the jokes you need to rid yourself of social awkwardness. Lampanelli’s humor is meant for your own personal enjoyment.
The titling of the tracks on “Equal Opportunity Offender” is pretty self-explanatory in terms of the stories that will unfold. But since her styling is certainly not meant for everyone, another caution sign simply won’t hurt. It’s difficult to judge this album as a regular comedy listener or longtime Lampanelli fan, but the only complaint exists in Lampnelli’s inability to evolve her routine from one year to the next. The tracks could easily be from the same year. Either way, once “Equal Opportunity Offender” is played from start to finish, Lisa Lampanelli will have you wondering why you ever even cared what that 9th grade bully said to you. For lack of better words, ‘who gives a f**k?’
