Rewind album: Live on the Strip, by Richard Pryor (1982)

Richard Pryor
Warner Bros

There was always a frothing madness to Richard Pryor's on-screen personae. He played mostly ramshackle deadbeats looking for a decent break and was occasionally brilliant at it, such as in Stir Crazy (1980). The charm came in the fact he was just so lovable.

But his fans, and lovers of America's live comedy circuit, knew the heart of a far different beast beat deep inside him, constricted by the restrictions on what Hollywood studios of the time allowed their artists to do and say.

Pryor, both on stage and off, was an angry man. The lifestyle he chose to lead at the time added fuel to the fire but it also added to experiences such as this ground-breaking and - for many - life-changing routine, captured live on record before it was then released on film.

Pryor had through the 1970s helped give voice to black America's boiling dissent, ranting and raving about the injustices he encountered as a young man trying to make his way in the US. He laid waste to the lie that "we're all the same" and took wicked delight in making the white members of his audience aware of the differences between them.