After mild success as a talk-show host and a somewhat disappointing film career, Chris Rock is back to what he does best: stand-up comedy.

Rock's fourth comedy album, Never Scared, serves as a reminder of what thrust the comedian into the limelight in the first place. Rock has never been more on top of his game, as he lives up to the album's title, tackling controversial subject matter and giving the listener a kind of "what is he going to say next" anticipation from beginning to end.

Never Scared features 25 tracks, which alternate between live performance tracks and skits recorded by Rock and a few of his friends.

The live material kicks off with Rock's discussion of his realization of his new role as a father: to keep his daughter "off the pole."

"They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper ... yeah you went mighty wrong there, baby. You thought you had a household, no, you got a ho camp," Rock said.

He joked about guys who are so addicted to strip clubs that they will eat there, and how all of the strippers always seem to wear the same "uniform."

Rock makes it clear, though, that he has no problem with strippers; his problem is with the "stripper myth."

"The stripper myth is, 'I'm stripping to pay my tuition.' No you're not, there's no strippers in college," Rock said. "I didn't know they had a college that only took one dollar bills."

Rock spoke about his love of rap music, but that it's getting a lot harder for him to defend rap to people that criticize it. He said that back in the old days it was easy to explain intellectually how his favorite rappers' music was art.

"It's hard to defend 'I've got hoes in different area codes,' " Rock said.

One of the funnier bits on the live portion of the album has Rock breathing new air into a subject that has been worn out by comedians over the past few years: Michael Jackson.

"Michael, another kid? That's like another dead white girl showing up at [O.J. Simpson's] house," Rock said. "And O. J. going, 'I know what you're thinking ...' "

Never Scared does show Rock venture out into politics for the first time, suggesting that all of the media hype around celebrities for the past couple of years served one purpose: to keep the public's mind off of the war in Iraq.

This album, though, could have done without the sketches that appear between the tracks of live material without much need.

There are a couple of Bud Light commercial spoofs that are hilarious, but the other ones seem like a waste of space where Rock could have included more live material.

Only half of Rock's success as comedian comes from his material; the other half is his charisma.

Rock's loud delivery has often been criticized by some as annoying, and it could definitely wear on your ears after listening to the full album, but it is also the trademark that made him stand out from the millions of other stand-up comedians that would dream of having his success. If you haven't liked Rock in the past, you aren't going to like him now, either.