Does Martin Have Legs?

His routine is relatively free of the misogynistic bits favored by Def Comedy Jam comedians. Brought up in a female-headed household with three sisters and two brothers, Lawrence says, "I respect the female. To me, the female is your right hand."

Growing up in Landover, Md., while his mother raised the family and worked as a cashier, Martin assumed the role of surrogate dad, even though he was the fifth child. "He always wanted something better," says his sister, Rae Proctor, 29. "When he was 11 or 12, I remember he was carrying people's bags to their cars at the Safeway parking lot. Then he'd take each one of us to the mall to buy us tennis shoes. That was a lot of bags to hustle."

Lawrence's mother, Chlora, was -- and still is -- a supportive audience for his off-color stories and jokes. "She would just laugh and say, 'Boy, get out of my face.' Or, 'Boy, leave me alone,'" he recalls. "But she never said stop being funny or stop doing what you do." A teacher encouraged the wisecracking kid to perform at local comedy clubs. After graduating from high school, Lawrence scrubbed floors at Kmart while perfecting his act. His breakout came in 1987 when he landed an appearance on TV's Star Search and was noticed by Columbia Pictures execs, who cast him in a small but recurring role in the syndicated sitcom What's Happening Now! He went on to become part of the comedy scene in L.A., was given his own HBO special in 1990, and eventually was signed by Fox.

Today, Lawrence surrounds himself with a tight group. Sister Rae is his personal assistant (he calls her "the head honcho"); baby sister Ursula, 27, runs his fan club. When Lawrence travels, his entourage includes another assistant; his personal trainer; childhood friend Kenneth Whack, 28, a middleweight boxer; and Bufford, whom Lawrence befriended early in his Hollywood career. Lawrence felt that Bufford and several other writers he met in those days shared his sensibility, and he promised them that when he made it big, he'd bring them along.

Clearly, loyalty is paramount to Lawrence -- and may be at the heart of his dissatisfaction with Fox. On the other hand, he's capable of severing old ties. He made a surprising break last year with manager and Martin cocreator Topper Carew, who had guided the comedian from his first days on the L.A. stand-up circuit. Neither man will reveal the reasons for the falling-out. "We had a personal disagreement," says Carew, although his name remains in the show's credits. "It was a tough impasse for me." Lawrence allows himself to hurl one dagger: "If you see that this year's shows are better-looking and better quality, then you see why [Carew's] not here."

Lawrence has been making a few other breaks from the past lately, like anchoring himself with a stable home life. Last year he bought a house in North Hollywood -- just minutes from the Martin set -- where he works out every morning with his trainer and shoots hoops with friends. And while he has joked in stand-up about swarms of women flocking to his side, he quietly became engaged last fall to actress Lark Voorhies. A Saved by the Bell alumna who guest-starred on Martin last season, Voorhies, 20, now plays a homeless unwed mother on the NBC soap Days of Our Lives. When asked about her, Lawrence is momentarily taken aback and looks like he might put those sunglasses back on.

"You're not leading me into talking about relationships," he says, suddenly shy and off balance, leaning way back in his chair. He tries to deflect the subject by discussing his sitcom character's relationship with girlfriend Gina (Martin will pop the question to her in a two-episode, sweeps-stunt story line in February). But soon he warms to discussing real-life intimacy and launches into a discourse on the beauty of monogamy; the hard-driving Lawrence, as it turns out, is a romantic.

"I love the family life," he says. "There's nothing better. Lark is very spiritual, and when I saw how passionate she was about God and not wanting to party and be out at every club, something in me just said, 'If you can't see that love is in your face [a line the fictional Martin often uses], and you let it pass, you're not really looking for it.'

"I'm trying to do the right thing," Lawrence continues, "and that's not being the ho I know I could be. If I wanted to run around right now, I could. But my passion is for the passion of love. That keeps you smiling when nothing else does. With love, you don't need money, you don't need lights, camera, action, you don't need none of that s---."

You go, Martin.