Joe Rogan Experience #1249 - Donnell Rawlings
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 43 minutes
Words per Minute
195.40309
Summary
Comedian Dave Chappelle joins Jemele to discuss his new Netflix special, "I Am Who I Am" and how he's changing the culture of comedy. He also talks about the importance of comedians having their own voice and why it's important to have a voice in the world of entertainment. Jemele and Dave also talk about the current state of stand-up comedy and how it's affected the way we see it. They also discuss what it means to be a standup comic and what it's like to be in a world where comedians have their voice taken away from them and how important it is to have your own voice. And of course, they talk about Dave's new standup special "I am who I am" which is out now on Netflix and why he's one of the best comedians of all time. You won't want to miss this one! Thank you so much to Jemele for being a part of this podcast and for supporting Jemele s career and being a good friend of mine. I can't wait to see what she does next. I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. XOXO, J.J. and I hope it's as good as it gets bigger and better than the last one. -Jemele xx - Thank you for being my guest on Jemele's new show "I AM WHO I AM WHO CARES" and we talk about comedy and standup and comedy and comedy! -RICKY, J-E-JEANS - J-O-YO-R-A-J-J.O.S-JG-Y-D-JH-I-S.D.E.S. -J.E-S-E.J-O.A.T.I-M-R.O-D.I.T-JESSE -JE-A.A-T-A? -J-YA-SZY-C-JORDY-AJ-SZA-SORRY? J-IH-SOSO-S? -D-E? -A.M. J-U-S -A-M. -S.S? -S-I.E.,J-I S-O., J-L-I TH-O? -P.S., S-A TH-I HAVE A PODCAST?
Transcript
00:00:21.000
Don't know, we were talking about the different kinds of comedians that there really are.
00:00:32.000
In fact, one of my closest friends, Bearded Humor, he's like, I would say...
00:00:37.000
If he was a stand-up comic, he would probably be in my top five in terms of creativity, in terms of talking about things in the moment and just all out funny.
00:00:51.000
You know, the skill set for stand-up, I started 25 years ago, it used to be the only way you proved yourself as a person with any type of...
00:01:14.000
I don't even know if people are as excited about stand-up As they used to be, and now it's excited about what's going to be the newest thing, what's going to be the hottest photo, the photoshop, and what's going to be the hottest image.
00:01:30.000
You get those images, the photoshops and the memes that are funny that hit you immediately.
00:01:34.000
But I think right now, especially when you go to the store, don't you think there's more people interested in stand-up now than ever?
00:01:45.000
But people are so, they're more critical of stand-up now more than ever.
00:01:50.000
There used to be a time when you could just say what you wanted and people would say that person was outspoken, outraged, but they were themselves.
00:01:58.000
But now you tell one joke, one blogger, one troller, Dissect your jokes and print your jokes.
00:02:11.000
Don't do the tag and next thing you know you offended somebody.
00:02:14.000
But I think with a lot of events that are happening now, comedy is going to start taking a shift back to people with honest voices.
00:02:26.000
I think there's a direct backlash to political correct thinking and the type of policing that you're seeing.
00:02:37.000
I understand police and stuff in the Catholic Church, police and stuff in the regular church, but you go to a comedy club to police, you're in the wrong place.
00:02:46.000
And nine times out of ten, people that go to a comedy show, that walk out and protest, Their mindset was to protest before they even went there.
00:02:55.000
They're just waiting for the trigger where it's just like, well, I never, and they'll leave.
00:03:01.000
You know, being outraged at something, especially if you kind of have a point, like if you could articulate that point, it's a great way to get attention.
00:03:08.000
With the people, the trollers and the people that...
00:03:13.000
Like, if you think of, like, if you're a comic and you're a famous comic and you're outspoken, you know, and someone could take your bit and take it apart, like, They've done with Chappelle many times, right?
00:03:26.000
I've never seen a guy that flips our sets over.
00:03:29.000
Like, he's just writing another five-minute bit.
00:03:32.000
But the thing is now, I've watched some of his new stuff and things he's doing now.
00:03:37.000
He's going to lead the charge for comedians having their voice.
00:03:44.000
And at the end of it, he said, comedians now more than ever...
00:03:47.000
You need to grab your balls because it's our job to talk about the things that are bad in this world.
00:03:57.000
It's the last real line of free speech because you don't have a real boss.
00:04:02.000
Like when you go on stage, no one gives you a single word of direction.
00:04:08.000
You know, that's a very unusual place to be in, in terms of entertainment.
00:04:12.000
And something that reaches, especially with someone like Dave, millions and millions and millions of people.
00:04:17.000
Every time he does a Netflix special, every time he does anything that's filmed, it's going to hit millions of people.
00:04:27.000
And then when they try to tell you what to do, you resist it and you do what you want to do.
00:04:38.000
And I've seen you do some material like, how the fuck does he get away with this?
00:04:46.000
I really believe what I'm saying in a lot of ways.
00:04:50.000
Like in other things, it's obvious that I don't really believe it.
00:04:56.000
As much as people are like, oh, I need that left.
00:04:58.000
I think for comedians, it's therapeutic for us, too.
00:05:03.000
You have an argument with your wife or somebody, and you can't go on stage that night just to talk about how pissed off she made you.
00:05:12.000
So as much as people get stuff out of us, when you come to a show, we get now our psychiatric exam right on the spot.
00:05:20.000
Yeah, also, like, you could complain about some shit, right?
00:05:23.000
You can complain about someone saying something or something, or you could turn it into a bit, and you can get hundreds of people just dying laughing.
00:05:31.000
I've had some conflicts online, one of them with a bunch of vegans.
00:05:42.000
But every once in a while, you just want to punch a troll in the face.
00:05:47.000
Occasionally, you read the comments and you're like, holy shit.
00:05:52.000
Anyway, I had this whole thing in my act about chasing down the hashtag vegan cat.
00:05:59.000
Somebody wrote some mean shit to me and this hashtag vegan cat.
00:06:04.000
I went there and there's a whole community of people feeding their cats vegetables.
00:06:08.000
But in doing this and tracking this down, it makes you realize, okay, I've got to write a bit about this because I could just get mad.
00:06:18.000
I could just get mad and be upset that someone's being mean to me or I could turn this shit into fuel.
00:06:22.000
Or you could just go fucking destroy the whole vegan community.
00:06:28.000
The produce is the same shit as every other group.
00:06:31.000
I don't really know too many vegans that aren't assholes, bro.
00:06:51.000
Especially people who wear glasses because they have like a million different frames.
00:06:55.000
That's when you're at the next level of being an asshole when you switch your glasses up.
00:07:01.000
I don't think vegans should be allowed to go to a barbecue.
00:07:11.000
They're upset if you've been cooking meat on a grill that was designed to cook dead animals.
00:07:29.000
Because when they make their transition, they can't just become vegans.
00:07:45.000
They got to let everybody know that I'm a vegan now and I'm an asshole.
00:07:50.000
And the worst is a vegan that always gets colds.
00:08:00.000
Whenever I see him call, I say, so how's that vegan life called?
00:08:09.000
I take pictures of Ian every time we fly together and he falls asleep.
00:08:20.000
He said he would eat meat, but he would only eat elk that I killed.
00:08:23.000
He said he would eat some elk meat, so I'm going to cook him some elk meat.
00:08:28.000
He'll probably like bounce around like super person.
00:08:31.000
Like he's been eating nothing but lentils for the last 20 years.
00:08:46.000
Can you transport your kill or you have to break it down wherever you kill it?
00:08:55.000
And then when you have a tag, you're allowed to get a certain kind of animal.
00:09:20.000
And you have to keep that with you, that paperwork with you.
00:09:23.000
So if you transport the meat across state lines and some game warden pulled you over and said, do you have a deer in your car?
00:09:30.000
He's got to see that you have the paperwork for it.
00:09:33.000
I don't want to sound racist at all, but I don't know a black person that could tell that story that you just told about killing people.
00:09:50.000
You have an obligation to try to save the meat.
00:09:52.000
When you have an animal and it's down, you want to get it into a packaged form as quick as possible.
00:10:15.000
Talk about setting a whole bunch of people back.
00:10:23.000
It's a mess, and I think it was really awful about it because his story, it was like good and bad of it.
00:10:31.000
The good of it was when people thought that he was violated and he was a victim of a hate crime, it wasn't just gay people that was...
00:10:50.000
It was a community of people away from the LBG community that thought it was really fucked up.
00:10:58.000
And that was the beauty of the incident because it kind of brought people together.
00:11:10.000
It's so unfortunate somebody would play on people's emotions or to benefit themselves.
00:11:21.000
Well, there's a certain narcissism that exists in show business that I think you and I both know very well.
00:11:29.000
Thankfully, the people that seem to be the best, for whatever reason, they have some of the best handles on it.
00:11:38.000
And that narcissism is weird, that wanting it to be all about them, and they'll do sneaky shit like fake and attack.
00:11:45.000
Like, that's a symptom of that same kind of thinking.
00:11:47.000
It just got desperate and went in some crazy way.
00:11:50.000
It was awful for some reason because you have people like, when that first went down, you have people that normally, people that you look at, okay, that's my friend or whoever, you've started having side eyes and that's just, it's just, it's so messed up and I think also it's messed up as much as people rode for him when they thought that it was an injustice or anything,
00:12:11.000
Nobody's addressing it like, you know, this is our movement, these are things that we're trying to progress toward, but this was an isolated incident and just Say how awful it was.
00:12:22.000
You know, the beautiful thing is that people are way more tolerant than they ever have been before.
00:12:27.000
The also beautiful thing is attack didn't happen, right?
00:12:29.000
So we don't have to think of one more atrocious thing that people have done to another person for no reason.
00:12:35.000
And it's also good that you get to see where that kind of stuff heads, where you're always looking to be a victim, to the point where you realize there's some sort of currency in being a victim, so people fake being a victim, so they can get all this fucking attention.
00:12:49.000
Now, next time a story comes around that's just a little fishy...
00:12:55.000
It's like the boy who cried wolf, and that's what's unfortunate about it, because anytime someone says that they were a victim of such a heinous crime like that, you want to believe them.
00:13:03.000
You want to believe them the minute they say it.
00:13:05.000
But with this incident, it makes you start second-guessing, and that's another thing that was awful about the whole thing.
00:13:11.000
And all the smoke he's getting right now that he deserves, because I've been tearing his ass up on Instagram, on everything.
00:13:21.000
I read a story once about this dude who said that he punished his daughter by making her sit in the backyard by a tree and then he went out there an hour later and she was gone.
00:13:34.000
And I remember thinking that story going, man, that just does not sound real.
00:13:41.000
This guy left a baby in the backyard and coyotes got it?
00:13:47.000
Well, he left the baby to punish the baby, like a two-year-old.
00:13:53.000
The kid died and he had stuffed it in some drainage ditch somewhere.
00:13:58.000
I don't remember how the kid died and what was the reason for it, but it was one of those stories where you hear the story like, Jesus, this doesn't sound real.
00:14:08.000
The next thing, we're going to be second-guessing everything.
00:14:12.000
But when it first went down, I thought it was a situation where Lee Daniels and Jesse sat down in a writer's room.
00:14:21.000
And Lee Daniels is like, anybody got any ideas for any new episodes?
00:14:29.000
I'm going to go to Subway to get a 12-inch footlong.
00:14:41.000
And Lee Daniels said to him, nobody's going to believe it.
00:14:43.000
Jesse got upset and told Lee Daniels, we'll see.
00:14:48.000
And he walked himself into that whole scenario.
00:14:56.000
Now anybody that was a fan of Empire, which I know a lot of people that's listening were...
00:15:03.000
They're going to be like second-guess the storyline of so many of those shows.
00:15:06.000
The storylines of everybody who ever said that they were done wrong or anything.
00:15:11.000
The awful thing about this is now people are going to be ready and quick to just second-guess anything that you say.
00:15:20.000
Until we can read each other's minds, until we can find out for sure.
00:15:27.000
That's definitely going to eliminate a lot of street fights.
00:15:31.000
I mean, you talk about your imminent danger senses are going to be 100% if you can read somebody's mind.
00:15:42.000
I like having secrets, too, but I like going all in.
00:15:47.000
We were talking about it in the last podcast about there's something they're going to be able to shoot into your neck.
00:15:54.000
Yeah, like an injection that will take over, sort of.
00:15:57.000
Well, the way it interacts with your brain cells.
00:16:02.000
So literally, I think we're going to have built-in Wi-Fi internet systems where we're connected to each other's heads.
00:16:10.000
So it's like a study they're going to try out on people.
00:16:13.000
Or you could just go to your doctor and say, shoot me with the brain shit.
00:16:17.000
I think eventually it's going to be shoot me with the brain shit.
00:16:19.000
First, you've got to get it on a clinical trial.
00:16:31.000
There was a movie where a dude got shot and they put some chip in his back...
00:16:46.000
He was basically like a supercomputer inside of a person that could do everything.
00:16:51.000
Artificial intelligence is right down the line.
00:16:53.000
Dude, they're talking about this shit, shooting it into your brain.
00:16:59.000
Well, there's going to be a lot of white people joining that effort because black people don't fuck with needles, bruh.
00:17:06.000
Unless it's heroin, we don't take out needles like that, bro.
00:17:09.000
I'm telling you, you say that, but how many athletes are on steroids?
00:17:16.000
I'm talking about the average black dude, Brooklyn, Brownsville, or Watts, or something like that.
00:17:21.000
Yo, I got this new brain shit we ejected through a needle.
00:17:30.000
Like, who's gonna be the earliest adopter getting a shot in your neck that lets you read everybody's mind?
00:17:41.000
Because like half of what we do is say shocking shit that people know is kind of true, but you can't believe you're saying it.
00:17:46.000
And then you'll have people in the audience like, oh, not the old Winter's Subway joke coming up.
00:17:52.000
If you could do that, that'd be the ultimate fucking joke hater right there.
00:18:04.000
Would you want to be the first comedian to have it?
00:18:08.000
You almost want to be a fool who doesn't have it.
00:18:12.000
I want to watch other motherfuckers do it first.
00:18:15.000
But the problem is they're going to fucking take over finances instantly.
00:18:19.000
As soon as they upload their brand, they're like, I'm just going to get all this money.
00:18:22.000
I'm going to figure out a way to get all this fucking money.
00:18:24.000
And then by the time you shoot it into your head, they've already got the system locked down.
00:18:28.000
But see, you have a different level of people that you hang out with because your level of...
00:18:31.000
Your level would be like, how are we going to get the money?
00:18:33.000
But my level would be like, yo, we got this brain shit.
00:18:35.000
How are we going to get some ass off of this, dawg?
00:18:38.000
If you can read a broad mind, you get all the ass you want.
00:18:43.000
Like, half the fun is not knowing if somebody likes you.
00:18:45.000
You don't know, well, what's going to happen here?
00:18:55.000
I've seen the billboard with Taraji Henson and Tracy Morgan.
00:19:01.000
I had a conversation with Mel Gibson the other day on the phone.
00:19:05.000
I'm just happy to know I have friends that can say that.
00:19:08.000
So you have a lot of sentences my friends can't use.
00:19:15.000
All right, here's the difference between a buck and so-and-so.
00:19:21.000
Yeah, so I'm on the phone with Mel Gibson the other day.
00:19:39.000
Like you're talking to him, you're like, for real?
00:19:46.000
He did a podcast to talk about the stem cell doctor that helped his dad.
00:19:53.000
He's this guy in Dallas that treats people down in Panama.
00:19:57.000
He's got this radical stem cell therapy that you can't get in America.
00:20:01.000
Mel Gibson's dad was 92 and he was in a wheelchair.
00:20:06.000
What's the issue with stem cell situation in America?
00:20:11.000
The last time, and I'm not probably as knowledgeable as you are, but wasn't Christopher Reeve trying to...
00:20:21.000
Yeah, he had that spinal cord injury from a horse accident.
00:20:31.000
They're eating dead babies to get the stem cells.
00:20:35.000
As soon as you said South Park, I was like, this is going to take a bad turn.
00:20:40.000
Yeah, maybe that episode about rape on South Park.
00:20:48.000
They're the ones out there that are promoting ridiculous, preposterous comedy that's completely offensive but brilliant.
00:20:55.000
That's one of the things that when we were doing the Chappelle Show, the one of the things I appreciate more than anything about that show was how it brought people of all races, all backgrounds together to do the thing that we all should have in common and that's to laugh.
00:21:11.000
And also to not push the button but touch on racial stuff without having an angry undertone.
00:21:18.000
And that's what's so fucked up about America now.
00:21:21.000
Whenever you talk about race, it feels like one side, somebody has to be tense.
00:21:30.000
And I know things are intense, but we have to be able to laugh first.
00:21:34.000
Once you get people to laugh, you can talk about whatever you want.
00:21:36.000
And then even if a person is not in agreement or have the same thoughts...
00:21:41.000
At the end of the day, you should be able to respect that person, and I think those same people should be able to share a laugh.
00:21:47.000
Yeah, and there was a fun, silly, non-aggressive quality to the way you guys put together sketches that got the point across and everybody laughed.
00:21:58.000
And when I draw to this day, when I travel, when I do my audiences, it's interesting because, of course, you would think I'm going to draw a certain audience because I'm black, which I am and I do.
00:22:08.000
I could go to places and it's straight up like Dave called them the muddy boot motherfuckers.
00:22:14.000
Like the money booth motherfuckers, the money booths, they got John Deere.
00:22:25.000
They probably call up right now and say, no, Joe, I think you got that wrong.
00:22:37.000
But it's just interesting when you can look out.
00:22:39.000
When you can look out in the audience and you say you have all of America there.
00:22:43.000
It was the best sketch comedy show in the history of television, I think.
00:22:46.000
I think In Living Color is very, very, very overlooked.
00:22:55.000
And both of them, like, wherever I go, people always...
00:23:01.000
But I was like, I don't know if it happens every 10 years, every 15 years.
00:23:05.000
It comes a time where the audience wants something different.
00:23:14.000
You know, you didn't see a lot of black stand-ups on TV, but they had this underground circuit that was bubbling, and it was the right time.
00:23:30.000
The Richard Powers show, even though that only lasted three or four episodes, it was the right time, and it caught on at the right time.
00:23:36.000
In terms of groundbreaking sketch comedy shows, though, that KKK bit where he had the blind...
00:23:48.000
In the history of sketch, nobody has premiered a sketch show and came off so hardcore the first night.
00:23:59.000
When they ended that shit, when we asked why...
00:24:06.000
After all these years, it was like, because she's a nigger lover.
00:24:13.000
I was like, that was one of them, that was one of the joys.
00:24:18.000
I'm like, wake up everybody, no more sleeping in bed.
00:24:23.000
I knew from that moment that this show was going to be on the next level of shows.
00:24:31.000
It was so many, when we did, funny thing, a lot of things, I used to do, I was a warm-up comedian for a Chappelle show.
00:24:39.000
So whenever you saw a Chappelle show episode, and if you notice that whenever I came on screen, and I'm not being cocky, people would go nuts.
00:24:49.000
And the reason was because I was the guy that wanted the audience before Dave came out.
00:24:54.000
So I knew if I go gut the room out, At the beginning, people don't even...
00:25:01.000
If I ripped that at the beginning and then when they see me on the screen, it's going to be like...
00:25:17.000
The day we played that during the wraparounds, man, that shit hit so hard.
00:25:25.000
The funny thing people don't know is that Comedy Central did not like that sketch.
00:25:31.000
Comedy Central didn't like the sketch and Comedy Central didn't think Charlie Murphy was funny in it.
00:25:42.000
And I watched, we ran that shit, just to let you know the direction people think.
00:25:49.000
And every time, man, every time you heard Dave say, I'm Rick James, bitch.
00:26:03.000
When's the last time you had a sketch was getting kids suspended in school?
00:26:14.000
You and Dave Chappelle go to the fucking timeout room.
00:26:16.000
It's one of the most iconic sketches of all time.
00:26:28.000
But then it goes to show, you know how you have a vision with something.
00:26:34.000
Well, that's the problem with working with executives too, right?
00:26:37.000
It's like their vision is different than your vision.
00:26:41.000
And I know Dave ran into problems with them wanting them to change language so they could get more sponsors.
00:26:53.000
And to be quite honest, I don't know exactly what happened.
00:27:00.000
Never talked to him about it because the reason why I never talked to him about it because I didn't need to talk to him about it.
00:27:13.000
My friendship and how he felt away from that was more important.
00:27:21.000
The first time I saw him, I'm like, as long as you're okay.
00:27:25.000
One of your closest friends, somebody you work with, all of a sudden just goes to another country.
00:27:30.000
But when I first saw him after that, I was excited.
00:27:34.000
And I was just like, whatever it was, we had a moment.
00:27:40.000
People go on to do other things and just keep it moving.
00:27:44.000
Really, people always say, Donnell, if it wasn't for the Chappelle Show, this and that, Chappelle Show...
00:27:51.000
Gave me a platform for people to see what I've been doing for years.
00:27:55.000
And you know, you see talentless in the club now.
00:27:57.000
You see a motherfucker that's good as shit, good as shit.
00:27:59.000
But will they get the right platform for the world to see them?
00:28:05.000
You see one person go from one level to the next level who has the right platform to showcase their talent.
00:28:12.000
And with that said, I gave that show everything.
00:28:18.000
Like, if you look at two and a half years on that show, if you had an editor break down how many times I spoke, it would probably be a total of four minutes.
00:28:31.000
But I told myself, whenever they turn that motherfucking camera on, I'm going for it.
00:28:38.000
I'm going to make my body so expressive that your eyeball draws to...
00:28:45.000
Because I always get a mic because I'll come up with a line or something to throw in.
00:28:50.000
And we were doing a Rick James sketch and I didn't have a mic.
00:28:54.000
And Neil said, you're not going to get a mic, bro.
00:29:05.000
So I told myself, when he smacks this motherfucker, because if you look at that scene, when he smacks him, I said, what the fuck?
00:29:23.000
He didn't give me a mic, but I said, what the fuck with my face?
00:29:29.000
As people always ask about that show, young actors and stuff like that, talk to me, what do you need to do?
00:29:35.000
I was like, with anything, the best thing to do is figure out a way to get on a set.
00:29:40.000
You get on a set, you do background, you learn, you get opportunities, you got to be around it, you got to get a skill set.
00:29:48.000
But when it's time to show up, you got to show up.
00:29:57.000
And then when they say action, motherfuckers ain't ready to show up.
00:30:00.000
And every time motherfuckers say action in a situation, you got to show up.
00:30:04.000
Well, you have a great ability to express yourself on stage and on TV. Some people feel uncomfortable.
00:30:11.000
They just like to be cool while they're telling the jokes.
00:30:22.000
I saw Jim Brewer, like, the first time I saw him, we were real young.
00:30:27.000
And my manager, Jason Steinberg, says what's up to him.
00:30:36.000
I remember Jim Brewer at Boston Comedy Club days.
00:30:41.000
That's why when you mentioned his name, I was like, which Jim Brewer are we speaking of?
00:30:46.000
Even today, our dad, Jim Brewer, today, he's still real energetic.
00:31:15.000
And you know, Midland is a prime spot to fuck somebody up.
00:31:21.000
We had a good MC too, so the MC got the crowd really popping, and then the middle came on, and Jim just ripped the place apart.
00:31:31.000
I had a blown out ACL at the time, and I was wearing Cavaricis.
00:31:42.000
They were these stupid pants that people wore in the 80s, man.
00:31:45.000
Like, they were tied to the top and they flared out a little on the legs.
00:31:51.000
I can't believe I ever owned them, but they were in style.
00:31:59.000
You not should know Elk and them motherfuckers.
00:32:13.000
And then I had some nice dress-up shirt on and I just ate plates of shit.
00:32:32.000
And like now I see in comedy, like I go to some clubs, motherfuckers trying to do the lineup kind of soft, like, well, we can't put that person in front of that person because they won't be able to follow it, blah, blah, blah.
00:32:43.000
But it should be a point like when I started, like the baddest motherfuckers in the game, they went on stage.
00:32:48.000
And if you was a new Jack coming up, how are you going to have a defining moment in comedy?
00:32:58.000
But put that shit behind where you got a motherfucker like a Bill Burr comes in the room and just goes and fucks it up.
00:33:32.000
After the second year of Chappelle's show, we weren't really making a lot of money on Chappelle's show because the show still hadn't been proven.
00:33:43.000
It just so happened the show blew up before the contract was over, but that don't mean nobody's going to renegotiate.
00:33:50.000
So we had this popularity, but we wasn't making money.
00:33:53.000
And I came up with the idea of doing a tour called the I'm Rich Bitch Tour.
00:34:03.000
At the time, Bill Burr was a headliner probably at the time in B rooms, you know what I'm saying?
00:34:10.000
And there's no disrespect to him, but he was on the come up.
00:34:13.000
But when you saw Bill, you knew this motherfucker was going to be next.
00:34:16.000
You knew he was going to pop it, but we still wasn't getting no cash.
00:34:23.000
And I was like, how the fuck are you around all these comedians you've never been on stage?
00:34:27.000
You know, he tough ass motherfucker, rest in peace.
00:34:30.000
But I was like, yeah, you so tough motherfucker, but not with a microphone in your hand.
00:34:34.000
And I bullied him so much that he finally went on stage.
00:34:38.000
And Charlie, the tour was Charlie with MC. And all we needed him to do was 10 or 15 minutes.
00:34:44.000
At the time, me and Charlie, outside of the day, were two popular people on the show.
00:34:48.000
Bill Burr had a couple of sketches, but Bill Burr didn't pop off of the show.
00:34:52.000
And I was like, but if we're going to do this, let's have a fire show.
00:34:59.000
I said, let's give them a show that they won't ever forget.
00:35:02.000
And Charlie used to come out and do 10 to 15 minutes.
00:35:06.000
And I tell people, I was like, who's the toughest person to follow?
00:35:10.000
But Charlie would go out and do 10 to 15 minutes.
00:35:13.000
And Bill Berger would come out and do 20 to 25. And then I came behind Bill.
00:35:23.000
And Bill Burr is the type of actor, you have no days off.
00:35:27.000
You have no, any of that, any little inkling of being off, you're just going to hear, yeah, I like the show, but the white dude was funny as a motherfucker, you know?
00:35:37.000
And you can tell at that time that Bill Burr was going to be a A start.
00:35:43.000
Whether it would have been movies or television, but as a stand-up, you know, he was one of the pound for pound, one of the dopest to do it.
00:36:06.000
And you know, people, Joe, people understand how tough it is to start as a comedian.
00:36:23.000
So you got to fight past all of that shit creating your own identity.
00:36:28.000
Like, I cannot imagine, like, the heat he probably had.
00:36:35.000
And that's one of the things that when Charlie passed that I really appreciated about what the Chappelle Show did for him because when he passed away...
00:36:46.000
Everybody was like, Charlie Murphy passed away.
00:36:49.000
So he had his true identity, and that was Charlie Murphy.
00:36:55.000
Does it piss you off when people yell, Charlie Murphy?
00:36:58.000
He goes, no, I'm just happy they're not calling me Eddie Murphy's brother anymore.
00:37:16.000
Dude, I was with Maury Smith, who used to be the UFC heavyweight champion.
00:37:20.000
And Ivan Salivari, who's a guy who fought in the middleweight division of the UFC. And a couple other professional fighters at a table with Charlie Murphy.
00:37:28.000
And Charlie was explaining how none of these motherfuckers know how to do a Chicago Ridge hand.
00:37:36.000
But it's like Charlie Murphy's holding court, standing up, all these UFC fighters are standing back.
00:37:44.000
And he knew exactly what he was talking about, right?
00:37:53.000
He used to be Eddie's bodyguard when Eddie was right at the height of his stuff.
00:38:09.000
And one of the most genuine people you want to meet, man.
00:38:13.000
Yeah, his karate lineage, like he has some sort of a connection to some of my friends.
00:38:18.000
I'd have to ask them, but he was like a legit martial artist, too.
00:38:21.000
I saw one video of him in a martial arts contest, and it was, I don't know, I always tell him, I was like, yo, you knocked a 14-year-old, right?
00:38:31.000
I don't know how he, I don't know if it was a weight or whatever it was, and I was like, yo, that was a fucking kid you just knocked out.
00:38:36.000
He was like, yo, anybody in the ring could fucking get it.
00:38:44.000
I saw the video, he never wanted me to talk about it.
00:38:47.000
I used to bust his balls about him all the time.
00:38:49.000
I could tell being around him that he legitimately knew how to fight.
00:39:03.000
Not knowing him at all and then traveling with him for 22 days.
00:39:10.000
All just laughing and silly and super friendly.
00:39:14.000
And all he wanted to do was, man, just have a good time and laugh.
00:39:25.000
That was a big thing for him, you know, that he could do stand-up and travel around.
00:39:28.000
I always tell him, I tell him all the time, I say, I birthed your career, dude.
00:39:35.000
But you could tell, and I've been around him and I've been around his family, and you could tell when he was growing up, he was the guy that always had the center of attention.
00:39:54.000
When he passed, I was like, I didn't know he was sick.
00:39:59.000
You know, it's interesting that you say that because I had to continue to do shows, do radio interviews and stuff, and the thing that people kept saying was, he was so young.
00:40:12.000
And he was young, but I don't believe that we're all going to live to be 80, 90, 100, you know?
00:40:22.000
The only thing we all guarantee when we're born, we have our born date, we have that dash in the middle, and then we have the end.
00:40:30.000
And it comes down to what the fuck do you do with your dash?
00:40:41.000
Who the fuck gives a fuck about living to 100 and you don't have a passport?
00:40:51.000
And I know, Charlie, from the point of being in the Navy, To being with his brother, seeing his brother reach a certain height of success, being interested in the business, but kind of in there, but never really made your mark.
00:41:08.000
And then you get a platform that you become and get your identity and shit.
00:41:15.000
It's one of the best kind of success stories because it doesn't happen automatically.
00:41:22.000
And it's like, you know, people say what they want to say, but he put the work in.
00:41:28.000
I remember when, I think the movie Eddie did called Norbit, right?
00:41:36.000
The start of that movie, and I guess, I think him and Eddie was talking, whatever, and then, you know how, oh, that could be, ba-ba-ba, it could be a movie, and motherfucker Charlie called me and said, yo, man, I think I get this movie deal.
00:41:49.000
He said, I'm about to go lock myself in a hotel for 30 days and write this motherfucker movie.
00:41:58.000
I'm talking about, I'm not talking about somebody, I've been writing this movie for six months or whatever, it's like, I'm about to go Block everything off and write this shit.
00:42:08.000
And no matter what anybody want to say about how good the movie was, what the critics say, anybody in this business, if you can do something where it goes from a thought And it goes to the paper and you can execute it.
00:42:27.000
But then you say, how many of you got in the can?
00:42:45.000
I was, that's when Chappelle's show was popping, and Ludacris gave me a lesson out of nowhere.
00:42:50.000
I saw him in the airport, and I was on Ashley Larry, hard.
00:42:54.000
So I'm looking at rappers like, we're even, right?
00:43:02.000
I said, yo, can the motherfucker get in a movie or something?
00:43:10.000
I'm like, can a motherfucker get a movie or something?
00:43:19.000
And I looked at him like, well, I have none, right?
00:43:30.000
How the fuck are you going to ask somebody for something and you don't got shit to give them?
00:43:35.000
Well, a lot of guys in the beginning think that's how you do it.
00:43:39.000
When I was on HBO's The Wire, this motherfucker told me one time, he said, Yo, D, can you give me the number to The Wire?
00:43:47.000
This motherfucker thought that there was like a hotline from anybody from the streets.
00:43:55.000
You don't want to put those 10 years of getting rejected?
00:43:58.000
Just call this number and we'll put you on The Wire.
00:44:01.000
You know what gets me about acting, though, is when someone who's never acted before goes in there and kills it.
00:44:06.000
You know, like people who are, like athletes in particular, like rappers have done it.
00:44:13.000
But some people, I believe that you have natural talents.
00:44:20.000
That person, like you have a person that's trained and you have people that just are natural.
00:44:24.000
And then if you think about it, acting is just, it's playing make-believe.
00:44:33.000
Is it a person that for 12 years they've been studying and they went to the school?
00:44:40.000
Or is it a motherfucker that got that one story, that one character that they can nail?
00:44:44.000
Or is it the case of there's some people that'll do stand-up comedy for 30 years and they're never going to be that funny?
00:45:14.000
As much as people talk about somebody, in your mind you're like, I'm great too, motherfucker.
00:45:20.000
And one day I was watching Dave on stage and I'm like, what makes this motherfucker great?
00:45:26.000
And I think, in my opinion, what makes it great is it's not too often that we have an opportunity to have a Muhammad Ali moment.
00:45:35.000
And when I say that, I mean a moment where you've got to throw everything on the table.
00:45:48.000
Of course, Muhammad Ali was the greatest, but it wasn't just in the boxing ring what made him great.
00:45:54.000
And I think when I look at Dave Chappelle, I look at his stand-up, and I look at his career, and I say, what made him great?
00:45:59.000
And that's a person that Stanley Belief is going to give you their unfiltered truth, and they own it.
00:46:07.000
And don't compromise, and don't back down to anything.
00:46:10.000
Well, he understands what's important about stand-up, especially the type of stand-up that he does.
00:46:23.000
I'm like, Certain white dudes, you like this, what the fuck just happened, son?
00:46:28.000
Like, that motherfucker got some suplex or something, you know?
00:46:32.000
He know how to hit you, like, you know, like in a certain part of your neck and your whole shit is fucked up, you know?
00:47:19.000
And I told him, and it was just, like I said, I don't know if it's a movement, but I feel like I was recruiting him for a gang right now.
00:47:26.000
I saw him in the hallway, I was like, yeah, me and I. Dave Chappelle was just talking about the brand of comedy that you have.
00:47:35.000
Because as much as people fucking with us, they don't want you to say this, you want to say that.
00:47:39.000
Again, it's a handful of motherfuckers going to stay to their truth, and they're going to be rewarded for that shit.
00:47:50.000
How the fuck is somebody going to tell you what you think is funny as a comedian?
00:47:54.000
And you don't even know if you think it's funny while you're doing it on stage.
00:48:04.000
You know it's funny, you just don't know where the funny is sometimes.
00:48:07.000
You don't know the rhythm of it because I don't know what your writing process is.
00:48:16.000
Like, I have conversations with friends all day.
00:48:22.000
And it's like, you know, people with sense of humor, it's like, you see the funniest side of anything.
00:48:27.000
Like, the Jesse Smiley, it's just Gil Cosby, Smollett, whatever the fuck it is.
00:48:34.000
So, I never try to sit down like, I'm gonna write this perfect joke.
00:48:37.000
It's usually something that comes in a casual conversation.
00:48:40.000
And it's those moments, you know, you talk to somebody, you be like, oh, that's funny.
00:48:44.000
Usually that's where I start my writing, if something connects with me like that.
00:48:48.000
And I just go and believe in it and just force that shit to work.
00:48:54.000
Yeah, once you get on that stage with that idea and you're in that moment and you have just like...
00:48:59.000
Everybody understands the first time you're trying a new bit.
00:49:06.000
That's one thing I say about you, the times I've watched you.
00:49:12.000
Like, yo, I'm going to fuck somebody after this shit.
00:49:15.000
I'm just going to stand outside and hear good set, good set, good set.
00:49:18.000
Then you got the motherfuckers like, no, that was a thought from last week.
00:49:34.000
You can go to sleep and you wake up and you get innocent!
00:49:48.000
You really want to touch the motherfucking nuts?
00:49:54.000
Open with your clothes, and we'll see how much strip them other motherfuckers.
00:50:08.000
They got an act, and then they got scared again and never got rid of that act.
00:50:11.000
And then they can't stand for the right motherfucker to be in the room.
00:50:18.000
I'm gonna flip a whole new set on your motherfuckers.
00:50:23.000
Build some shit from this one motherfucker right here.
00:50:27.000
Not a riff like, your pants so tight, but pull something from him and just turn this into a whole shit.
00:50:35.000
Because you know, we got millions of jokes that we never use.
00:50:56.000
And after 25 years, I can honestly say I feel like I get better every year.
00:51:08.000
I mean, good sets and bad sets when you're working on new stuff.
00:51:12.000
But I think overall, when I'm done after two years, each two years is better than the two years before when I'm ready to film.
00:51:21.000
If you're not out there creating a type of material where it's old...
00:51:35.000
I might be on Netflix radar, but I don't have a deal with them, but I'm gonna, not by myself, but Dave Chappelle has gave me a verbal commitment that he's gonna produce my next special.
00:51:52.000
So, with that said, I don't have a home, but I'm pretty sure The level I've been operating with my stand-up, you know when you're ready.
00:52:12.000
I think the energy that I bring to a special right now, and then the energy that he would bring to producing for me, it would just fucking blow up.
00:52:22.000
And this is not something like, I'm not calling Dave up every day like, dude, you got to do my special.
00:52:26.000
Every time I work with him, he was like, you got to let me do your special.
00:52:35.000
I'm not saying that I'm eyeing this place, I'm eyeing that place.
00:52:39.000
First thing I want to do is put an hour of material that when it plays, it can change my life.
00:53:02.000
Yeah, sometimes I'll do four sets in a night in L.A. I did.
00:53:12.000
And I was so fucking happy because that's a normal night in New York.
00:53:24.000
You feel like you just can do whatever you want.
00:53:28.000
Because you know if you're starting off with something new on that first one, you got four more.
00:53:32.000
By the time the night is over, you got that motherfucker.
00:53:35.000
Yeah, when you're doing reps the same night too, when you hit that third set, it's almost like you're in this weird flow state where there's no resistance between you and the ideas.
00:53:46.000
And then you know the thing you got to do is one thing to have a joke.
00:53:53.000
And that's why you see some motherfuckers, you just tell them that they're a good writer.
00:53:57.000
But there's nothing, there's no performance of it.
00:54:12.000
Man, I'm telling you, the Boston Comedy Club years ago, Barry Katz ran and owned it at the time.
00:54:21.000
It was running neck and neck with the Comedy Cellar.
00:54:53.000
That was a time where comedy was on fire, and Jim Brewer would demolish it.
00:55:06.000
Probably 125, 130. But it was like, it was old comedy club vibe, brick wall, tightness.
00:55:30.000
You know who I used to follow at the comedy store that also changed my life?
00:55:40.000
Dude, I used to be the guy who had to go on after him.
00:55:44.000
Mitzi used to always stick me on after Martin Lawrence.
00:55:47.000
I'm going to tell you, the first time I saw Martin Lawrence, and it was kind of made me...
00:55:54.000
I was in D.C. I was laying up in the bed with this chick.
00:56:12.000
They was like, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Martin Lawrence.
00:56:14.000
And he sees this little black dude, big-ass, skinny motherfucker with all his energy.
00:56:25.000
He said, when you making money the right way, you can tell your lady shit like, shut the fuck up.
00:56:33.000
I woke up, I was in the bed like, who is this motherfucker, right?
00:56:37.000
He said, you can tell your lady, she's like, shut the fuck up.
00:56:43.000
And then he said, and he said, after that, he said, and she'll shut up too.
00:57:02.000
And if you was fucking with that shit, it was like, it was everything Martin did.
00:57:07.000
He was going on stage with leather jumpsuits on, and I was going on after him.
00:57:12.000
Well, you know you're already going to make it or made it if you're going on with leather jumpsuits and you're hitting comedy clubs.
00:57:18.000
Well, it was just people were getting up in droves.
00:57:20.000
By the time I would go on stage, everybody just wanted out of the building.
00:57:40.000
And that was one of those specials where, and that's what I'm saying with the next one I do, you never can plan stuff like that, but the energy I want to have is the energy out of that.
00:58:01.000
You know, like a Bernie Mac with I'm Scared of You Motherfuckers.
00:58:11.000
The story behind it, it was this comic from DC named Butch Burns.
00:58:17.000
He was a senior guy of all of us in DC. Tony Woods and Joe Rector.
00:58:24.000
So in Def Jam, nobody really knew what Def Jam was going to be.
00:58:29.000
So Butch Burns had a set And he didn't do well.
00:58:37.000
I'm not saying it's because it was a black audience.
00:58:48.000
You ever seen a room that's so fucked up that can't anybody do anything?
00:58:52.000
The only thing you're saying is, okay, just let me go on.
00:58:58.000
Going up backstage, and he talked to Bernie Mac.
00:59:03.000
He said, the sun's not shining on you today, but it'll shine on you again.
00:59:22.000
And that's where the phrase, I ain't scared of you motherfuckers, came from.
00:59:28.000
It was a real motherfucking comic figuring out what he's going to do in this moment.
00:59:54.000
Now, this is after a motherfucker's career was buried.
01:00:00.000
He came on the year before that and I think he thought he was dressed too old.
01:00:04.000
So he wanted to appeal to the youth a little bit more.
01:00:08.000
And he's backstage saying like, this could change my career.
01:00:21.000
I'm going to tell you something straight off the motherfucking press.
01:00:26.000
In New York, goddammit, y'all motherfuckin' women look good.
01:00:44.000
Although we're getting kicked off YouTube if we keep playing it.
01:01:05.000
I guarantee the energy he wanted to have to rip was there.
01:01:09.000
But the story, the backstory, it being in that moment.
01:01:23.000
They got a motherfucking excuse for everything.
01:01:25.000
You ever go to a motherfucking room and they be talking about how's the crowd?
01:01:41.000
And I've heard you in your podcast talking about no excuses.
01:01:44.000
And I feel like the things you say about no excuses, yeah, it's easy to make an excuse.
01:01:52.000
You got a good excuse and you got a bad excuse.
01:01:54.000
You could have an explanation for failure with no excuse.
01:01:59.000
We can talk about how you failed and why you failed.
01:02:15.000
Man, anytime I hear a comedian say, how were they?
01:02:23.000
We don't know if that motherfucker in the front row is thinking about a funeral.
01:02:29.000
But it's our job to, kind of, going back to what you said earlier, in a sense, we read people's minds through their body.
01:02:42.000
You can be like, oh, she was so upset because I said that.
01:02:55.000
And I'm not going off, but it's just frustrating when you see motherfuckers out here making excuses.
01:03:03.000
Well, it's not good for everybody that's around them.
01:03:07.000
See, when a guy like you is around me, or, you know, a guy like Tony Hinchcliffe, or people who are just going forward, who live in the comedy life, like you're writing, you're always writing new material, that's empowering.
01:03:21.000
You know as motherfuckers, I've been around motherfuckers that got more bomb material than they got real material.
01:03:34.000
Just one joke don't work and be like, oh, and then they slide into their bomb and shit.
01:03:44.000
Yo, in case they throw tomatoes, I got the old tomato bit.
01:03:53.000
Yeah, it's a ridiculous idea to have a set that you do when the audience is shitty.
01:04:00.000
If something come your way, you can bounce off.
01:04:02.000
But I'm talking about these motherfuckers actually right.
01:04:06.000
In the event that I bomb, it's going to go that way.
01:04:21.000
And I tell people all the time, if you liked any of the things that I've done, whether it was HBO's The Wire, Chappelle's show and other stuff, If you come see me do stand-up, you'll become a complete fan.
01:04:32.000
Because like you said earlier, that's the one thing that we control.
01:04:36.000
We don't have to have an audition for that shit.
01:04:38.000
We don't have to motherfucking get tested for it.
01:04:44.000
We don't have to pitch it and you know it's a good thing and they say fuck you anyway.
01:04:52.000
It's like, that's what we are, the executive producer, the producer, the line producer, we everything.
01:05:04.000
And at the end of the day, no matter what success I feel, Joe, we get with this, whatever level, I'm in your big ass shit, you hit it.
01:05:12.000
You know, whether it's TV or movies, Nothing is going to ever be able to take away from you being a flat-footed motherfucker that can stand in an audience and you've built your stand-up name enough where,
01:05:30.000
for the most part of the rest of your life, you'll be able to create a good living off of your name, off of doing stand-up.
01:05:40.000
But if you respect what it is, that you have a relationship with those people, you have to write for them, you have to work on your stuff, you have to be diligent, you have to have an ethic about it.
01:05:59.000
I could do a show, a comedy club, like 500 people.
01:06:08.000
And it's two motherfuckers just not feeling me.
01:06:25.000
He sees someone like this, and the whole rest of the audience is dying, and someone's giving him the stink eye.
01:06:33.000
You can't, you're just like that, and it's like, and you won't stop until that person doesn't have a problem or they leave.
01:06:42.000
You get committed to wanting everybody to love you.
01:06:46.000
There's also people that will fuck with you for extra attention.
01:06:49.000
They want you to look at them with their arms crossed because they need attention.
01:06:54.000
They're the same people that protest shit where it doesn't really necessarily make sense.
01:06:58.000
They spend so much time and effort thinking about these things.
01:07:01.000
It's so funny you said about protest because...
01:07:10.000
Last couple of years, comedy has been interesting.
01:07:16.000
A lot of people that aren't fans of Donald Trump.
01:07:19.000
And I think it's petty for you to be upset with anybody because they chose to vote for whoever they chose to vote for.
01:07:30.000
But I will say this past election was interesting in the sense that a lot of people were upset.
01:07:52.000
White people was like, we'll see about that in the morning.
01:07:55.000
And whenever you hear someone says, we'll see about that in the morning, it's going to be some change.
01:08:03.000
But comedy, I don't think comedy should be a place where people exercise anger or be angry.
01:08:20.000
Like, when Donald Trump first got elected, you know, personally, like, it was very interesting.
01:08:28.000
They could just go up there and be like, fuck Donald Trump!
01:08:37.000
To say, fuck Donald Trump or anybody, but it doesn't have to be fueled with any anger.
01:08:44.000
It doesn't have to be fueled like, fuck you, be like this.
01:08:49.000
And then allow the reason, but I just don't think that people should be angry about how they feel about...
01:08:57.000
I think it's fucked up when politics make people angry.
01:09:01.000
It's contrary to what you were saying was great about Chappelle's show.
01:09:09.000
But even anybody on both sides could laugh at it.
01:09:24.000
It's a ridiculous idea to have 300 million people under the guidance of one.
01:09:38.000
It was a great idea back when there were pilgrims and it was a small colony.
01:09:46.000
So when you let a guy like that try to be present, you're not going to be happy.
01:09:52.000
But you're not going to be happy if anybody wins.
01:10:09.000
Yo, the first time you saw Ted dancing, I'm not talking about years after Cheaters.
01:10:18.000
There's something about Trump before that that people enjoyed.
01:10:28.000
If he was a rapper instead of wrestling right now, it'd be different.
01:10:34.000
But the thing was, I'll tell you this, my thoughts.
01:10:44.000
And even when he got elected, I think a lot of people thought they knew him.
01:10:50.000
They thought the image, like, you ain't gonna be the billion-dollar Playboy guy forever, but you thought you knew him.
01:10:55.000
But then when you got to know him, you started to think, well, maybe I didn't know him.
01:11:04.000
Like, I don't think, even as much as, even how he got elected, people were upset about it.
01:11:10.000
But I think a lot of people at some point, they were like, you know what, maybe all of that shit was just to get elected.
01:11:25.000
He mastered how to get connected with his base.
01:11:28.000
He mastered how to get not everybody to fuck with you, but just the right amount of people.
01:11:39.000
It was a popularity contest, but it was also new, like, these are the people that got hit.
01:11:44.000
I think at some point, Joe, people were like, all right.
01:11:52.000
And I think it's so many examples of when you felt like he could have showed people example that he's for everybody opposed to just his base.
01:12:04.000
And I think that's what makes people frustrated.
01:12:08.000
He gives the impression that, you know, I only care about these people that elected me.
01:12:26.000
But I said something and somebody said, well, the last time I checked downhill, the economy was doing well.
01:12:32.000
And I said, you can't confuse the economy with humanity.
01:12:36.000
And that's the thing, and that's what people don't feel good about.
01:12:40.000
You can tout all the numbers you want, black unemployment, all the numbers, but how do people feel?
01:12:59.000
I make enough money where a lot of the views of Republicans are like, yo, that's right up my alley.
01:13:07.000
And you know, like, I fucked some Republican bitches before.
01:13:16.000
And it may not sound right to a lot of people, but it's the human factor of it.
01:13:27.000
Why so many people don't know the economy is doing well?
01:13:41.000
When Obama ran, like his campaign was changed, Donald Trump would make America great again.
01:13:46.000
Either one of them could have ran off each other's campaign slogan.
01:13:51.000
Do you know after Bush, Obama could have said, make America great again.
01:13:55.000
And it would have electrified a debate the same as change.
01:14:01.000
That would be the great thing for Obama to say right after Bush.
01:14:04.000
And I'm going to tell you, one thing that kind of...
01:14:09.000
I don't know, insulting or get people upset is like, you keep pushing the narrative, make America great again, make America great again.
01:14:17.000
You keep pushing it as if America was so fucked up before you took office, and that's not the case.
01:14:24.000
Like, when Obama took it from Bush, he was making America great again.
01:14:34.000
And the thing that people, however you took it, respected or not, it was never nothing laced with anger.
01:14:41.000
It was never, it wasn't no, yo, you see this mess Bush left me?
01:15:01.000
Whenever I think about it, I say the movie about getting shot in the face.
01:15:08.000
Well, the thing about Bush and Cheney is that movie kind of makes it seem like Cheney was the guy pulling the strings, and Bush was this simple, happy-go-lucky guy who they just roped into being president because he was the son of a president.
01:15:26.000
When I think about Bush now, I don't think about him in a negative way, but I think about Cheney in a negative way.
01:15:34.000
I think about all the rebuilding of the places that we blew up.
01:15:41.000
No-bid contracts that are worth billions of dollars to rebuild.
01:15:44.000
You know, it's interesting you say that about the Bush because if I had...
01:15:49.000
If I had to have a pick of who I would have wanted to be the Republican candidate, it was on the Republican side.
01:16:13.000
I think he probably, out of all the kids, I probably think that he probably was the one that thought a little outside of what their norm was.
01:16:23.000
Yeah, they didn't marry a Latino chick, if I'm not mistaken.
01:16:26.000
But I just, I don't know, but Bush, I mean, Trump fucked him up.
01:16:31.000
Yo, how do you fuck motherfuckers up with just nicknames?
01:16:39.000
Trump put all the motherfuckers, like, you were safe until you got your nickname.
01:16:49.000
You know that motherfucker was like, he can name rap artists.
01:16:53.000
No, it was a smart thing he did that no one's ever done before.
01:16:57.000
Even when Obama got elected, you know what got Obama elected was Facebook and $5 contributions, $5 donations.
01:17:08.000
When Obama was running, he was the first person to use Facebook the way he did.
01:17:29.000
Like, I would get an email, hey, this is Barack Obama.
01:17:37.000
And then a week later, he asked for fucking $20, right?
01:17:41.000
And then he would ask for 10 again, and then it got so bad, then Michelle would send me an email.
01:17:46.000
But he just, he'd nickel and dime America, and that's what supported his campaign.
01:17:51.000
And the fact that he was right at the turn of a form of media that you could use to your advantage.
01:18:04.000
Donald Trump was doing the same thing through Twitter.
01:18:10.000
Because he knows motherfuckers would rather pick up a phone and read a treat than to read a newspaper.
01:18:19.000
Yeah, way more people reading tweets versus newspapers, right?
01:18:24.000
Like, if you could get to see that exact engagement in a good article in the New York Times on the front page versus one of Donald Trump's tweets.
01:18:33.000
The only two people that motherfuckers are just waiting for their tweets to come out is Donald Trump and Kanye West.
01:18:38.000
Those are the two most interesting tweet people.
01:18:41.000
Kanye West could just say grapefruit juice and fuck up all of the media the next day.
01:18:53.000
One of the most interesting tweeters out there.
01:19:00.000
Well, he's got a free way of expressing himself.
01:19:03.000
He has an unfiltered way of expressing himself.
01:19:06.000
And a lot of people have mixed feelings about it, mixed views.
01:19:10.000
I know the black community is a little stressed out right now.
01:19:13.000
Well, because of his Trump thing, but you know what?
01:19:24.000
And then when Obama's gone, Trump takes office.
01:19:32.000
And here's the thing, Joe, with that said, I do white clubs, black clubs, whatever.
01:19:38.000
But the thing is, first off, Kanye West has a voice.
01:19:49.000
As much as black people want to throw talent on them, we don't have too many voices that everybody is waiting to hear.
01:19:57.000
I believe that Kanye West is trying to say something.
01:20:01.000
I just don't know what the fuck he's trying to say because I'm not fluent in Yeezy.
01:20:11.000
And I think he's trying to say something, but if there was some type of interpreter...
01:20:20.000
If Chappelle shows right now, this would be a dope-ass skit.
01:20:24.000
Kanye Way says something, and then Dave Chappelle is his conscious interpreter.
01:20:29.000
Kanye says, and then Dave yells out, You know what I think?
01:20:34.000
I only talked to him once on the phone, but what I think from studying him and paying attention, because we're supposed to eventually do a podcast one day...
01:20:45.000
And that's one of the reasons why he's so prolific with music.
01:20:50.000
And that's the point I'm saying about not speaking easy.
01:20:53.000
And some people that think like that, they don't know how to get it out.
01:21:09.000
You know how hard that was for the black community to hear them say that part?
01:21:13.000
Fuck, you can sell them a plane all you want, but when you say you're like my father, and then black people are sitting back like, could you please explain that?
01:21:22.000
So we think, then this was funny to me, then Kanye said, yeah, you're like a father figure to me.
01:21:29.000
Like, when I was younger, I thought he was going to hit me with the horrific, you know, father was in a shootout, a drive-by.
01:21:40.000
He said, yeah, when I was younger, my parents separated at a young age.
01:21:56.000
They had my mother and my father, you know what I'm saying?
01:22:01.000
I didn't have parents, but he said, my parents separated.
01:22:09.000
You up two before you even get to, and they separated, and mom moved down the street.
01:22:22.000
But the whole thing is, I'm pretty sure at some point Kanye West will be able to speak a language that everybody can understand.
01:22:30.000
Until then, it's only a handful of people that speak it and understand it and also write it.
01:22:38.000
But here's my problem with all this, and I've been thinking about this a lot.
01:22:49.000
Just stop and think about culturally effective in terms of the music that he makes, that people love, his influence.
01:23:02.000
His wife makes hundreds of millions of dollars.
01:23:06.000
If you want to talk about overall success, they're together.
01:23:12.000
Of He produces incredible art that's loved worldwide, and they want to medicate him.
01:23:18.000
But they want to medicate him to operate at what level, though?
01:23:28.000
When he's off medication, he said himself he's his most creative.
01:23:32.000
Stop and think about how creative he's been, how successful he's been, how well-received.
01:23:42.000
But yet they want him to act the way they want him to act.
01:23:46.000
Well, black people just want him to take the hat off.
01:23:53.000
The black people wasn't mad because he wore the hat.
01:23:58.000
If that was a new era, they would have been more accepting of it, man.
01:24:06.000
Anything with red, with white letters, someone will punch you.
01:24:17.000
But I did a show upstate New York, and it was this white dude came up to me after the show, and he didn't have what looked like a Make America Great Again hat.
01:24:23.000
He had a Make America Great Again hat, and it looked like he had the original one.
01:24:28.000
You know how you got a Boston fan, and you're like, you've only been a fan.
01:24:32.000
He was a fan of America, Make America Great before it.
01:24:41.000
This motherfucker had the hat on and shit, and at the end of the show...
01:24:45.000
He was one of the dudes that continued to laugh the most, you know?
01:24:50.000
And I went up to him, and I was like, yo, I gotta get a picture with you.
01:25:14.000
Kanye with the hat, he likes the idea of how it gets people flustered.
01:25:32.000
When a guy had the hat on that I was talking to, I heard on the side it was like this, oh, he's triggered.
01:25:44.000
What I would have been triggered by is how you make me feel.
01:25:52.000
You could come at me with the hat on with some fucked up energy and I could feel it.
01:26:07.000
I couldn't let him make me feel like if that's what his intent was, he was going to make me feel uncomfortable.
01:26:15.000
Do you think he was trying to make you feel uncomfortable?
01:26:21.000
But I know that motherfucker would laugh like a motherfucker.
01:26:37.000
Man, it's like, at the end of the day, you got good people and you got bad people.
01:26:47.000
You want to be on the good side or the bad side.
01:26:51.000
I know Sam Corny, Rodney King said, can we all just get along?
01:27:03.000
We can get along, the three of us in this room.
01:27:10.000
Like, something goes wrong when you get to, like, three million.
01:27:18.000
You get a couple of people together and most people could be fine together.
01:27:28.000
It's almost like people are supposed to live in small towns.
01:27:33.000
Like, small town with a bunch of assholes would suck.
01:27:37.000
How about if we lived in a small town with all comedians?
01:27:41.000
If I lived in a small town right now, I would be a...
01:27:44.000
If I lived in a small town right now, I would be a grandfather.
01:27:54.000
Yeah, but I mean, a small town, a community, let me say, filled with comedians.
01:28:01.000
Yo, comedians will actually kill each other, man.
01:28:05.000
I can't even, like, I can't, it's just only a certain amount of comedians I can be around at one time.
01:28:09.000
Because then it started getting, you know, there's motherfuckers jockeying for the best joke.
01:28:14.000
There's some that are like that, but there's some that lay back and they're laughers.
01:28:26.000
They know when you pull that trigger, it's supposed to shock you.
01:28:37.000
So snipers and the motherfucking grunts, they go out there.
01:28:53.000
And that was because a girl came through the gate.
01:29:15.000
I was like, these motherfuckers are going to gun and kick me out.
01:29:37.000
And I got out and just randomly went to a comedy club.
01:29:45.000
I used to go to this comedy club every Wednesday to fuck with the comedians.
01:29:51.000
It was like the black comedy club in D.C. This was a time when Martin Lawrence was on fire, the Def Jam thing was popping, and they had on black comedy clubs.
01:30:01.000
They'll just turn, okay, now it's a comedy club.
01:30:03.000
Monique had a club that she made turn from a restaurant to a comedy club just because she got more business on the weekend as a comedy club than a restaurant and just took it over.
01:30:13.000
And I was such a good heckler that people used to come to the show to hear me heckle.
01:30:21.000
They would be at the door like, yo, is that asshole dude going to be here tonight?
01:30:26.000
The club owner dared me to go on stage because he wanted to shut me up.
01:30:31.000
After four weeks of heckling, I tried to make a deal with the club owner.
01:30:44.000
He looked at me like, what the fuck are you talking about?
01:30:52.000
And the first time I went on, I murdered the shit.
01:30:55.000
And I knew that I wasn't going to be doing anything else with my life but doing it.
01:31:09.000
I remember it because I had talked so much shit to this point...
01:31:13.000
And the thing about it was, but the energy of the room was there because there was a lot of people that came, they saw me.
01:31:26.000
The first time I went on, people were excited about it.
01:31:42.000
I thought they were just trying to save me the headline.
01:31:44.000
I didn't think they were just trying to give me the shittiest spot.
01:31:47.000
But half the club came to see me, so they would stay there.
01:31:50.000
And that first time I went on, I had all these jokes I planned I was going to do.
01:31:54.000
And when I went on stage, I drew a complete blank.
01:32:00.000
I started fucking with somebody in the audience.
01:32:20.000
And they was like, no, Daniel, he doesn't know.
01:32:26.000
And I was there almost every Wednesday for eight months.
01:32:45.000
But it was interesting to me because I didn't go from D.C. to mainstream white clubs.
01:33:06.000
And I'd be like, does anybody want a break for this shit?
01:33:09.000
And then I would go do jokes when I couldn't do comedy because I would do that until I started making a name for myself and never looked back.
01:33:16.000
New York is a great place to get your chops up.
01:33:38.000
And it was because my situation was different because I wasn't getting a lot of road work.
01:33:45.000
If I'm not getting a lot of road work, I might as well try to get more film and television stuff to move out to L.A. And then when I moved out here, I started getting more personal appearances.
01:33:55.000
So basically, I moved to L.A. and became a road comic.
01:33:59.000
And I wasn't mad at it because after you doing it for a while, you just want to, where the fuck can I make money doing this shit?
01:34:14.000
And until now, like I do 40 weekends a year, but with me having a young kid now, I'm trying to focus more on film and television and get some more stable shit because I'm getting a little, you know, it's getting burnt.
01:34:27.000
I hate to say this because I've said it too many times, but you should have a podcast.
01:34:47.000
I did radio, I did Hot 97, but I would love to do a podcast.
01:34:51.000
You could have the number one podcast in the country.
01:35:02.000
Shit, you could upload it literally from your iPhone or whatever phone you use.
01:35:06.000
You put a little microphone in the bottom of it.
01:35:09.000
And another reason why, because I always want to talk.
01:35:25.000
I'd say an early adopter, but it was already established.
01:35:32.000
And then Adam Carolla went from radio to podcast.
01:35:39.000
Was he a radio personality before he was doing the man show?
01:35:51.000
And then after that, he had a big-time syndicated morning radio show.
01:35:57.000
And then when he left his radio show and went to podcasts, he got this professional studio built and everything.
01:36:05.000
And I remember walking around the place going, look at this shit.
01:36:22.000
What are the people that, um, that, uh, that make that?
01:36:29.000
Taxidermy, but that's only when they put, like, the fake, when they put the fur over it and the fake eyeballs and shit.
01:36:39.000
That's what they call a European mount when they just have the skull and the antlers.
01:36:46.000
I'm cooking an elk roast tonight when I get out of here.
01:36:57.000
Yo, if I go tell my boys I'm eating elk, they be like, you change, son.
01:37:06.000
That motherfucker say he a vegan and he eating elk.
01:37:11.000
He trying to do them fucking $5 footlongs with Smollett.
01:37:24.000
No, because he's going to How does he feed himself?
01:37:29.000
The way he feeds himself, because he's still gonna have a base.
01:37:37.000
The motherfuckers would be like, fuck it, I would have did the same thing.
01:37:43.000
You said it might not be a good group of people the way you think it, but for him, it's a group of people.
01:37:50.000
There's going to be still some people that want to hear his side of the story.
01:37:59.000
And some people still hold on to like, well, maybe some people are just going to, you know, like, I refuse to believe it.
01:38:22.000
I think he was possibly paying them for something else.
01:38:33.000
Alright, I got some other ways we can make money.
01:38:53.000
Home to me, because when it first was put out like this, I wish the fuck somebody would try to violate my brother or disrespect my brother.
01:39:01.000
So I had that, and that's what's so fucked about the whole shit.
01:39:03.000
He had so many people that was riding for him for different reasons, man.
01:39:07.000
And it's like really selfish for you to not give a fuck about how you're going to hurt people.
01:39:14.000
Maybe he didn't realize how bad it would go wrong.
01:39:20.000
When you're saying throwing fucking bleach on me, you trying to trigger motherfuckers.
01:39:37.000
Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to getting...
01:39:54.000
I don't want to stop this podcast, but I gotta pee so bad.
01:40:24.000
There's a little extra, like, I think it's called butter.
01:40:43.000
How many people still come up to you about The Wire?
01:40:46.000
You know, the funny thing about the people that come up to me, The Wire, they identify by themselves as instant intellects.
01:40:53.000
Like, people, it's almost like they're cocky, like, I know you're on Chappelle and a couple other things, but you know where I really love you from?
01:41:05.000
I started, I think I got, I feel like it was six episodes and I watched three of them.
01:41:17.000
If you were a fan of The Wire, you've definitely been a fan of The Corner because so many of the actors came back to do The Wire.
01:41:23.000
After I watched The Wire, I wanted more and more content like that, so I went back and tried to watch it, but I actually enjoyed re-watching The Wire more.
01:41:31.000
I liked the show, and my character was supposed to build out more, but the Baltimore Tourism Board was upset that every time someone goes shooting Baltimore, they depict it as a It's a drug infested,
01:41:48.000
So that's why they went from, if you notice the shift in the writing, they went from the towers to the docks.
01:41:56.000
That's because they didn't just want to be in the hood like that.
01:42:09.000
I've tried to get Joe to watch it, but it's 10 years old now, so it's hard to get back into an old show.
01:42:14.000
But it's so good, so many people love it that way.
01:42:21.000
And when they brought me back to last season, I was nervous because HBO, the last season of any show on HBO, the writers get vindictive and they do nasty shit to the characters.
01:42:29.000
Like, to the last season of Oz, it was dudes getting raped on Oz that weren't even on Oz.
01:42:39.000
I didn't get raped the last season and it was fun.
01:42:43.000
I've got to settle down and choose it for a run.
01:42:49.000
You've just got to watch it because it's so good.
01:42:55.000
Not to spoiler alert it, but to follow the money starts with him.
01:43:02.000
My role would have been, like, if they didn't switch the tone, if they would have kept it in the towers, my shit was...
01:43:07.000
Because I was the connection between the streets and the politics.
01:43:14.000
And when I first got busted, when I was in the room, I was trying to...
01:43:19.000
And when I tell you, Daniel, he said, what's your name?
01:43:24.000
My name is Day-Day, but they mostly call me Damien, right?
01:43:34.000
And this is after I had already said how I would rob the whole crib because I thought he was a driver with me.
01:43:39.000
And that character should have been off by then.
01:43:45.000
I can honestly say whatever happens in my career, I was on two shows that go down in television history.
01:44:00.000
But for sure, Chappelle's Show is the greatest sketch comedy.
01:44:04.000
It's number one and number two is like that and in living color.
01:44:07.000
And you can pick your spot depending upon when you grew up and what it meant to you.
01:44:11.000
Because for a lot of people, in living color too, because it was on Fox, you didn't have to have cable to get it.
01:44:21.000
It was regular TV. But then it was new, too, because it was, for the most part, an all-black cast.
01:44:32.000
Everybody was making money and getting ass when that was out.
01:44:37.000
Sean was a DJ. I don't even think he knew how to DJ, but Kenan had that fucking vision, man.
01:44:52.000
Every comedian hoped that every year they would come around and say, they're looking for new people who live in color.
01:44:58.000
And every city was just busting doors down and trying to get an audition.
01:45:09.000
Me and a buddy of mine, my friend John Tobin, we were playing pool and we were watching the show.
01:45:17.000
When Fire Marshal Bill came out, I was like, what the fuck am I seeing?
01:45:23.000
He was, again, like, once you saw him, you just started laughing.
01:45:36.000
Paul Mooney wrote the Homie the Clown character.
01:45:51.000
Talk about how dope of a career that motherfucker had.
01:46:03.000
Like when Mike Tyson was talking about Jamie playing him.
01:46:37.000
I think he's got a whole bunch of what you've never seen before.
01:47:05.000
That's a tough thing to do, too, probably, to get that level as an international A-list superstar to still have the passion to do stand-up.
01:47:17.000
You've got to want to do it for some strange reason.
01:47:20.000
You let the motherfuckers peers in your group know I still got it, motherfucker.
01:47:25.000
Did you ever see that thing, it was about maybe a year or so ago, right when Bill Cosby was in the heat of all his trouble, where Eddie Murphy did some stand-up on a dais, like in front of a platform?
01:47:37.000
Yeah, that was for, it was an award he got at the Kennedy Center.
01:47:42.000
I can't remember exactly the name of it, but I remember, I think Dave was a part of that too.
01:47:54.000
You know, even though he's not using the stage platform, you know he sits around Or it's like, oh shit, that would be funny.
01:48:05.000
I mean, he had this whole routine about them taking Bill Cosby's doctorate degree away from him.
01:48:11.000
He had this whole bit about it when he was doing a Bill Cosby impression.
01:48:21.000
It was so powerful, I was like, god damn, we missed out on years of this.
01:48:48.000
You know you f***ed up when they want you to give your trophies back.
01:48:52.000
Man, we missed out on him hosting the Oscars, man.
01:48:55.000
Dude, I'm telling you, when you watch him do this routine, you go, oh my god, he's still got it.
01:49:02.000
I know, but he hasn't done any stand-up in forever, and it was like he's been doing it every day.
01:49:07.000
Yeah, but you gotta look at it when he came on like certain people are just naturals, bro.
01:49:11.000
But it's so sad that he hasn't been doing it, man.
01:49:17.000
You know, delirious to raw to nothing for all these years.
01:49:27.000
I mean, nothing in terms of his do-it-stand-up.
01:49:33.000
But he could have been one of the greatest of all time if he isn't already.
01:49:40.000
If you have a top 10, you got to kind of put Eddie Murphy in there.
01:49:52.000
Like, we got big names and stuff now, but Eddie Murphy was just like...
01:49:59.000
Like his special job, the next day everybody was quoting lines from it.
01:50:03.000
I watched it with my friend Jimmy and with a bunch of his friends.
01:50:09.000
And we were probably like 18 or something like that.
01:50:17.000
And I remember we were just like, everyone was stunned.
01:50:20.000
Everyone was sitting back on the couch going...
01:50:28.000
That was like what you said, when specials were really special.
01:50:32.000
It was a couple of them, and then whoever that person was, you knew you were going to see them on TV or somewhere for like the next two years.
01:50:39.000
Dude, I found out about Kinison from a girl that worked the front desk at a health club that it worked at.
01:50:46.000
I was going to say, what the fuck was he doing in there?
01:50:56.000
That was the Boston Athletic Club in South Boston.
01:51:03.000
Anyway, there's a girl who worked the front desk.
01:51:09.000
He did this joke about gay people, fucking dead people.
01:51:15.000
No, I don't know that, but Jess Sentence is 20 years old.
01:51:22.000
He did this bit about gay people fucking so and so.
01:51:26.000
Motherfucker couldn't even probably try to think about saying that on stage now.
01:51:32.000
But the way he said it, the way Kinnison said it, you know, she was saying it to me one way.
01:51:36.000
I went and got it on VHS after that to watch it.
01:51:40.000
But she was lying on her stomach in the parking lot to pretend to be a dead body because what had happened was these homosexual, in the Kinnison bit, these homosexual necrophiliacs were paying money to have a little bit of time undisturbed with the freshest male corpse.
01:51:55.000
So Kinnison lies down on stage and he's going, you imagine that?
01:51:58.000
The fact he said undisturbed, like, Can you imagine?
01:52:00.000
He's lying down on stage and he's like, wow, I can't believe this.
01:52:03.000
I guess I'm going to go to heaven now and be with Jesus.
01:52:14.000
Oh, I mean, life keeps fucking this even after you're dead.
01:52:19.000
So I'm watching this girl who's like this volleyball player, this big athletic girl.
01:52:29.000
She's like, life keeps fucking you in the ass even after you're dead!
01:52:33.000
And I was laughing so hard at what she was saying.
01:52:47.000
Yeah, and then like, you think he was really loud, but then he was loud, but he was saying shit, just like that bit.
01:52:53.000
You know how your brain has to be to even think of that shit?
01:52:56.000
Do you know he shared something with Roseanne Barr?
01:53:00.000
Brain injury, personality changing brain injury.
01:53:09.000
I mean, don't hit your kid with a car and hope they turn out to be a comedian.
01:53:17.000
With Roseanne, she was in a mental institute for nine months.
01:53:20.000
And with Kinison, they said there was an abrupt change between who he was and who he became.
01:53:25.000
He got hit by that car, and then from then on, he was this wild, reckless, don't-give-a-fuck guy, and this ranting, raging preacher.
01:53:49.000
Roseanne is, in my opinion, like having a person with a broken leg and expecting them to keep up on a hike.
01:54:00.000
And, you know, Adderall and marijuana and all these different things.
01:54:03.000
There's a lot of shit that's fucking with her head.
01:54:07.000
And they kind of knew that when they were making that show.
01:54:15.000
But it's also one of those things where, like, there's lovable parts about that show because of the fact that she's kind of loony, you know, and she's self-admittedly loony and self-admittedly medicated.
01:54:34.000
The most interesting person to watch is somebody you think you could probably do better or smarter than or any of that.
01:54:39.000
We'd like when successful people have a giant major flaw like a brain injury that makes them ramble about shit.
01:54:52.000
Now here comes the needle, the needle comes out and shit like injector.
01:54:56.000
Well, for Kinison, like Kinison was a, he was a groundbreaking comedian.
01:55:00.000
Like when I remember seeing him, and obviously I was only like 18 or 19 at the time, but I remember seeing him being like, oh, I didn't even know that this was comedy.
01:55:12.000
He did a show where he would call up, he would have a phone, and he would ask some guy in the audience if your heart was ever broken by a girl.
01:55:22.000
And he goes, oh, she fucked my friend, and she left me.
01:55:28.000
And he would get on the stage, hey, hey, Marcy?
01:55:36.000
And he would scream at this lady, and they had her over a speaker.
01:55:52.000
I was working as a security guard at Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts.
01:56:03.000
I didn't see the special, but I saw him perform.
01:56:09.000
Can you imagine how it felt to see him work the OR? Oh my god.
01:56:13.000
You know motherfuckers might be out in the hallway and shit trying to peek in?
01:56:17.000
That room started getting tight as a motherfucker.
01:56:24.000
The beret and the fucking child molester jacket.
01:56:30.000
It was like everybody wanted to be the loud fat guy with the crazy hair.
01:56:35.000
Yeah, there was a little bit of that after that.
01:56:36.000
He opened up a door for something that people loved.
01:56:40.000
There's something about him that was like you knew that he was like genetically fucked.
01:56:46.000
It wasn't a good specimen of manhood, but he was angry and smart and confident and fucking ferocious.
01:56:57.000
Part of the fact that he was physically vulnerable was part of what made him funny.
01:57:06.000
Yeah, well, the funny thing is about, he had some hilarious bits about being married, about the devil coming up to you when you're married.
01:57:23.000
He had this shit where he's like, he goes, look at my face, look at my face.
01:57:30.000
And you can't even try one of his jokes without doing his voice.
01:57:35.000
You can do Seinfeld and you kind of do a Seinfeld voice.
01:57:39.000
Even if you hear somebody do their voice even yell a little bit like, alright, calm down, Sam Kennison.
01:57:49.000
Yeah, he had some groundbreaking shit where you watched it and it was like you were on a ride.
01:57:56.000
Like all of a sudden there was this new thing going on.
01:58:06.000
They banned him from a lot of things by the time he got to a certain stage in his comedy career.
01:58:13.000
He had this bit about AIDS. It was so ruthless.
01:58:17.000
And he goes, everybody says, AIDS. You shouldn't make fun of AIDS, Sam.
01:58:36.000
And there was certain bits like that where people were like, cut!
01:58:41.000
Yo, right now, it would be like comedy police everywhere.
01:58:45.000
I mean, so much of his bits were punching down.
01:58:48.000
It was an argument that I got in with a guy who wrote a book on comedy, and he was telling me that comedy always has to punch up.
01:58:56.000
I go, Sam Kinison had one of the greatest bits of all time, two of the greatest bits of all time.
01:59:00.000
One, there was a dude who was getting fucked in the ass after he was dead.
01:59:05.000
Yo, I want another committee that nominated and made that one of all times.
01:59:12.000
And then the other one was the bit about watching someone...
01:59:19.000
And the other one was a bit about us watching a commercial to, will you please donate money to feed the starving children in Africa?
01:59:27.000
And he's saying, what just occurred to us, you know, like, there wouldn't be world hunger if you people would move where the food is!
01:59:45.000
And he's like, he goes, hey, we got deserts in America too!
01:59:55.000
He's like, we're going to take you where the food is!
02:00:01.000
He had a joke where he literally sang, see that?
02:00:05.000
You know what's going to be 100 years from now?
02:00:13.000
And you were crying, and it was the most ruthless and wrong thing that anybody could ever say.
02:00:17.000
You're talking about starving children, and it was punching down.
02:00:24.000
He was punching down with earthquake-like effects.
02:00:34.000
And it was one of the most punched down things you could ever do.
02:00:45.000
One, it's not really happening the way you're saying it.
02:00:55.000
And I don't think a joke could be too soon, but it never could be too soon for a funny observation.
02:01:03.000
We can go to a fucking funeral and be in that motherfucker on the inside laughing like crazy.
02:01:10.000
And everybody going to be talking about, I'll see you in heaven when you go to heaven, assuming that everybody's going to go to heaven.
02:01:20.000
One of the best lines, one of the best one-liners I ever heard was from Dave Foley.
02:01:25.000
I was on news radio with Dave Foley after Phil Hartman had gotten murdered by his wife and then his wife committed suicide.
02:01:39.000
And we all put on suits and shit and went to the Emmys.
02:01:46.000
And Dave Foley turns to look at us and goes, what the fuck does he have to do to win?
02:01:55.000
It was just one of those things, in the moment, our murdered friend just lost at the Emmys.
02:02:03.000
And he turns to us and goes, what the fuck does he have to do to win?
02:02:07.000
And me and Steven Rood were falling down in our chairs.
02:02:25.000
Because the minute you're saying it's too soon, somebody's gonna jump on that shit.
02:02:32.000
It's when you think about it, that's when it has to go down.
02:02:36.000
That's why I have this bit about that dude who was visiting that uncontacted tribe and trying to convert him to Jesus, and they shot him up with arrows.
02:02:46.000
It's a story that's on the news, and I made sure I made fun of it that day.
02:02:54.000
This guy visited an uncontacted tribe with Bibles.
02:03:12.000
Man, if it doesn't make my stomach rumble a little bit, a little uncomfortable, it's funny, but it's not your gut funny.
02:03:25.000
You know, one thing that I think we should really say is we should really thank all the real comedy club fans that are still coming out.
02:03:34.000
And one of the things that we're not getting, where guys like you and me perform, wild people, when we perform in front of comedy clubs, we're not getting a lot of pushback, man.
02:03:54.000
Like with me, it's weird because I'll do shows.
02:03:58.000
I'll do like an improv scene in Cleveland or some shit.
02:04:03.000
I dabble with little theaters and that's how I'm with a group of people, whatever.
02:04:06.000
And I was like, how many people follow me on social media?
02:04:08.000
And it's like, out of a room of like 500, it'll be like four people.
02:04:23.000
You know, like people that, whether it's through Instagram, it doesn't have to be there, but they know this dude and they want to see him.
02:04:31.000
And that's the best shit, the crowd that comes out to see you.
02:04:35.000
You know, it's one thing, and we can't take anything for granted.
02:04:39.000
It's one thing to, like, go up, like, at a night at the comedy store where you know it's going to be a million comics.
02:04:45.000
You know, it's going to be everybody on the stage.
02:04:49.000
And you perform it, but it's another thing knowing when the people that are there are there just to see you.
02:05:03.000
But when it's like your only option, for the most part, that's all I do now.
02:05:11.000
Yeah, but it's like you're in control of your own destiny, man.
02:05:14.000
I just think the only thing you're missing is the podcast.
02:05:24.000
He tells me like, we'll be talking and he'll be like...
02:05:29.000
He was like, yeah, but son, when are you going to do yours?
02:05:51.000
Give it to Donnell and I'll reimburse you on PayPal.
02:06:00.000
That's what you're gonna tell people, yeah, you mean Uncle PayPal.
02:06:15.000
It's like saying Uncle Joe's coming over, guys.
02:07:13.000
I guarantee your podcast will be number one in iTunes within a couple of months.
02:07:20.000
Probably the first episode will be close to the top.
02:07:36.000
Just get you either with a microphone and a friend or another comedian or whatever.
02:07:41.000
So do you think it's important to engage with other people or can you do it?
02:07:47.000
Ari Shafir does some of the best shit he ever does on his own.
02:07:53.000
He'll have a podcast that's two hours, but his introduction is an hour.
02:07:59.000
And it's some of my favorite stuff that he does.
02:08:12.000
I mean, you could probably be just as funny by yourself, but you're a funny dude to interact with.
02:08:21.000
And you could just have a friend that's also a comedian.
02:08:27.000
You could just be talking shit about things that are going on in the news or talking shit about life or talking shit about...
02:08:51.000
People said we look like the black and white version of each other.
02:09:05.000
I have 57% more Neanderthal than the average person.
02:09:18.000
But for a bow and arrow, that's when you really have to focus.
02:09:22.000
Whenever you say bow and arrow, I just immediately hear...
02:09:31.000
I think there's an honest way to earn your jokes.
02:09:43.000
If you told the average person, alright, you want chicken?
02:09:47.000
And just show him like six hens alive and he was like, you want chicken?
02:09:54.000
That motherfucking chicken would rock before a motherfucker was able to skin it.
02:10:05.000
Because the reality is we're still eating animals like crazy.
02:10:10.000
There's like a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percent.
02:10:12.000
So you gotta get somebody to do your dirty work.
02:10:15.000
So because someone's doing your dirty work, you don't think it's dirty.
02:10:19.000
This is the shit to get vegans caught out there.
02:10:24.000
This conversation will turn a motherfucker to a vegan.
02:10:28.000
There's a reason why so many people accept veganism.
02:10:33.000
It's because there's a lot of really good points.
02:10:43.000
But I don't hear people push that side of it As much as the dietary habits of it.
02:10:56.000
You know, on my side I hear like, it's carrots and this, but you don't hear about, no, it's more about the animals.
02:11:03.000
It really is all about the animals for a lot of them, and they're really right that it's better than the standard American diet.
02:11:11.000
That eating vegan food and healthy vegetable food all the time, as long as you do it correctly, is way better than the standard American diet.
02:11:29.000
This idea that it's not good for you is kind of crazy.
02:11:35.000
And you guys got that sorted out with the vegan diet, and some people have it sorted out with another diet.
02:11:44.000
And then when people have an idea of something that they're doing that they think everybody should do, then they start telling everybody they should do it.
02:11:52.000
Yeah, there's a couple of people to tell it, and then they listen.
02:12:04.000
Yeah, it was like one motherfuckin' turtle And I understand it reaching out, but now you can't fuck with plastic straws.
02:12:14.000
Yeah, there was someone, I retweeted their post, I wish I could remember who the fuck said it, but they were laughing about how you can't buy straws, but at Starbucks they still have those plastic lids.
02:12:28.000
And then you get a paper straw, and that shit gets all sloppy.
02:12:31.000
But I understand it, but somebody started it, and motherfuckers are...
02:12:36.000
Well, you know, they can make hemp plastic that's biodegradable.
02:12:39.000
They don't have to use the same stupid plastic that's made out of oil.
02:12:47.000
These people told me they gave you one of those books.
02:12:58.000
You know, in our business, people are always handing us...
02:13:11.000
That was that big-ass book he gave me at the comedy store.
02:13:20.000
This is the first time I saw something that made me look like, okay, this is the direction.
02:13:30.000
That war chest over there with that championship belt on the top of it.
02:13:56.000
He might have forgotten that no one has a microphone.
02:14:08.000
I don't want to leave you hanging, ladies and gentlemen, but...
02:14:10.000
Yeah, I'll be right back, but I'm stopping from this site.
02:14:36.000
I'll use the co-word Rogan and I'll get five bucks.
02:14:50.000
Shout out to Gino from LA Speedweed for hooking that up.
02:14:55.000
If you're in the middle of nowhere or you're in one of those states that's still clinging to prohibition, you don't understand.
02:15:16.000
There's places that we get arrested for all this.
02:15:29.000
These other states, their future, they need to catch up.
02:15:40.000
Yo, this shit right here, LA would make you a snob, son.
02:15:44.000
Yo, LA, when you go back to the West Coast, I mean, any other coast from LA, when you go back, people are like, I got weed, and you'll be like this, what strand?
02:15:54.000
And they're like, what the fuck do you mean what strand?
02:15:57.000
I got some loud, I got some fire, I got some gas.
02:16:03.000
Yeah, but you can't underestimate weed in some places.
02:16:06.000
One time Ari and Joey Diaz and I, we got cocky.
02:16:09.000
We were doing a show in Philly, and they gave us some weed.
02:16:19.000
We thought it was going to be like low-grade weed because it's in Philadelphia.
02:16:24.000
But the guy got a hold of some OG Kush strains from like 2001 and brought it back to Philly, and we were crippled.
02:16:33.000
But you guys had to be the type of company that you knew you would have to find the best shit.
02:16:37.000
Well, you didn't know it was going to be that good.
02:16:40.000
If I knew it was California weed, I would have backed off.
02:16:48.000
I wonder who's going to be the next gangsta state.
02:17:09.000
Yeah, you gotta think about the type of friends you have that would give you bad weed.
02:17:15.000
I got to be for this chick at this comedy club down in Tampa or something.
02:17:23.000
So she gave me this joint and she said, yeah, it's some shit weed, but here you go.
02:17:45.000
But I'm like this, yo, why would I want to smoke some weed that you just told me was garbage?
02:18:00.000
They're making some of those hard to get off now.
02:18:10.000
There's three different ones, three different colors.
02:18:41.000
Why does the little battery look like it changed?
02:18:46.000
It screws into the bottom of the base of the battery.
02:18:53.000
Damn, it feels like you're in a hospital when you get out of here, man.
02:19:48.000
They will let you fly out of LAX. Yeah, I'm waiting for one of you motherfuckers to get caught with that because you're the third person.
02:19:53.000
Not caught, but you're the third person to say how easy it is.
02:20:04.000
Yeah, if you land in Delaware, they'll put you in a hole.
02:20:16.000
I think it's legal in nine states and maybe a few more medically.
02:20:29.000
So it's Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado.
02:20:45.000
I think it passed when we were there, but they might not have their stores open yet sort of thing.
02:20:49.000
Ohio just passed medical and they just are now opening stuff up.
02:20:59.000
Yo, I feel like something else needs to go in here, Joe.
02:21:36.000
No, I like to have, like you said, two puffs of weed.
02:21:48.000
I was like, when you hit me with a blunt, when I first walked out, I was like, yo, Joe, slow down, man.
02:22:00.000
When Charlie Murphy got me on them the first time.
02:22:04.000
And then I was like, this is an interesting experience to be high and then nicotine high at the same time.
02:22:15.000
And then I didn't do it again for a long time until I smoked with Dave and John Mayer.
02:22:30.000
These vapor shit that like squirt off, squirt out a...
02:22:41.000
You can tell when he got his aromatherapy thing in his head.
02:22:46.000
And then he'll just come by you and be like, so how's everything, right?
02:22:51.000
It's real, but he's supposed to give me one of the motherfucking machines.
02:23:09.000
What's that smell that you gotta be careful of?
02:23:17.000
It's like a type of oil that people were wearing, like a lot of hipsters were wearing.
02:23:31.000
I have some lotion, I don't have it with me, that's organic with some magical elements.
02:23:39.000
So what is John Mayer trying to do with this aromatherapy wand that he's waving around everywhere?
02:23:44.000
I think he just wants people's sinuses to be open, man.
02:23:52.000
But when he has it, he's like a different person.
02:24:00.000
And he brings it around people that have been drinking, so now you gotta mix the smell of fucking rum with his goddamn lavender machine.
02:24:07.000
And he only has one machine, so once he gets you addicted to it, you gotta chase him.
02:24:19.000
I just don't want him to have me chasing him for smells.
02:24:22.000
Because the last two times I've seen him, I was like, John, man, what's up with the fucking vapor thing?
02:24:36.000
Maybe I can get them to sponsor my new podcast.
02:24:56.000
Ari Shafir, when he went to Asia, he went on a walkabout for like, what is it, three months?
02:25:01.000
Ari Shafir vanished off the face of the earth, disconnected from social media, from his phone, from his email, everything.
02:25:11.000
And just traveled around for months and months and months and months and months.
02:25:17.000
He came back after three, four months and it just picked right up where it left before.
02:25:28.000
I gotta do it, and it's like, I think people want me to do it.
02:25:44.000
Say, little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to.
02:26:18.000
Say, little bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wanted to.
02:27:11.000
But my friend keeps telling me, he says, Donnell, fuck that.
02:27:22.000
I like the fact that I know motherfuckers have got wolves.
02:27:36.000
The thing about your podcast, too, is with technology today, you could literally do all of it on a phone.
02:27:44.000
If you feel like fucking around for a little bit, getting your feet wet, you could do everything from your phone.
02:27:58.000
Just if I've recorded, I know there may be an app, but if I've recorded my voice memo, is it important just to have my voice, or it has to be on a certain...
02:28:11.000
Well, the voice recorder, like on a phone, on an iPhone, the voice notes, I have made at least a dozen podcasts.
02:28:24.000
Like me and Tony Hinchcliffe would be on a plane.
02:28:28.000
We just start talking shit and drinking cocktails and laughing.
02:28:30.000
So the more important thing is the conversation.
02:28:37.000
Like right now, we have a real professional setup.
02:28:46.000
But as long as you put the effort to give people a good, solid product, occasionally you can have one where you're just talking on a phone.
02:28:55.000
People will know, oh, these guys are on a plane.
02:29:05.000
The thing is, like, if you just started doing that, people would love it.
02:29:09.000
And then let it just sort of figure its own, you know, as it gets bigger, figure its own path.
02:29:17.000
You just need one of them little Zoom recorders.
02:29:29.000
With me, while I was probably somewhat hesitant, I'm like, man, everybody got a goddamn podcast.
02:29:37.000
If you're with the right network of people, and you're with the right network of people, people recognize.
02:29:42.000
If you're in the network of people, we were talking about you did Theo's show, you do my show, you do Joey Diaz's show.
02:29:55.000
You do their show, and then everybody knows, oh, okay.
02:29:57.000
And then it's all in the same group of people, and everybody gets a bump.
02:30:03.000
As long as everybody is succeeding and everybody's doing well and there's more and more podcasts.
02:30:07.000
And if I say, hey, you should see this guy's podcast.
02:30:13.000
For all the black people that are listening right now, could you please take a note of what Joe just said for the last minute?
02:30:31.000
Everybody who's, even the people that are making more money, everything's better for everybody.
02:30:41.000
Man, I'm telling you, I'm with you 100% on that.
02:30:53.000
Because when you're struggling, you feel isolated and you feel alone.
02:30:58.000
And one of the things about comedians is, we've had this conversation many times where we try to figure out what the number is.
02:31:04.000
I don't know what the number is, but it might be less than a thousand on the whole planet.
02:31:09.000
On the whole planet Earth, there's seven billion people.
02:31:13.000
And I'm probably being real generous when I say that.
02:31:17.000
If I run into a dude like you or any other real legit comedian, that is a rare human being.
02:31:35.000
Imagine if that alarm went off and I woke up to pee.
02:31:56.000
I was making a point, not being funny, but making a point.
02:31:58.000
And I was like, black folk that are listening right now, listen to the strategy and listen to what he just said.
02:32:06.000
It has nothing to do with anything other than community.
02:32:10.000
All the other shit that's in your head in terms of competitiveness is in your own head.
02:32:18.000
You're there for 15 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever your set is, that's yours.
02:32:25.000
And we should support each other because there's not many of us.
02:32:32.000
But that is one of the troubling factors in a lot of communities like to support...
02:32:51.000
They feel like there's not enough for everybody.
02:32:53.000
Everybody had this feeling for the longest time that there's not enough for everybody.
02:32:56.000
And I think that's a crazy way to think of things.
02:32:57.000
There's There's more than enough for everybody.
02:33:01.000
How many fucking people do you need in your audience?
02:33:04.000
You should realize if you really enjoyed doing stand-up, you'd want these people to become fans of stand-up.
02:33:09.000
So you'd want to tell them about all these other comedians.
02:33:13.000
Tell them about, you know, fill in the blank, Tony Hinchcliffe.
02:33:21.000
Yeah, but motherfuckers, I'm telling you, certain communities, they just don't want to...
02:33:24.000
They don't want to tell motherfuckers to be just on their self and themselves so much that they don't want to help.
02:33:33.000
Like, the conversation you're having with me right now, it's simple for you because, you know, those are the type of friends and those are the type of people you deal with.
02:33:46.000
Like, I look at it like people I hang with, Chappelle and these other guys, like, I went around some powerful motherfuckers, but we're friends first and foremost.
02:33:59.000
It is a tough one, but it's just a matter of a shift in the way you view things.
02:34:18.000
When you do a show with someone who's a murderer, a murderer, and they go on in front of you, you're way better off if you're laughing.
02:34:24.000
When you go on that stage, you're way better off if you're loose.
02:34:28.000
But if you're tense, like I told you, I bombed with Jim Brewer.
02:34:42.000
It's hard to get away from whatever your first experience is gonna be.
02:34:52.000
Yeah, like I was supposed to do 45 minutes, I got off stage at 35. But you went back in the gym!
02:34:58.000
Yeah, but the thing is, like, Jim and I have always been friends, and I've been friends with a lot of people that made me eat shit, going on after them.
02:35:05.000
The thing about it is that, like, and even after all these years, I feel genuinely, genuinely honored to be a part of this group of people.
02:35:16.000
Because we do something that is my favorite thing to watch.
02:35:19.000
That's a group of people, but like you say, it's like a limited circle of like, there's no other way to say it but real motherfuckers.
02:35:31.000
You know, it's some motherfuckers like, you're like, they say somebody's name, and you're like, it's okay.
02:35:46.000
I tell you, a couple weeks ago when I was with Dave, and he said, comedians, it's time to grab our balls.
02:35:51.000
Because now more than ever, we're the only people that we have to talk about what's fucked up in the world.
02:36:05.000
It's too confusing right now because it's too dangerous to have any controversial ideas.
02:36:21.000
And normally, I'm telling you, if you have a...
02:36:28.000
If you own it, they know what you meant to say.
02:36:36.000
Someone was asking me, why do you think Charlie Sheen never got Me Too'd?
02:36:43.000
The guy was on ABC Good Morning America talking about smoking rocks.
02:36:51.000
Because they didn't want him to have another show.
02:36:56.000
If he would have got Me Too'd, he would have been in the headlines, and he would have found the show somewhere.
02:37:02.000
Collectively, there was a period of time where Hollywood lost their fucking mind, and they were giving out these deals where if you got a certain amount of episodes, they signed you up for 100 episodes.
02:37:10.000
And that's what happened with Anger Management, the Charlie Sheen show.
02:37:14.000
Charlie Sheen made more money off that show than he did even off Three and a Half Men.
02:37:29.000
They used to sign these shows and they would sign these shows in the anticipation of it being a huge success.
02:37:43.000
I don't know how it's structured, but apparently the point is that they sign up for a giant number of shows.
02:37:48.000
Not 13, not 22. They sign you up for a giant number of shows.
02:37:53.000
And by doing that, somehow or another, right after Charlie Sheen had his whole scandal leaving two and a half men, he went on to make way more money than ever before.
02:38:21.000
I don't think I've ever had a crack conversation with anybody.
02:38:28.000
Nobody's like, yo, last night was a little weird.
02:38:33.000
You got too many beers, too many glasses of wine.
02:38:38.000
Yeah, there's a certain darkness given into that glass dick.
02:38:41.000
Once you start going down that road, you know you've made a choice.
02:38:46.000
You know, there's no critical thinking involved there.
02:38:52.000
I had a friend who did a lot of crack back in New York.
02:38:57.000
He would have to drink like 40 ounces of malt liquor to try to calm down because he'd be just so jacked up from the crack.
02:39:04.000
I had a crackhead friend, and I was like, I gave him so many opportunities just to be cool, and he gave me a crackhead experience once.
02:39:16.000
We was waiting for McDonald's, and then we gave him the money.
02:39:20.000
We were like, we know you're a crackhead, but don't crackhead us.
02:39:25.000
Go outside of our community, but like here, don't do that, bro.
02:39:31.000
Brilliant, brilliant guy, but he had just like mental problems and he just needed to get high all the time.
02:39:43.000
It was a real one for him because he was brilliant.
02:39:48.000
But he was also homeless half the time I knew him, you know?
02:39:59.000
He would just vanish and disappear and do drugs for a few days and then come back.
02:40:05.000
Like you could say to him, 99 times 54 times 6 minus 5 divided by 3. When he was sober.
02:40:21.000
But he couldn't manage his own brain to the point where he could stay away from hard drugs.
02:40:40.000
Like, not too many motherfuckers come back from that.
02:40:46.000
I mean, it is possible, but you need some help.
02:40:49.000
That's one of the reasons why that 12-step shit works.
02:40:54.000
It's like you're going to have to somehow or another think there's something more important than what you're doing, otherwise you're never going to stop this shit.
02:41:00.000
Yeah, but those people become like big sex addicts and shit too.
02:41:06.000
Anybody you know that used to be heroin addicts, they want to fuck everything.
02:41:51.000
And I know there's a reason why I bumped into you in the show.
02:41:57.000
We've been talking about doing this for a long time.
02:41:59.000
But I don't, like, when I see you in the comedy club, I'm like this, yo, that motherfucker working, I'm working.
02:42:12.000
I'm like, but when I see, I be like, didn't work.
02:42:21.000
They was like, yo, this might be my week at getting shows, son.
02:42:25.000
They was like, yo, you still cooking show, right?
02:42:29.000
Burt was like, I think I just gave my show to Donnell, right?
02:42:32.000
Then I come here, then Joe Rogan's like, yo, Donnell, let's do a show.
02:42:53.000
Congratulations on all your success and however many years you've been doing it.
02:42:57.000
Because when I was first introduced, I knew Fear Factor.
02:43:12.000
I was like, that's the TV nigga right there, right?
02:43:17.000
And then I was like, that nigga do stand-up, too?
02:43:20.000
And I was like, all right, but he a podcast nigga, right?
02:43:23.000
And then when I saw you do your show, I was like, he'll go hard, motherfucker, son.
02:43:28.000
I appreciate your work ethics in everything you do.
02:43:33.000
I appreciate your perspective on comedy, your approach, your ethics, the whole deal, man.
02:43:39.000
I appreciate you being around the Comedy Store too.