- I speak Spanish, too. I'm fluent in Spanish.
I don't tell people, though. I like to surprise them.
Because one of the perks about being Black
and being fluent in Spanish is occasionally
you get to hear other Spanish people
say racist shit about you right to your face.
(crowd laughing)
That's always a good experience.
Sometimes it can get weird.
Like one time I was in a Uber,
and the driver was on the phone,
and he said something about me in Spanish.
So he got off the phone.
I tried to let him know like,
"Yo, I understood what you said about me."
And then he tried to pretend
that he didn't understand Spanish.
(crowd laughing)
I was like, "But I just heard you.
I heard you speaking Spanish.
And you're wearing three rosaries.
(crowd laughing)
I know you understand Spanish, Alejandro."
(crowd laughing)
Thank you. (chuckling) (crowd laughing)
I'm in a good mood, too.
Like, a lot of people...
I'm always in a good mood. That's kinda my thing.
Like, I'm always happy. I'm always very positive.
People think it's weird.
A lot of people ask me like, "Yeah, you're never angry.
Are you in therapy?
Like, how come you're never angry?"
I don't do therapy.
This is how I deal with my aggression.
You guys can try it if you like.
Before I leave my house I like to listen to
at least 45 minutes of gangster rap music.
That's Black people therapy.
That's how we work on our issues.
Something about gunshots and police sirens
is like a white noise machine for us.
(crowd laughing)
Makes us feel centered, you know?
And I like old school rap. That's my favorite.
I like old school, like Tupac. He's my favorite rapper.
I love Tupac.
He's been dead over 20 years,
but his music still makes you
relate to things you never been through.
Stuff you never experienced,
you hear Tupac talk about it, you're like, "Yeah.
I know what you mean, Tupac.
(crowd laughing) I get it."
My favorite Tupac song is Dear Mama.
Dear Mama, that's a song he writes to his mom.
In it he got a line where he says to his mom,
he says, "Even as a crack fiend, mama,
you always were a Black queen, mama."
- [Crowd Member] Woo!
- And I don't think my mom's ever tried crack.
(crowd laughing)
But that did not stop me from writing
those lyrics on her Mother's Day card.
(crowd laughing)
Tupac had me inspired.
I was like, "Wait til you read this, ma.
This is from the heart. (crowd laughing)
I mean this." (crowd laughing)
I like to joke around with my mom like that,
because she doesn't understand.
My mom speaks Spanish. That's her language.
Because she was born in the Dominican Republic,
but she moved to this country as a teenager,
so she's been living in the United States
for over 45 years now.
Still don't speak a word of English.
People think that's lazy.
I think that takes skill. (crowd laughing)
You know how committed you gotta be
to live somewhere for 45 years
and not pick up on a single word?
(crowd laughing)
That takes Navy SEAL level training.
(crowd laughing)
And I don't know why we say that to immigrants anyway.
That's what we expect from immigrants.
We're like, "If you're gonna move to this country
you gotta learn our language and adapt to our culture."
We say that, America.
The country that won't adapt to the metric system.
(crowd laughing)
The international unit for measuring, we're like,
"Yeah, we're not gonna learn that."
And the rest of the world, they try to convince us.
You ever traveled abroad?
They try to talk you into it.
They're like, "Look, kilometers is a lot easier."
And we're like, "Yeah, but we already made our signs.
I'm sorry. (crowd laughing)
We can't change. You guys gotta change. I'm sorry."
I think not adapting to society
is the most American thing you could do.
And I'm a proud American.
I was born and raised in New York City,
and if I ever had to live in another country
I ain't adapting to shit. (crowd laughing)
I'm bringing New York City with me.
I've got a New York attitude.
I can't live anywhere else.
I could be in the nicest place.
I could be in Canada.
I get on the train pissed off for no reason.
(crowd laughing)
Like, "Yo, why nobody masturbating in here?
(crowd laughing)
Nobody masturbates on your trains? I don't feel safe.
Take me home. I don't like it here.
(crowd laughing)
What are you guys hiding? I don't like it."
(crowd laughing)
I think that's one of the perks
about being from New York City.
A lot of people don't like New Yorkers.
It's not that we're bad people.
It's just we deal with so many weirdos on a daily basis
it's tough for us to care about
what the rest of the country cares about.
Like, I travel now. I'll go all over the country.
There's places in this country
people are arguing about gender pronouns.
That's ridiculous.
People will argue with you about how you wanna be addressed.
That's crazy.
In New York, nobody's arguing about that.
"You want me to call you 'they?' I'll call you 'they.'"
There's a crack head in my neighborhood
I gotta call Beyoncé.
(crowd laughing)
That's what he go by. He told us one day at the bus stop.
He was like, "Yo, my name is Beyoncé."
And then he started peeing on the bus.
Everybody was like, "Oh, Beyoncé, Lemonade. We got it."
(crowd laughing)
We don't got time to argue with you.
We gotta go to work. This is New York City.
(crowd laughing)
I'll call you whatever you wanna be called.
One time it got awkward.
One time this dude wanted me to call him King.
He told me his name was King Jonathan.
And I had no problems. I was like, "I'll call you King."
But I wanted to make sure.
I was like, "Are you sure that your first name is King?"
He got upset that I even questioned him.
He was like, "Don't worry if my name is King, okay?
I think a king is somebody who knows their worth,
and I know how much I'm worth,
so I consider myself a king."
I was like, "That's fine.
But Uber says I need to look for a Jonathan.
(crowd laughing)
I don't know if you wanna send them an email
and let them know about your kingdom,
but they probably don't know,
because you drive a Toyota Corolla."
(crowd laughing)
That's why I love being from this city.
A lot of people complain about
the cost of living here, which is true.
Cost of living is very high. Rent is very high.
But that's one of the benefits
of having a high cost of living.
Nobody judges you by what you do here.
If you survive in New York,
in New York people kinda just encourage it.
Like, "A'ight. Get it how you could get it," you know?
Like, there's this dude on my block that sells waters.
He sells those dollar Poland Spring bottles of water.
He's been selling waters for like five years.
I never bought a water from him.
I always kinda just walk right by him.
The other day I was walking by and he stopped me.
He was like, "Hey, man. Do you live on this block?"
And I was like, "Yeah, I live right up the street."
And he was like,
"Then you should definitely buy a water from me,
because I could easily be on your corner selling drugs."
I was like, "You easily could be selling drugs?
(crowd laughing)
Then you should be selling drugs."
(crowd laughing)
Like, this is New York City.
You gotta have ambition to make it in New York City.
(crowd laughing)
Can't pay your rent with waters.
(crowd laughing)
I'm at a good place, too.
I'm trying to figure it out right now.
I just turned 29. I'm 29.
No kids. Not married.
My family thinks right now's the perfect time
to start thinking about having a kid,
because I come from a very traditional family.
Like, my grandparents,
they just celebrated 59 years of being together.
(crowd cheering) Yeah, I know. I know.
And they're Hispanic, so...
They're thinking about getting married.
(crowd laughing)
My grandmother might be the one, you know?
(crowd laughing)
This is nice.
(crowd laughing)
(chuckling)
I'm 29 with no kids, but to be honest,
none of my friends have kids neither.
I think millennials just decided we not gon have kids.
We're like, "Yeah, society should just end after us."
Like, it's been... (crowd cheering)
It's been a good run.
We're like, "This is it." (crowd cheering)
It's really... It's gone on long enough.
We'll make up any excuse not to have a kid.
You ever spoke to a millennial about having a kid?
They get offended. (chuckling)
They take it as an offense.
Starting a family's offensive to them.
My boy. I was talking to my boy the other day.
He was like, "Ian, with everything going on today,
I don't know if I could bring a baby into this world."
I'm like, "What do you mean?"
He's like, "You don't watch the news?
This country could go to war at any minute."
I was like, "Yeah, but things gotta get pretty out of hand
before they consider sending your baby off to war.
(crowd laughing)
What exactly are you worried about?"
(crowd laughing)
And my dad gets mad at me,
because he was 26 when he had his first kid.
I'm 29. No kid. No sign of having a kid.
He's like, "Ian, you don't get tired of working all day
and not having something to come home to?
Like, as a man, don't you want something at home
waiting for you when you get home,
a reason to come home after work?"
And I was like, "Yeah, that's why I got Amazon Prime."
(crowd laughing)
I don't know if y'all know this,
but for $125 a year you could get
the same happiness a kid gives you
delivered on your doorstep in 48 hours.
(crowd laughing)
That's a good deal.
And I think I hate when people try,
especially older parents,
they try and put pressure on you to settle down.
I think they forget that dating today
is way harder than it was back in the day.
I mean meeting is easier today, but back in the day...
You ever stop to think when your parents were dating?
You could do whatever you want.
Nobody would know.
There's no cell phones
with HD cameras to capture everything.
You could be married, have another family right across town.
Nobody asks no questions.
It was no proof.
Even if you got caught red-handed,
somebody happened to have a big ass camera on them
and they took a picture of you,
you'd have two weeks before that picture even got developed.
(crowd laughing)
That's why when older men try to talk to me about dating
I get upset because I'm like,
"Sir, you don't gotta face the challenges
that young men gotta face in modern dating."
Like, you never had to video chat
with your girlfriend at a funeral
because she didn't believe that you were at a funeral.
(crowd laughing)
What type of woman doesn't believe you
when you tell her that somebody died
and you gotta go to their funeral?
(crowd laughing)
And the crazy part is you really weren't going to a funeral.
(crowd laughing)
So now you gotta pull up
to a random funeral home on your way to the club
so you can take a picture by the corpse
and save your relationship. (crowd laughing)
Y'all wasn't dealing with that back then.
And the issue is millennials.
We put a lot of pressure on the people we date.
That's why nobody settling down.
We expect a lot from our partners.
I read a article the other day that said
that the number one turnoff for women right now
is men with bad grammar.
Which goes to show you how much more
sophisticated women are than men.
The fact that you wouldn't sleep with a guy
because he has bad grammar.
That would be like a guy not having sex with a girl
because she has... (chuckling)
Um... (crowd laughing)
I can't even think of a real reason
not to sleep with somebody.
(crowd laughing)
Guys don't care about grammar.
I asked one of my boys.
I was like, "Yo, you care about a woman's grammar?"
He was like, "What do you mean, like her period?"
I was like, "Never mind." (crowd laughing)
Guys, I'm Ian Lara.
You guys have been dope. Thank you.
(upbeat music)