- "You're American, I'm American.
"Well, just, hell, we're all American.
"Can't we just be all Americans?"
Yeah, we are.
We all Americans,
but we live in two different Americas.
That's what it is.
People forget that.
And I don't think everybody
that doesn't understand what we go through
is necessarily racist or bigoted.
That's a far jump.
There's a lot of folks that just straight up don't know
what it's like, and you gotta educate them.
You gotta educate them
on the kind of America you live in.
I go to Best Buy and give a dude some straightening.
(audience laughs)
Straighten his ass out, yeah.
I'm straightening.
Dude at Best Buy gonna decide
I don't need a bag with my purchase.
(audience laughs)
"You just have an iPhone case.
"I figure you can just pop that open and..."
No, I ain't popping shit.
You put it in the bag.
(audience laughs)
I need that in a bag.
"What do you need a bag for?
"I don't understand why you need a bag.
"It's wasteful.
"Recycle.
"Don't you care about the earth?"
I go, "Sir, this has nothing to do with the earth.
"I'm a Black man in America,
"I gotta leave this store with a bag, bruh."
(audience applauding)
It's about safety.
I'm Black.
I don't get the luxury of just walking out
with shit in my hand.
That is a roll of the dice.
That is a horrifying day.
No, not only do I need the bag, bitch,
I need that receipt.
(audience cheering)
And staple it to the outside.
I don't want a receipt in my hand.
You staple my receipt to the outside
like Chinese carry out
and I hold it up in the air.
I "Lion King."
I hakuna matata an iPhone case out of Best buy.
For me, in my standup,
if I haven't made you uncomfortable
somewhere in there then I don't think I've done my job.
And I'm not there to make you squirm and feel,
but this is gonna be a real conversation
about stuff that's happening in the world.
Now, there might be a couple goofy ass jokes
somewhere in that performance,
but somewhere in there there needs to be something
that speaks to an honest observation about the world.
And I don't think every comedian sets out
to change the world, and politics, and Blackness,
but even if it's just about relationships
it's still your truth.
You've experienced something
and you're reporting it back to the people.
And to me, that is the type of comedy
that will always fly the furthest and the highest
is comedy that is a reflection of the human condition.
(smooth jazz music)
- The role of Black comedy
with what's happening in the world today
is no different than the role of Black comedy
from the beginning.
It's all about telling the real story from our perspective.
What better place to be able to tell your story
than on a stand up stage with freedom of speech
and letting it just go?
- As a comic, I've been there before
where I needed to go to the club.
So if something crazy happened in the news
where I was like, "Yo, I don't know how to deal with this,"
for me, right away I'm going to the comedy club.
And I don't care if it's just for me to do a set
or if I'm coming there just to watch
some other cats do they thing,
because I need the laugh.
- Redd Foxx said it to Malcolm X.
You gotta do something to get people excited and engaged,
and a sense of humor is the best thing
that everybody can meet at one place.
You can laugh people into some truth,
and you can hit them with some reality
of what's gong on in the world.
- Sometimes I like to have fun and it's all fun shit,
and sometimes it's like, "You know what?
"This is the fucked up shit that's going on in the world."
And a lot of times when you're a Black comic
and you're...
And I'm mainstream comedy,
sometimes white people don't wanna hear that shit, you know?
Or they tune in when it feels comfortable for them.
- Comedy, especially in the Black community,
truth to power.
I always said we the third eye.
We right below the pastor.
There's Jesus, it's your clergy, then it's comedians.
- I'm not preaching.
I'm a stand up comic.
My first priority is to entertain you.
If I'm making you laugh
and I'm educating you at the same time, brilliant.
So I talk about police brutality in my set,
but I do it in a way you don't even realize
I'm talking about police brutality,
and then you go, "Oh shit."
I don't care about Starbucks banning wifi for porn.
That doesn't interest me.
That's for white dudes.
(audience laughs)
You know it's white dudes.
Black guys get arrested just for not buying coffee.
Can you imagine if they got their dicks out?
(audience laughs)
"I shot the penis!
"The penis was resisting!"
(audience laughs)
- We have always, from the Richard Pryors
to the Dick Gregory, God rest his soul,
made society see what they was doing to us in a comical way.
And laugh about it to keep from crying about it
or be invalid about it.
So, I take that on.
I take on that responsibility very serious.
I have to talk to my people and say,
"Yeah, this happened to me too."
- I hate to see any baseball player having trouble.
That's a great sport for my people.
That is the only sport in the world
where a negro can shake a stick at a white man
and won't start no riot.
(audience laughs)
- Dick Gregory represented us
not just as a stand up comedian,
but as a civil rights activist.
Dick Gregory spoke when I was a freshman in college.
The way he schooled me, Medgar Evers schooled him,
and it was all about doing the right thing for all, not one.
- [Dick] Great men have said before
that a soldier can fight for his country
against another country,
but it takes something like a super special man
to fight his country when it is wrong.
- If you're a Black entertainer and you talk about race,
you're gonna take a hit.
Like, it's just natural,
because there's always gonna be backlash.
Same thing with, like, Kaepernick.
Like, white people don't want to see you
talking about the issues, they just wanna laugh.
You're just a comedian, just stick to your day job.
I felt more connected to artists that use their platform,
especially if you get the opportunity
to be in white rooms, on white television,
in front of white people,
especially white people that generally don't see you,
you should be talking about the issues,
but at the same time you need to stay funny.
And I think that's what separates a great like Dick Gregory
is he was able to political and still funny,
because at the end of the day people wanna laugh.
- You can always laugh at problems that's right.
Everyone in the whole world knows this is wrong,
so then you can make humor out of this
in a manner like you're enlightening people
on just what's going on.
- It's, like, one of the last bastions of free speech
that we have is through comedy.
You know, we used to have the last poets.
You know, Nikki Giovanni.
We don't have poets anymore that are famous,
poets that can speak for us, you know?
"This revolution will not be televised," and all that.
We don't have anybody to hold our fists up.
The only people we have left is comics.
We won't be censored, we don't give a shit.
La Wanda Page had a lot to say that people don't realize.
Marsha Warfield.
- I really like watching the news though,
'cause on the news they have their own language.
It's almost like they're talking in code.
See, they even have a code word
for Black people on the news.
It's "youth."
"A 35 year old Detroit youth
(audience laughs)
"was today shot and killed by a 14 year old Utah man."
(audience laughs)
(audience clapping)
Think about it, think about it.
- Something that comes readily to mind,
the cover of "Bicentennial N*****"
has Pryor in a chain of different Pryors, right?
In different forms.
He's a boxer, he's a preacher, he's a business man.
And the figure holding the chain is Uncle Sam to the corner.
And so, that in itself physically back in the day
when album covers were also part of the humor,
it's already performing a definite critique
of the celebration of America in this "Bicentennial"
and the persistence of enslavement
in different forms in 1976.
- Richard Pryor is easily the best to ever do it.
Richard Pryor had a line,
"You go to jail looking for justice
"and all you find is just us."
No white person can absorb that
the same as a Black person.
Like, a Black person is like, "Yes, thank you for saying...
"Exactly."
It's a moment of truth for Black people
and it's a moment of realization for white people
who are getting for a the first time,
a lot of them for the first time,
to see the world through a Black man's eyes.
- Police got a choke hold they use out here though, man.
They choke n****s to death.
That mean you be dead when they through.
Did you know that?
Wait, the n****s going, "Yeah, we knew."
The white folk, "No, I had no idea."
Yeah, two grab your legs, one grab your head.
Snap.
"Oh, shit, he broke.
(audience laughs)
"Can you break a n*****?
"Is it okay?
"Let's check the memo.
"Yep, page eight, you can break a n*****, right there.
"See?
"Let's drag him downtown.
"Okay."
- It's the window into Black life,
Black opinions, Black thoughts.
You know, you look at somebody like Chris Rock
and some of the brilliant shit he said.
White people wouldn't even understand some of this shit,
at least politically, if he didn't say it.
(Lil Rel laughs)
- The white man thinks he's losing the country.
"Affirmative action, and illegal aliens,
"and we're fucking losing the country."
Losing?
Shut the fuck up.
White people ain't losing shit.
If y'all losing, who's winning?
- Then you got a guy like Katt Williams,
who I don't think Katt will ever get the credit he deserves
for being as smart as he is.
He said something back in "The Pimp Chronicles Part One"
that I wrote a thematic essay on and I got an A on it
because he said something about the war.
- You don't believe we gangsters?
Tell me what the Iraqi uniform look like.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
(audience laughs)
'Cause you ain't never seen that motherfucker.
We ain't killing they army, nigga, we killing them.
We over there killing niggas in sweatpants,
tank tops, flip flops, and a cowboy hat.
You shouldn't have been talking shit.
- Then I thought about it.
I was like, "I don't know what that uniform looks like,"
so he's right.
We really are killing people and we don't care
because they don't classify them as people,
they classify them as insurgents.
That's brilliant.
- I'ma be honest with you white guys.
You guys are...
Don't nobody trust y'all now.
(audience laughs)
Don't nobody trust you.
And it used to be, like,
the crazy looking white dude nobody trusts.
A white n**** in khakis, I'm getting the fuck out.
Do you hear me?
(audience laughs)
If he looks like he manages an Arby's
I got to go.
What is..
(audience laughs)
what is he doing here?
No, I never adjust,
which is why it's taken me 17 years to make it.
She be like, "Oh, where you been?"
I been here,
just trying to figure out my life.
I go on stage and that's what I deal with.
Like, whatever I'm going through,
whatever is going on in the world, I deal with it.
'Cause sometimes I'm nonsense.
It's fine.
But I want to say something, you know?
And that doesn't mean that I always hit the mark,
it just means that I wanna say something
and I wanna make sure that I make a great impact.
And my responsibility is, maybe sometimes to my detriment,
is to always push this narrative that
we still don't have it easy as Black people.
And not that we want it easy,
but we should just at least have some form of rest.
I should be able to wake up and be like,
"Oh, I'm gonna live my day as Yamaneika,"
and not have an experience as I go through the world
where it's like,
"Oh, somebody doing some shit 'cause I'm Black."
Or just I'm being treated this way because I'm Black,
or I'm a woman.
Sometimes you can feel powerless,
and comedy, for me, is a thing that makes me feel powerful.
- When we do go out to see comedy, we seek it.
We go out and we seek it.
I need to laugh, you know, 'cause something's going on.
I got one bit about we always talking about
white male privilege in this country,
but we never talk about white female privilege,
which I think is a lot more privilege.
When I hit that beginning part and I say that,
you'll see some of the looks going, (gasps)
"What?
"What privilege?"
Then when I break it down
and I get to one of my first bits in that joke,
I wish I could be as comfortable around the police
as drunk white women.
And I start breaking it down about things
I see them get away with versus what we can get away with.
And this is a true story.
I seen a white girl pissing between the cars
and this officer was being so patient with her.
"Ma'am, could you please?
"Ma'am, when you're done...
"Ma'am, could you please?"
And she turned up, looked at him,
and said, "Get out of my face you fucking pig."
And there was a part of me that's looking at that
that's like, "Word.
"You tell 'em, you fucking pig."
But then there was a bigger part of me
knowing that I couldn't get away with that
that kinda wanted to see the officer tase her,
just a little bit,
because you need to know it's real out here.
I couldn't get away with half of that shit.
Meanwhile, he's calling you ma'am, miss, and all that.
I've been called n***** for not turning around fast enough
to talk to the cops.
So, you know, sometimes they have the adverse reaction,
but if it's a good joke they'll take it
as long as you get to a good punchline.
They'll laugh at it at the end.
- Eating and breathing have become
unexpectedly dangerous in my life.
I'm actually gonna stop calling my allergies that.
That's a wimpy name for something
that might kill you out of nowhere.
So I'm now gonna call my allergies my
police, exactly, because they might erase my existence
and people will react the same way.
"Why'd you go outside that day?"
You guys know what I mean?
The exact same disregard for human life.
Okay, some of you with me.
Some of you feel weird about race and that's fine,
because that's how I woke up.
This morning and every single morning
I've woken up just, "What?
"Black again?
"Hope I make it.
"The police are out and it's already skin thirty.
"I'm a contestant on Will This Get Me Killed?"
Anyway, guys, um...
(audience applauding)
Come with me or not.
- When I moved from Atlanta to Indianapolis
there was no urban scene,
so it kind of forced me into the mainstream circuit.
So I would tell these stories
and people would be blown away how I was raised,
the type of parents I had,
the environment that I came from.
That's what they're learning when they're coming to my show.
Like, "Hey, you wanna close your door
"and act like people like me don't exact, but it does."
I'm 16 years old, I got two kids, two and one years old,
and I'm living in the hood in Atlanta.
And in this hood I'm, you know, I'm trying to survive,
so I go out and start me a small business.
Well, I was selling crack,
but we gonna call it a small business tonight.
(audience laughs)
Okay, white people?
(audience laughs)
I always had to keep a client in the car with me
'cause I was 16 years old with a learner's permit
and I didn't want to risk the chance
of losing my fucking permit.
(audience laughs)
I think it's an eye opener when I'm standing on stage
talking about my life so honestly,
and I'm a girl.
See, you really don't hear girls say
they trafficked cocaine, they been shot,
and I have this little saying where I say,
"Hold my hand white woman,
"I'm about to take you to the hood.
"You let it go, they're gon get your ass."
And I just walk them through
all these crazy stories in my life.
And I bring them back at the end in the comedy club
and set them in they seats.
- Oh, I just wrote it yesterday.
I was a Hawks game yesterday,
'cause you know I must have been bored
if I go to a Hawks game, and I bought the ticket.
I was in the concession stand and I had a friend beside me.
And I said, "Damn, the Hawks are really
"whooping some ass today.
"They beating the Knicks."
And there was a young lady beside me, a sister.
I say, "I'm sorry for using that language in your presence."
Using ass.
"Please forgive me."
And she said, "Nah, it's cool.
"It didn't offend me,
"it's just that I was just worried
"my mother didn't need to hear this.
"She's 82 years old.
"She don't need to hear that kind of language."
I said, "Well, if she's 82 years old
"she done heard words worse than ass."
"Not my mother."
I said, "Yes, she is 82."
"Like what?"
Like, "N***** get off my porch.
"You wanna vote?
"Recite all the ingredients that's in shampoo.
"Give me the National Anthem backwards,
"and then read it to me forward,
"and tell me the 54th word in the National Anthem."
Your mother done heard some worse shit
if she's 82 years old than ass.
She said, "Not my mother.
"She lived up North."
I said, "It was everywhere."
And that was my point.
- I used to do this bit about the first slave
that ever had to read, right?
And the whole process of this.
I was thinking to myself, I'm like,
we don't appreciate or talk about enough
the legacy of the people who survived
so that we could be here, right?
All the slaves that made it, and didn't die,
and just went through the whole process.
So many times people are telling you, like,
"Let's forget that.
"Let's stop talking about it.
"Slavery is over.
"We're done with that."
I'm like, "But what about those unsung heroes
"that we really don't have documentation on
"because nobody was writing the stories down?"
And most of the stories that did come from that
were from a white perspective of what was going on.
And I said, "How hilarious that must be
"to be, like, the first Black person
"that was sent up North to read,
"and you're so proud of all the accomplishments
"that you made, and that you made it up North,
"and now all you wanna do is write a letter,
"and you wanna send it back to them,
"but you gotta send it to Master's mailbox
"'cause them n****s ain't got no mailbox."
And then he's like, "Who the fuck...
"Who getting letters around..."
You know?
It's like this whole world.
And so, at first I said, "Nobody wants to hear that."
Right?
And then, as I went into it and people started to laugh,
I go, "Oh, how crazy can I make this world?
"What can I say?"
And it just starts to add layers.
I mean, that's my process.
I don't know how other people's process...
Some people's process is, "I just want people to like me
"when I go onstage."
And I don't think like that.
I just want people to hear what I'm saying and like it.
- I went to a psychiatrist,
and those of you who are like, "I'm happy, what's that?"
It's like, "Shut the fuck up."
(audience laughs)
No, you go to a person,
you tell them all the deep, dark secrets
you can't tell your friends.
They throw pills at you and some days you feel all right.
A lot of my first jokes and half my material now
is sad things that happened to me,
or things that bothered me,
or something someone said to me
that made me feel bad,
and then I made that into a joke.
I've gotten to sort of exorcize a lot of things,
a lot of issues I had with being a kid,
a lot of issues I have being a Black woman,
and it's just because if you're, as a Black person,
any person of color, you're just...
You're going to experience more trauma
and that's just an amazing way to deal with that
is to be like, "This thing hurt me..."
Like, I talk about depression, for example.
That's not fun.
It's not fun for me to go through that.
But when I talk about it on stage I feel better.
I feel seen.
It's not a scary, embarrassing thing about me anymore,
because I'm telling you
and I'm changing the narrative with my jokes.
First question he asks me, pretty early he was like,
"Do you have a boyfriend, girlfriend?
"Are you in a relationship?"
I was like, "Yeah."
He was like, "Do you love him?"
I was like, (scoffs)
"What did he say?
"I don't wanna say it first."
(Sonia laughs) (audience laughs)
He didn't think that was amusing.
He was also taken aback.
He's like, "That's a little inappropriate
"given the setting."
I was like, "But doctor, all the world's a...
"Okay, inappropriate.
"Yep."
He was like, "Do you do drugs?"
And I was like, "Ah!" (laughs)
That's inappropriate.
I'm getting this.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
I paid a lot of money, uh-huh.
Mm-hm.
Towards the end though he got really serious,
we were having a good time,
and then he was like, "You suffer from suicidal thoughts."
And I was like, "Yeah, honestly,
"that's a big part of why I came.
"I have those thoughts.
"But whenever I think about what it would do
"to my friends and family it makes it something
"that's impossible to go through with."
And this man looked at me and then looked at his notepad
and he was like, (laughs)
"Not if you're determined." (laughs)
What?
Now I wanna kill myself so fucking bad!
- I have a best friend, name is Mike Machoki,
and I was speaking to him one day
and I was like, "Oh, yeah, you know,
"I'm about to finish college.
"I'm doing my thing."
And he's like, "Man, you gotta get on stage, man.
"You funny.
"Like, we had you hosting events back in college.
"You gotta go on stage."
And I'm like, "All right, yeah, I'ma go on stage.
"I'ma do it."
And I knew I was gonna do it then.
About a week later he and his fiancee
got murdered when coming home from their engagement party.
Losing them was something that still haunts me.
It has me depressed.
There's things that I go through just losing two people,
like, so suddenly, right?
Now I'm able to talk about it on stage,
but when I talk about it I make sure,
like I kind of quote/unquote "bully" myself,
because I'm like, "All right, you can talk about depression,
"but don't you be that sad nigga on stage.
"You still gotta be funny."
When I talk about depression on stage,
like when I'm getting into it,
it's, like, the best feeling in the world
because I see audiences, like I see the response.
Especially if I'm doing an all Black show,
I'll see a response of people laughing,
and then there are other people who are just laughing
and looking at me like, "Yeah."
You know what I mean?
Like they get it.
It's not just a joke to them, it's real.
And it's just a good bonding experience
because I think that Black audiences
when they see me do that they're like,
"You know what?
"Yeah, we can...
"This is good to talk about.
"We can talk about it."
So, yeah.
- I don't like walking up behind white women at night.
(audience laughs)
Makes me really uncomfortable,
so I cross the street.
(audience laughs)
If I was a white woman I would rob Black dudes.
(audience laughs)
(Greer laughs)
I'd walk up to Black guys and be like,
"Hi, my name is Sarah.
"Give me your wallet."
(audience laughs)
"Sarah?
"That's my grandmamma name."
"Give me your wallet or I'm gonna scream."
"Here, here, Sarah."
(audience laughs)
Look at some of the white women like,
"Wow, we could actually do that."
(audience laughs)
So, one night I was walking the block
and this white woman is in front of me,
so I went to cross the street.
And then when I got across the street
there was another white woman there,
so my only option was to walk in the middle of the street.
And, you know, I did.
I was just like, "You know what?
"Fuck this."
What's so sad about the whole feeling is that
I don't want to make her uncomfortable
when, you know, if you break it down
that's her problem,
because I'm just trying to get home just like you,
and society has painted this wicked picture of us.
We're not given the benefit of the doubt.
From that, I wound up talking about it on stage
and I turned it into a joke.
Black people react to it like,
"You're damn right, that's right."
You know?
And it's the dudes normally like, "Yo, that's what's up!
"Yeah!"
And white audiences are a little taken aback at first,
and then they jump on it.
Then it's like, "Oh my God, I can't deny this.
"Like, this is his factual feelings
"and truth of what he does."
- We all have our mission statement
in this big movie called life.
Number one, to alleviate pressure.
You know, in these times we under a lot of pressure.
That's comedy's job,
we gotta alleviate the pressure that people are under.
Then we gotta educate,
because the news is so slanted in propaganda right now
we have to now educate ourselves
so we can educate through our humor
what's really going on out here.
- I firmly, firmly believe that all the best philosophers
through the generations just stopped majoring in philosophy
and just became comics, you know?
Like, the most brilliant people you talk to
make you laugh about whatever it is
that they're talking about
because if you're laughing at it
not only do you not have to let it be as serious of an idea,
but you also just, you understand it better.
- To me, being a Black comedian in America
means that you gotta stand up for something.
You gotta say something in your material.
That's, I mean, our greatest I guess comedian
that everybody talks about,
Richard Pryor, he said something.
Dick Gregory said something.
Like, say something,
'cause that's what we come from in our material.
Our kings, they said something.
They made points.
They pointed out injustices and made fun of it.
Say something.
(Greer laughs)
(fun jazz music)