This episode is brought to you by Shopify, one of my absolute favorite companies, and they make some of my favorite products. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, and I've known the team since 2008 or 2009. But prior to that, I wish I had personally had Shopify in the early 2000s when I was running my own e-commerce business.
I tell that story in the four hour work week, but the tools then were absolutely atrocious, and I could only dream of a platform like Shopify. In fact, it was you guys, my dear readers, who introduced me to Shopify when I polled all of you about best e-commerce platforms around 2009, and they've only become better and better since.
Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or getting ready for your IPO, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. Doesn't matter if you're selling satin sheets from Shopify's in-person POS system or offering organic olive oil on Shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform. However, you interact with your customers, you're covered. And once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers.
Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States and Shopify is truly a global force as the e-commerce solution behind all birds, rotties, Brooklyn and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across more than 170 countries. Plus Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way if you have questions.
This is Possibility Powered by Shopify. So check it out. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify. That's S-H-O-P-I-F-Y. Shopify.com slash Tim. Go to Shopify.com slash Tim to take your business to the next level today. One more time. All lowercase Shopify.com slash Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Cometeer that's spelled C-O-M-E-T-E-E-R. Cometeer is hyper-fresh, expertly brewed, flash frozen coffee that produces an incredibly delicious cup. Now, I have to be honest, I was very skeptical of flash frozen coffee, and I thought, at face value, this is probably just a gimmick. Yada, yada, yada. But, as you know, I am an avid coffee drinker. I talk about caffeine and coffee a lot on this show.
And when it landed on my doorstep when I first started testing it, I thought to myself, this is actually incredible. It is locked in at peak freshness, and you can sample coffee from some of the top roasters, not just in the US, but around the world. And I went in with one eyebrow raised, and I'm sure some of you have one raised right now, but the coffee is
absolutely delicious. It's pretty incredible. And I'm able to avoid bitterness completely. Commoteer lets you prepare your coffee with no mess, no machines, no burning, no bitterness whatsoever. It's a fast and foolproof way to a truly delicious cup of specialty coffee. They source high-quality beans from the country's top roasters and some outside of the country that includes counterculture, bird rock, George Hell, equator coffees, which I used to have. I used to drive
45 minutes from my house in San Francisco to have a quater coffee, just to give you an idea, and you can get it through a commentary or birch, Joe coffee, red bay, go get him tiger, clatch onyx, square mile, black and white, intelligentsia, which was in the four hour chef as an example in Chicago,
And on and on so you can get all sorts of coffee wouldn't otherwise be able to get because it is frozen using their process their coffee is brewed using proprietary technology to pull out more flavor compounds and antioxidants then it's flash frozen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit to lock in the incredible flavor and freshness.
of the specialty we already mentioned this but it's worth reiterating cometer ships to you and one hundred percent recyclable capsules the store in the freezer and if you're walking by kitchen right now looking the freezer it is chock full of cometer coffee simply add hot water and you've got a game changing cup of coffee lickety split it's very fast it's easily customizable and seconds for ice coffees latte espresso martinis and more if you've never had espresso martini
I recommend it. It's pretty game changing. We'll cover that another time. Comitier is also great to travel with when you need a cup and don't want to sacrifice quality. Their capsules are TSA approved. So order today at Comitier dot com slash Tim Tim and listeners of this podcast will receive $25 off of their first order. So visit Comitier dot com slash Tim Tim to learn more and get $25 off of your first order when you join the future of coffee with Comitier.
Make this altitude like in one flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different disciplines to tease out their routines, habits, favorite books, lessons learned, mental frameworks, et cetera, and so on and so forth that you can apply to your own lives. This time around, we have a very special edition with two hit interviews from the podcast's back catalog.
We're coming up very soon on the 10th anniversary of the podcast, and I wanted to experiment with a new format, and that is taking someone who is very much a household name, a superstar who is known to the masses, in this case, Jamie Foxx, and pairing that person with someone who is lesser known, but who I consider to be a superstar.
and who I would love to have a little more visibility. So it's a two-for-one, and in this case, the names are Jamie Foxx and Maria Popova. Jamie Foxx, for those who may not know, you can find him on Twitter at I.M. Jamie Foxx is an Academy Award-winning actor, a Grammy Award-winning musician, and a stand-up and improv comedian. He is one of the most consummate performers and entertainers that I have ever met. Honestly, I would say that the two top
are Jamie Foxx and Hugh Jackman, who both been on the podcast. But Jamie blew my mind in this conversation. It was so much fun. It ended up being voted podcast of the year in 2015, back in the pleocene era of podcasting when celebrities appearing on podcasts were really few and far between. And we did this in his recording studio at his house. There's music, there's comedy, there's everything. The stories are amazing.
And then we have Maria Popova, who you can find on Twitter at Brain Picker, who is the creator of the Marginalian. Long ago, this was named Brain Pickings, and it is included in the Library of Congress's permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials. It started off as a newsletter to a handful of friends, I think maybe six people, and now millions and millions and millions of people.
read her work constantly the marginal is maria's one woman labor of love and inquiry into how to live in what it means to lead a good life she is unbelievably prolific she reads so continuously she writes so beautifully she speaks multiple languages and english is not her first language which is always
Incredibly impressive to me because her writing is better than mine, which is not to say that I'm the best in the world, but her English is far more elegant, far more eloquent than mine. She is incredibly consistent. The marginalion was created on October 26, 2006, and it has been running strong for 17 plus years. So I hope you enjoy this format. You can dip in, dip out. You have two people to choose from. My hope is that you will
begin with the entertainment, the no name, and that will pull you in, in this case with Jamie Foxx, who better, and then you will continue and listen to someone you may not come across otherwise, and that is Maria Popova.
I love both of these interviews, and I would love to know what you think of this format. So let me know on Twitter. It's going to be a while before I can bring myself to say X, as the cool kids might be saying, by tagging at T Ferris, at T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Let me know what you think of this format. My goal, again, is to introduce people to interviews they might have missed over the years. They might miss forever if they weren't surfaced and brought to your attention.
And you can think of this as my personal curated selection of, if not the best of the last 10 years of the podcast, at the very least, some of my own personal favorites. So I really hope you enjoy this and please do let me know what you think.
Jamie, welcome to the show. Man, thanks, buddy. I am so excited to be here. I'm admiring your setup here. This is where the magic happens. To be honest with you, a lot of magic happens here. For the people that are listening, we are actually in my studio, my home studio.
You know, studios, we're talking about tech world. Studios, because of tech world, a lot of them dissipated and closed doors. Because if you think about when LMFAO came around, they didn't need studios. They did all of their music on the laptop.
Right. Flying from here to Germany or whatever like that and just dumped it on to, uh, and then just pressed up to see CD or the iTunes. So studios are almost becoming obsolete, but there's something very interesting about this studio. First, just for people that are listening, this studio, and I'll describe it, it's, you know, a sort of plush, the carpets is great. We can sit next to a grand piano. Uh, you had a grand piano, which a lot of places,
So we keep a grand piano around just to make sure that we don't lose, you know, we don't get too techie, but what's interesting about it is it's actually electric, but it's an electric grand piano. So we still have the wood to give you that warm sound, which, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense because as music starts to progress,
Because of the way we record now, sometimes you lose a little bit of the heart of it. So I think within the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, it'll be this type of music, the real sound will remain, if that makes sense. Now, the studio, when I first got the house, looked like an old porn set.
It had like an old basement carpet and a couch and like a Metallica poster. And I was like, what would I do with this? Because I needed a place to work and do music. What's interesting now, I got a guy to change the whole place over. And then you can see, we'll take pictures and show it for you guys to listen. But they did a very good job in them. But if you look over here, this is where we do the recording. There's a booth, which is normal. But also the recording on both sides, we're able to do animation.
We're able to do, uh, if we want to do ADR for movies. Um, what is it? ADR is like when you, um, like when we're doing the movie, but we're recording up the, the movie outside is a lot of noise. Oh, you didn't pick up audio. So we'll do pick up audio. Uh, so, uh, and so, and, and most any actor or actress will tell you ADR is the worst thing in the world to do. So to be able to have here, have it here, I could do my ADR here. I could do my animation here and things like that.
And so just now the studio itself, the actual brains of the studio, it's an old hard drive. And the reason I kept that old hard drive, I used to have a smaller studio in a smaller house. But when I had that small studio, I wasn't in music.
I built the studio in my smaller house because I wanted to get in music. But I was from comedy and from acting and things like that. But what I would do is I would throw parties and I would invite musical people over at the party. And when they would come over, like if I had puff or snoop or back at that time, John B or Brian McKnight, I would say, hey, man, you know, I'm trying to get into music.
Would you leave me some music in my studio? So the people leave me like 16 bars, 24 bars? Because I would... They would record something while they were in the studio. Yeah, they would record. We'd have the party going, I'd say, man, it's going to back.
You know, while we drinking and whatever like that and going, I say, man, just leave me a little something because I was trying to get into music. And then I met this kid named Breon Prescott basketball. We played basketball and all this kind of stuff, pick up basketball games. And he said, hey, man, why don't you ever do music? I said, man, I'm trying to get into that shit, man. I just, you know, I don't know how to get into it. And then one day I throw this big party. And the party was crazy because as I digress a little bit,
I would follow puffy combs around back in the day when it was just like puff and J Lo and back at that time, no one could get into his parties, but the reason he would let me in because I would carry a camera with me ever ago. But it was back in the day day, like the big cannon cameras. Wait, he would let you in because you carried a camera? Yeah, because at that time, I wasn't Jamie Foxx, I was just Jamie Foxx.
And so I couldn't get into all the parties because Puff was so big or he come to LA, we couldn't even get in our own clubs. But I took a town car everywhere he went, jumped out of the town car one day and said, yo, Puff can I record? No, at that point he didn't know you at all. He knew me. He knew me. The kid that was on the living color or whatever like that, but it wasn't elevated.
Right. And plus he was having parties that were like huge, like nobody's getting it. And so they saw me with the cameras like, yo, let him through. And it was back in the day was like the big Canon camera with the light and had to change the battery. It wasn't like how today you just got your phone and your pocket. No, I had, I had production.
But I would follow him around, and then one day we had this party in Philly that I recorded for him, and he said, yo, your money, you know how much this party cost us what? Said cost a million dollars for this party. I said, you paid a million dollars for a party. He was like, yeah, that's how we, I told Puff, I challenged him. I said, I'll throw you a party at my house at LA, which is way smaller than this situation. But I'll spend maybe $400 and it will rival this party, not in the scale of it, but in the type of people in it there.
And he was a little upset. You know, Puff is a, you know, he always likes to win. He's a competitive guy. He's a competitive guy. I said, yo, give us out your motherfucking mind, playboy. You don't understand the essence of this part. And I was like, all right, I get it. And he actually came to LA a few weeks later.
And it was a Saturday, he said, yo, playboy, make that shit happen. So he calls me like nine in the morning, right? For that night in the morning. For the day. I said, no problem. So I go into my cell phones call. I have a, I have a list of people that since I first came to LA, the way I got into knowing everybody, I was the first, I was the first social media guy without social media.
I would go do a stand-up comedy routine at a club. If they liked the routine, I had cue cards back in the day. And when have people sign cue cards, sign the name, did you like the set? Give me your page or number. I will text you and let you know where I would be. You were on time or time. Yeah. They were like index cards. To index cards. So a box and I had these, got to get rid of this fly, man. Stop before I say.
All right, so we're picking back up. I just have to we took a fly break. Yes, I just have to admire this because the studio is what would you say maybe like 30 30 by 15 feet on the floor and then another 15 feet tall and you said I'm going to stop and get this fly.
Yeah, it got sort of flossed in my man. This is a lot of space. And it took you about seven seconds to drive this fly down and kill it. I was very impressed. We got to get shit done in here. We don't have time. So the cue cards. So I would get cue cards. And like I said, I would send it. You know, I had a list of about 800 people. I had 600 women because women at that time, just like around 90, 91 women at that time love to go to comedy clubs. So it was all the pretty girls, those pretty girls like to laugh, you know, and we got eight, nine girls together. Jamie, you're so crazy.
whatever. And so I had 800 signals, just 200 guys, because they wanted to be where the girls were. So I would take that list and also say, okay, well, now I'm having a party here, here, here, whatever, whatever, if you want to come by. So that same list, along with the other people that I met as I
As I started to grow in the business, I text and said, I'm throwing a party for Puffin. This one Puff had, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, we ain't going nowhere was out. And it was, it was popping. I mean, even the LA dude was like, man, we don't want to fuck with this New York dude, but this shit is so dissolving, so hot. So I text, I said, listen, I'm, I'm Puff is coming.
And the people that I text were only cool people, like no guys that are behaving. You know, girls are pretty, not slutty, but not too tight. You know what I mean? It was just, it was really, it was, it was, and so I hit him at 12 noon. I said, yo, where you at? We're at a favorite pitch. It's going off over here at my little house.
And when he gets there, his mind is blown. And he shows up with the entourage. He was like, gatsby. And he walked in. He said, oh, that's the girl from that show. And that's the girl on this. And I said, yeah, Puff, we all live out here. So all the people you see in Hollywood, I know they're my friend. And so he's like, oh shit. So the party's incredible. We're playing his music through my little sound speakers. Everybody's really toasting him. And I said, Puff, the people that are here are different.
What the fuck? It's another fly. Hold on, I'm staring at him. Good night. Two for two. Two for two. So he's admiring that it's crazy.
And everybody's in tune with him and I explained to him, I said, let me explain to you who you are. I said, these are the people who not only live in LA, but I think I've found the right set of people who appreciate the art as well. Because what you do musically and what you're doing on the artistic side is blowing our minds as well. And I said,
Therefore, look at the table. I only spent $400 on the table. There's Kentucky Fried Chicken. I just put it in a nice bowl. There's cola. I just put them in pitchers. I said, so no more than $400, but people are here. I said, because here's the thing. A fitted baseball cap, New York fitted. It's $58 maybe retail. I said, but puff on your head, on your head is priceless. We just want to be around this fly shit, right?
So we part in, Puff is partying, and there's a dude standing next, like on the wall, no one's talking to. He got a little green jump jacket on. Guess who it was? Jay-Z. Nobody knew who it was. Jay-Z, I said, yeah, how'd that do? Miss Yellert has one room, Puff has the other room. Then I go to my garage.
to grab some other drinks, and I see this tall dude and this little dude, and they're like, the little guy goes, yo, B, it's like this all the time. I say, yeah, what do you mean? You know, the girls and karaoke and I say, yeah, yeah, man, who are you? Oh, we're the Neptune's. My name is Pharrell. I say, yeah, man, I heard of you. Yeah, man, I like your shit. So that's how long ago this was. Amazing. So here's how I make the music play though. So as Puff is there, I get people to lead me different bits of music or whatever, because I'm trying to get into the music thing.
So I turned that into a show in a sense to where I would just have different people I would toast and try to, you know, get my music on. So one day my boy Breon brings in this kid. He has a backpack on.
His jaws are a little busted. His name is Kanye West. And I say, yo, yo, who's, who's that? I said, yo, that's a new kid, Kanye West. He coming on. I said, really? What do you do? I said, he rap. I said, well, shit, he got to perform that shit because everybody comes to this, to my house, they got to perform. So I said, yo, man, they say you the shit. And he was really quiet. You know, I said, man, let me hear you rap. You need your beats or whatever he's on, you know, beat.
freestyle but through every I mean chopped everybody's heads just amazed I said dude I don't know where you come from but you are going to be one of the biggest stars ever and he says I actually have a song for you I said why me a song like what you mean he said I got this song he says I want to record I said well you happen to be in luck because I got a studio on the back
So we go in the back and my studio at that time, I call it the Porsche. It was a lot smaller than this. It was really like nipping. It was like a, it was like a legit. It was compact. It was compact. The sound was toasty. I had engineers from all over the city dialed in so that when real artists come, they don't think that, oh, this is just comedian fucking around some real shit. So we go in and Kanye, you know,
quiet, but, but at the same time, he knew what he wanted. He says, okay, the song goes like this. She says she wants a Marvin Gaye, some Luther Van Joe's, a little, I said, I got it. And I started going, she say she wants a Marvin Gaye. And he said, what the fuck are you doing? I said, well, see, young man, you're learning about R&B. See, I'm a R&B motherfucker. See, I got to give him the shit, you know, I got to put the shit on it. And he goes, really politely, he says, hits the button. He says, uh, don't do that.
earlier, that ain't how the song go. You got to sing it this way. So in my mind, I'm thinking, you know what, I'm a singer shit. The song is wack. It's not going to make it because I'm thinking old school R&B. But he was teaching me the simplicity of hip-hop, which I didn't know.
cool guy, great rapper. I don't think it's going to happen for him. So I'll go off and do a bad movie. And when I come back, my boy says, remember that song you said was right? I said, yes. Number one, in the country, you Kanye and Twister Kanye's first record. And it was actually Twister's record. I said, oh shit. So I'm at a club. He says, you don't believe me? I said, no, I'm where in Miami. They played it. Everybody rented a dance floor.
I grabbed the mic, said, that's me? That's my song? I'm on that. And so the music, that's how I got into the music. Now, the reason the story is significant is because the same brains that we use, that same hard drive that we use, I brought it to this studio. Oh, no. So that hard drive is magical because we also did, just to give you a history on the music, we found that song, Slow James, it went number one. And then as we started getting into music,
there was a song that Breon brought in, and he would play these, Breon would call me, like he said, you want to be in the music business? It's just like, two or three in the morning, he called me, he said, you want to be in the music business? And I said, yeah, he said, and wake your ass up. I said, well, I got this song, you got to hear. So I drove all the way from my house in the valley to this little studio. He said, you ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? And Breon always says everything three times. Are you ready, motherfucker? Are you ready? Are you ready? I said, yeah, yeah, man, play this shit. So he plays it.
And the song was, Blame it on the goose, gotcha feeling loose, Blame it on the... I stopped it. I said, listen, first of all, please tell me that's my song. He said, yeah, it's your song, but you got to record it right now because a lot of people are listening to this song and they don't know if it's a hit or not. He said, but I know it's a hit.
We did blame it on the alcohol that night. I sung it exactly like the record, which goes way in contrast to my R&B roots, because it was auto tune and everything like that. But we wanted to sing it exactly like the demo. So we would lose the essence of it. I don't want to be like, blame it on the alcohol. You know, some corny shit.
So we did that, and then we went from every, the way we broke that record is that we went from every club, we went to the strip clubs first. We went to the strip club strip club. We went, we went, we did a East Coast run. Said we were going to break the record in the East Coast. So we went to the strip, went to New York. My man Pekas took us around and I will go into the club and use my comedic, you know, vernacular to get the song off. I said, fellas, you ever been?
At the club, you meet a girl, you've been drinking. You think she look like Halle Berry. You get her back home. She looks like Halle Scary. You know what you got to do? Blame it on the goose. Got you feeling loose? Blame it on the... Stop the record. Ladies, you ever meet a guy? You get back to the house with him and you've been drinking too much and you say, I usually don't do this, but you do it anyway. You got to blame it on the... So we took that and we went all the way down from New York all the way down to Miami. This is like 2008.
And then the song took off. And so long story longer, blaming on alcohol was done here, slow jams was done here. So this studio has that essence to it that you just, you don't throw that away. And just the building itself.
Natasha Bettingfield's been here. She's cut. Kelly Rowland's been here. She's cut. The game has been here. He's cut right here on this floor. And I'm showing for you guys listening, I'm pointing to the floor, to the carpet, a young man by the name of Ed Shearing, slept on this carpet for like six weeks, trying to get his music career gone.
He came from over from London. He heard about a live show that I do in LA. So really want to do your live show if it's possible. You know, because I have some music that I look at here, this kid with this red hair. I'm like, yeah, you do my live show. And it's mostly black, you know what I'm saying? But it's really like music people, like really hardcore music people. They're very finicky.
You know, people that have played for Stevie Wonder. People would come there to... I mean, I had Miranda Lambert one night. I had Stevie Wonder on stage. I had Babyface. I said, so this is the real shit you talking about. You know, you come here. I don't care about the London and the accent. You got to really come with it. I think I'll be okay. That's all right. So, taking to my live night, 800 people there.
people's playing black folks sweating and just getting it, you know what I'm saying? I mean, people singing and, you know, they would tear America and I in love, you know? And these people don't necessarily, doesn't have necessarily made it. So all of a sudden their sharing gets up with a ukulele.
walks out onto the stage. And the brother that was next to me was like, yo, Fox, man, who the fuck is this dude right here, man? With the red hair and shit in the fucking ukulele. I said, man, his name is Ed Sheeran. Let's see what he does. Within 12 minutes, he got a standing ovation. Wow. From that crowd. And I said, bro, he on your way. So this studio has a, like I said, a lot of history and it has that magic to it as well. Yeah.
Now, you mentioned getting into music, but it seems like, from what I've read of you, that music in some ways came first. Music did. Music did. When I was a kid, my grandmother made sure that I took piano lessons. And, you know, that's tough for a little boy in Texas, you know, playing furry Lee's and Chopin and Mozart. And we're not talking about Houston or... No, we're talking Terrell, Texas.
And I love my city. My city was dope because it was only 12,000 people. So it was like literally like 12 or 15 families. So we all knew each other. But you know, for a little boy playing at that time, you know, the kids didn't understand, yo, man, why are you doing that? My grandma want me to do this, you know? And so I would sometimes I would be belligerent and be like, why are you want me to do this? He says, the reason I want you to learn classical piano is because I want you to be able to go across the tracks and play your music.
for people listening across the tracks or on the other side of the tracks for southern city was the tracks in the southern city separates the city. One side is black and the other side is white. So in our city, the south side, the south side of town was where all the black folk lived.
The north side of town was where the white folks lived. So she says, I want you to be able to go on the white side of town and play classical music. So she taught me how to play classical piano, a lady about a name of Lanita Hodge taught me how to play classical piano. And I literally would go on the other side of the tracks and, you know, and start playing for like wine and cheese parties and things like that. But my grandmother took it a step further too, because she was able to see the future.
Uh, he was a lady with the eighth grade education. She had her own business for 30 years. She had her own, uh, nursery school business. She says, when I say across the tracks, I don't just mean in Terrell and those people over there. I mean, the metaphor like across the track, like meaning everywhere in the world. So you, she said, but music connects you to the, to the whole world. So in doing that,
I would connect with people on the other side of the tracks, you know, in a southern city. And Terrell, you know, we were a little behind the curl when it came to race relations. Let's just say it that way without, you know, I don't want to demonize my hometown, but there was that, who's a little black kid? And my grandmother would be like, don't, you know,
Do your thing. And when I would play, you know, a lot of that broke up broke up. I remember even like being armed with just my music and sort of that racial setting and sometimes like there was a time when there was a Christmas party with these paid gigs. Yeah. I make like, I get like 10, $15. You know what I'm saying at that time was lemma and I played for the church.
So playing for the church, I would make like $75 a week. So if you count that up, that's like 300 a month, you know. That's real money. That's real money at 13, 14. My grandmother would take the money and put it, you know, and give me this money. So you know what, you don't want money, shit. You ain't paying no rent. You ain't gonna give me this money.
So, but I remember at that time being armed with just my music and there was a Christmas party that I was supposed to play for. Myself and my best friend who was 17, I was 16 at this time. And so here was a little bit of the racial misunderstanding, shall we say. I went to play for the guy's Christmas time. Maybe it's like December 17th. And we show up. It's two little black kids on the white side of town. And when he opens his door and he sees these two little black kids, he says, what's going on here? I said, well,
I'm here to play for your Christmas part sure then why are two of you here at the same time? I said well, I Don't have a license. He you know, he drove me. Well, is there a problem? Yeah, it's a problem. I can't have two niggas in my house at the same time and I was like Well, you know, I've been sort of used to the racial misunderstandings and I said well Is there any way he could wait outside or wait and he can't wait on the street starts at six thirty now? You got to make you make your mind up now
So I told my boy, so let's just come get me at 8.30, which was pretty late for kids at that time. So I'll go in. He says, where's your tuxedo? I said, well, he didn't tell me to have a tuxedo.
So we go into this room, which looks like a bedroom, and I'm looking like, why the fuck does he have clothes hanging up in his bedroom? But it was a walk-in closet. You know shit like that. We make a split-level condo out of this shit. So he gives me a Brooks Brothers jacket that had the patches on the elbows. I'm like, oh shit, high for loom.
So now I'm really playing. But as I'm playing, they were doing the grownups there. We're doing a racially misunderstanding jokes. I'll say it like that. And my grandmother taught me something at that time. She said, when you're in a setting like that, there's a word I want you to remember. It's called furniture. I said, what's that? She said, you're part of the furniture. So you don't comment on what's being said. You play. That's what you're there for. You let these people enjoy there.
And the lady at the house felt bad. She said, I just want to apologize to you for what they're saying. I said, no problem. She said, can you sing something for us? And I was like, sure, I could sing something for us. And this was a song with a song. Just not roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose.
You'll take care of speaking some by a choir and folks dressed up like Eskimo. Everybody, anyway. So as I'm singing, I remember watching those white guys, old men, some of them faculty at my school, that had just said something, you know, probably not
I don't think it was that they meant harm harm, but it was that after they'd have to resign today. Yeah. And they look and they go, they immediately changed. It's, wow, man, that's good. You know any other songs? And I sat and I did about maybe like the six songs set. And I saw what my grandmother talked about that music cracked them in half. They saw a different me. And then afterwards, he gave me a hundred bucks. And I'm like, shit, call me nigga every day. I got a hundred dollars. I'm rich.
And what was interesting was I went to give him the jacket back. He's like, no, I can't wear the jacket. So it was still a little bit of residue left over. But I saw what the music did. And I remember when my boy showed back up, I said, listen, it was a cool gig. We got paid. I said, but I got to get out of here.
I said, because I'm too smart for this, I need to go elsewhere. And I did. I changed my major. Well, I changed the college that I was going to go to. I was going to go to another college in Texas and study music instead. I came to California in San Diego to study music in a national university. And what was interesting about that was, is that being in Texas, it was black, white, to Mexicans.
When I got to international university, it was 81 different countries represented at that school, all connected by music and other things. Music of sports. The music arena at that time was high-end strict child prodigies from Japan, child prodigies from China. I had a Russian music teacher and I had a Yugoslavia music theory teacher, so it was
It was really across the tracks. But because of that, because of Estelle Talley and Mark Talley, you know, picking me up every weekend to go play music, man, it set me on a, like I said, a crazy, wonderful journey. And so the music was first, you know, and my college was interesting. I didn't know anything about Jewish.
Palestinian, I had no idea. I was at the Student Center and it was argument going on. Yeah. So what are you talking about? Oh, my brother, my friend, talking about the Gaza Strip. I said, fuck is that? And he said, no, the Jewish occupation, the district that I had. I got a quick, I got a quick history lesson on that. I got a quick history lesson on
People from Argentina, or I would see a person who looked black and I'd be like, hey, what's up brother? I'm going to show you from here. Oh, so I'm from Paris. I was like fuck they got black bit so That music gave me not only an opportunity to share but opportunity to be educated by other people because we study Texas history and I'm studying Texas history is interesting like if you study Texas history if it didn't happen in Texas and
didn't have it. So when you look at like, this is just a sidebar. But when you think about politics and what people know and don't know in politics and what they know about across the sea or what they know about even on the next block or what they know about what's different in Texas from New York, the reason that politics is so interesting is because the people don't necessarily have educations of other people, which is why I think that once we start opening up
a little more and traveling a little more because what is it less than how many percent less or less than five percent of Americans have passports and things a small number yeah so so anyway that music like I said took me took me every
Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.
It's time that you had a marketing platform built specifically for you. LinkedIn Ads empowers marketers with solutions for both you and your customers. LinkedIn Ads allows you to build the right relationships, drive results, and reach your customers exactly where they are already. You'll have direct access to and can build relationships with decision makers, 1 billion members, 180 million senior level executives, and 10 million sea level executives.
With LinkedIn ads, you have access to targeting and measurement tools built specifically for B2B. In the technology sector, LinkedIn generated a two to five X higher return on ad spend than other social media platforms based on an assessment by analytic partners. 79% of B2B content marketers said LinkedIn produces the best results for paid media.
So make B2B marketing everything it can be and get a $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash TFS to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash TFS terms and conditions apply.
What other, your grandmother seems like a very wise woman, and I've heard you describe her, and I might be, I'm sure I'm paraphrasing this, but that she was the bow, or had the owner of the arrow, and she pointed you in different directions. I'm wondering what other, like, you are the furniture, right? I mean, when to speak, when not to speak. What other lessons did you learn from your grandmother?
My grandmother taught me confidence as well. My grandmother was a very confident person and very smart. And just, I would you say, just naturally intelligent. She was a tourist. You know what I'm saying? Natural is like, it wasn't something that was super educated or anything like that, but you just had a... I'll give you a hint of my grandmother. I'm 10 years old, maybe. I think I'm in the fifth grade, 76, President Carter.
The preacher started preaching about homosexuality. No, I don't know what it is. I'm 10 or eight or whatever. So he said, God made Adam and Eve. God didn't make Adam and Steve. Some people's like, you know, it's Southern, it's Texas. Hey, man, my grandmother stood up and said, you stopped that. And the whole church stopped. What's that Miss Taylor? You stopped that. Now her words.
What she said next was very interesting. Let me tell you something. I've had this nursery school for 30 years. And I want to let all y'all know that God makes sense these two in the whole place when what she said these little boys that I've watched since they could walk. They play by, they play by different music. And you stop that because you're making it hard for them to navigate.
sits down, he goes to another subject. Eventually, he leaves the church. But I found that very interesting. At that time, I didn't know what that meant until I got to be about 18. I was like, man, what was you talking about? She says, yes, it's true. She says, you know, I've had this nursery school. I see the difference in the kids. And so therefore, I would have these kids come to me.
after they graduated from high school, gone to college or tried to have a family, although they were living with this. So she was a type of woman who had natural intelligence. I said, well, Granny,
Well, what does it say about religion? Doesn't it say that it's that it's wrong? You know, being a kid from Texas, it's natural question. She says, you know, when I think about it, she said, you have to open up the umbrella of religion. That's what you mean. She said, if you only open up the umbrella halfway, only a few people can stand under it. She said, you have to open an umbrella all the way through.
So, God's children can stand on it because no one here did not get made by anybody else or anything else but God. So, that was my grandma, you know? It seems very, with the movement, church, it's a very bold move, very courageous move. Very bold, very bold, but my grandmother raised those people in church.
See, I was adopted, you know, at seven months. So she was much older. So all of the kids over there, whether it was on, like I said, it was only a few families that lived in Terrell. So all of the kids that grew up, or all of the grownups that were there, she
She was the matriarch. Because during the year, it was a school. You know what I'm saying? But during the summer, you drop your kids off of my grandmother's house and just let them keep them. So she was very powerful in that sense. And then when I did finally make it, it was wonderful to tell my grandmother to come live with me. So my grandmother was living with me.
So we go to clubs, you know my grandma was like She had to be 83 at the time. Should we go to clubs or hang out? You know, I'm saying she's in LA. This is LA I had a little apartment split level condo. Remember when I was hype the split level condo So I had a loft. Oh, yeah Ricardo. He's only 19. He doesn't know what I'm talking But I had a loft and we were living in that loft and then we eventually rented a house and
Me and my grandma, and I didn't know I was a mama's boy. Like we go to the parties, come back, we have an after party to crib, and then one of my homies came and said, yo, your fox, so old lady out here in the front room, I said, yeah, this is my grandma, what's that? Oh, yeah, of course, yeah, then you use a bottle of champagne pop. What are we doing?
We getting it or what? She was amazing, man. So, you know, my grandmother, you know, we party, hang, have a good time. She was 83 years old. And then the big thing was, as I granny, you know, it's Christmas time. Why don't we do something we ain't never done? You know, you sell, making a little money. Why don't we go to Hawaii for Christmas? Because I got some friends from Hawaii. Well, yeah, well, let's get it going. Gas up the plane, right?
So we fly to Hawaii one year. And it was just amazing to be able to show my grandmother another side of the world. It even made the papers in Terrell, Texas, Estelle Talley on her way to Hawaii. And I remember, you know, just a fun, just a fun time. I remember we're having a good time. We're going everywhere. And she had a boyfriend at the same time. It was 83, too. And he was on the, you know, he was on the land side.
So it was like December 23rd, we called her boyfriend just so they could talk. So she's on the phone. Yeah, having a good time.
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, yeah weather's nice. Mm-hmm, sunny. Oh, food is good. I got my own seasonings, though. Mm-hmm. Real nice. Well, I'll tell you what. Look, I'm gonna go, but let me tell you something. No, let me come back there and catch you with no young girls. You understand? Cause I don't play that. No, let me catch you with no young girls. You hear me? So she hangs up. You know, it's like three or four families there. We're having like little Christmas party and we all go, Granny, what? When you said the young girls, what are you talking about? You know, 60, 65. I don't want to miss when I'm 65.
She said, shit, I made it three. You know, so I can handle 65 year old woman, all of my shit. So she was just a great person, tough girl. I remember there was some situations where I did make it and some people in my family felt like I should give them all of my money. This lady walks in and we're my apartment. She comes and says, my rich cousin.
I didn't even recognize because I had only seen it maybe once or twice growing up. So anyway, it gets around to it. She says, I need $10,000 for a kidney. I'm like, who's kidney? Well, I need kidney surgery or something like that. So if you give me the cash, I could take it and get the, I said, well, why don't you, if it's a situation of medical, I know some doctors, maybe they can help you. Oh, I would prefer the $10,000.
That's funny, okay, I'll hit you. Now I didn't call, but I was like, so that became a problem for her. And she called me one day and left on the answer machine, young fella, and the last time you see the answer machine. So I'm checking my answer machine, and she leaves a scathing message. Well, you know what, I didn't get the money from you. And that's fine, because you're not part of this family. Anyway, he was adopted. Nobody wanted you anyway. This is what this lady is saying to me. Griddle. I was like, what the hell? So I let my grandmother here. Let me run that back.
I played it. What's that number? And she called and I remember listening. Now I'm grown, you know, I'm 22. So I'm grown and I hear how she stuck up for me. She's, let me explain something to you, boy, and I could hear her. I got that boy when he was seven months old.
I said, and everybody wanted him. I wanted him. Everybody. I said, and he may not be blood, but he's our family. It was an incredible, incredible thing. My grandmother was absolutely amazing. I think you need people like that. And when you talk about that bow, that's my reference to raising kids, and I got my own kids.
When you raise your kids, you are the bow and arrow. You're the bow. They're the arrow. And you just try to aim them in the best direction that you can. And hopefully, your aim isn't too off. And that's what she did for me. And then she watched my whole career all the way up until getting nominated for an Oscar.
where all of the things that she taught me came into play. When we did Ray Charles, that was an opportunity to play the piano, to be funny, to do an impersonation. And all these things is what my grandmother championed. So when we embarked upon that film, I was like, oh, man,
Granny was right. This is taking me on the other side of the tracks. And when we got in, even when I got a chance to meet Ray Charles, which, you know, that's my grandmother's era, you know, and she didn't get a chance to meet him because at the time she was, you know, she couldn't move bedridden a little bit. But being around older people.
You know, I understood that muscle too, because I was always the young kid with the old parents. So meeting Ray Charles was like seeing my grandfather, seeing one of my uncles. And when I met Ray and we were trying to do Ray Charles's movie and Taylor Hackford, who was the director and he said, you know, I've been wanting to do this movie for 25 years. I'm glad you came along because it's the right time. And I remember meeting Ray Charles, walking down his studio, you know, clean, you know,
It looked like almost like you could see, you know? And I said, Mr. Charles, you know, he's trying to do the best I can to, you know, to do your movie, your biob. He said, you know what? Look, if you could play the blues, man, shit, you could do anything, man. I said, what do you mean? He said, and just, can you play the blues? Shit, that's what I'm asking. I said, well, I guess so. Then come on. And we go and we sit down.
and all of the hard work that my grandmother put in, all of the days my grandfather drove me to piano lessons. Here I am sitting with a legend and we were like, and I was like playing the blues with Ray Charles.
And as we're playing, I'm like, I'm on cloud nine. Then he moved into some intricate stuff, like the loneliest monk. And I was like, oh shit, I gotta catch up. And I hit a wrong note.
And he stopped because his ears are very sensitive. You know, why the hell would you do that? I said, why do you hit the note like that? That's a wrong note, man. Shit. I said, well, I'm sorry, Mr. Charles, I just said, let me tell you something. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just got to take the time out to play the right notes. That's life. So that was a lesson.
that the notes are right underneath your fingers, so metaphorically. So now you got across the tracks. There's someone like Estelle Talley teaches you, then you got Ray Charles explaining, now that you're across the tracks, what notes are you going to play? And so now we go on and we do that movie, which we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know that it was going to be like that. It wasn't a studio film. It was independent.
you know, doing the process of the movie was interested of my background being from Terrell knowing how to mimic. But I needed to know how to do Ray Charles, like the young Ray Charles. So I got in touch with Quincy Jones. And for all of you young ones out there,
Uh, listening, make sure you Google Quincy Jones and Ray Charles. And the reason why you should do that is because they were the building blocks about music today, which started in Seattle, Washington, which was interesting. Seattle at that time was a big hub for jazz music, jazz musicians. And that's where Ray Charles migrated to.
Running into a young Quincy Jones Ray Charles actually taught Quincy Jones Everything he knows about music who was Quincy Jones for you young ones listening Quincy Jones was the one who? Did I mean he played he was the band director for Frank Sinatra all of those guys the rat pack all of those guys He was the band leader if you and when I met Quincy Jones
He talks about that, yeah, man, shit, man, music, man, these young cats don't know music anymore, man. Shit, they play in the key of cue if they would, man, shit, man, when I played baby Frankie, baby, I said, Mr. Jones, who's Frankie, man, shit, Frank Sinatra, man. Shit, I was young, man, the band, we were playing in Monaco, man, we didn't even have time to rehearse, baby. We were just there playing, waiting on fucking Frank to come in. I said, what do you mean? He says, we had to play this show in Monaco.
Frank had never met me. Knew that I was this young kid who was great with the music. I become the band leader. We don't get a chance to rehearse. Monaco were his billionaires and millionaires in the audience waiting on this incredible show. And he says, we'll just vampen, man. Shit and Frank doesn't even come out on the stage. He comes through the audience, man. Shit talking and shit. I'm like, man, I'm nervous as hell. And then Frank got up. He said, he sung. The band was tight.
And Frank Sinatra knighted him, like gave him a ring that was like, you know, pretty significant, if you know what I mean. And if you guys Google Frank Sinatra, you'll understand what I mean about the LaCosa Nostra. And so here I am now talking to Quincy John.
And he's telling me about Ray Charles. He says, man, Ray taught me everything, man. Shit, man. He taught me how to dress. We were wearing suits, suits, suits, suits, and shit, man. He had nice suits, tailor-made. And I said, why did he have nice suits? Shit, man. He was always around women, man. And women would tell him, man, those suits are ugly because he couldn't see. So the women was telling him how to dress. And I said, well, Mr. Jones, I'm trying to figure out how to do Ray Charles, but I need the young Ray Charles, right?
And he says, well, man, shit, let me look. And he gives me a cassette tape to you young ones out there, a cassette tape back in the day was a way for us to, I'm just messing with her, to share music. And I said, okay, I got a cassette tape. I had to go rent a truck from a Hertz rent a car because there was no cassette players in the cars. So I popped a cassette tape in and on the tape was,
Hi, this is Donna Shaw from the Donna Shaw Show. We have two very wonderful musicians here today, and Mr. Kenny Rogers and Mr. Ray Charles. And you hear the young Ray. And you know what, Donna, I'm just so happy to be here. I'm so happy to hear that you know my music. I mean, this is just great. And it was the young Ray, like, you know, because when I was talking to the older Ray, I didn't want to grab those bad old habits I wanted to play in young. So I hear Ray talking young on the tape.
And then all of a sudden, he's in charge of the interview, and he was just doing his thing. And then all of a sudden, he says, talk about the drugs, Ray.
And then he started to stutter. Well, you know what? So I used that as DNA to play the iconic character Ray Charles that when he's talking about his music, he's fully in control. When he's confronted with real life things, why are you doing drugs? Why don't you take care of your family? Why are you cheating on your wife? He would stutter.
And I say this long story to say this, after the success of Ray Charles, after being nominated for an Oscar, my grandmother got a chance to witness all of that. She got a chance to see
the bearing of the fruits of her labor, for her young kid coming from that racially misunderstood town, which I love and wouldn't change anything in the world when it comes to Terrell, Texas. Her saying, get across the tracks. We've now gone across the tracks. We've gone all over the world and then here we are and think about what's the odds of a kid
who lives in the town, population 12,240 people, from Terrell to go all the way to Los Angeles, California, meet Puff, meet all these different people, and then actually have an opportunity to win an Oscar, and your grandmother gets a chance to see that. Now, October 23, 2004, she passed away, which if you know, the actual awards was 2005.
in February, but she got a chance to hang in there and feel it. So my grandmother was just like the blueprint. How do you think of teaching confidence with your own kids? Because you're clearly a very confident guy. Grandmother was very bold, very strong woman. How do you try to teach that to your kids?
Well, what you do with your kids is like when my daughter is like, there's the phrase that when you see Annalise, my daughter and my oldest daughter, Karen, I would always ask them, what's on the other side of fear? And they'd be like, huh? I said, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like if I stood in the middle of this floor right there and just yelled,
What's on the other side of that? Or if I stood in the middle of the floor and went, what's on the other side of it? Meaning like, either you do or you don't, but there's no penalty. There's no reward. It's just, you just be yourself. So I taught them what's on the other side of fear, nothing.
People are nervous for no reason because there's nothing no one's going to come out and slap you or beat you up and then you're just nervous. So why even have that? And so that's a building block that they can use, not just about the entertainment business because that's the other thing. You don't have to be an entertainer, but whatever you go into, whether you be a lawyer or a school teacher or tech guy or whatever or girl, whatever it is, there's nothing on the other side of it.
What's on the other side of fear? Nothing. I like it. So why are you... When people say, I'm so nervous, what are you nervous about?
reminds me of this quote that I sort of recite to myself. And I'm going to paraphrase it because I haven't written down, but it's from Mark Twain. It says, I'm an old man who's known a great many troubles, most of which never happened. Yeah, exactly. Because all of it is in our head. When we talk about fear or lack of being aggressive or, well, it's in your head. So not everybody's going to be super aggressive, but the one thing that you can deal with is a person's fears. So if you start early,
If they are a shy person, they just won't be as shy if you keep in stealing those things. The mimicry, the impersonation. How early did that start? Because I read and maybe you can tell me if this is off or not because you never know with the internet that your second grade teacher used to reward the class if they behaved by letting you tell Joe. Yeah, they will let me tell Joe because I would get in trouble. Miss Reeves, I think it was my third grade teacher, Miss Reeves.
Because I would like talk, but I was very smart. My grandmother had a school. I lived in a school. So I'd already knew that from first to eighth grade, I already knew all of the lesson plans. So a kid like me sitting there with nothing to do, I'm going to get in trouble. So she would let me do stand-up comedy on Fridays for the kids. And all I would do is my grandmother would watch Johnny Carson. And the only room that had the television was my room. So I had to watch Johnny Carson too as a kid.
So nine years old, seven, eight, nine years old. I would just take the jokes that were being told by David Brenner and Steve Allen and a young David Letterman. Who else would be on there? Franklin and Jai. You guys, when you're hearing this, go Google these guys. A young Jay Leno. These were like sort of like, you know, Richard Pryor. So I would take those jokes.
and tell them in school, because those kids wouldn't want it. Please tell me you use Richard Pryor on Fridays. Well, I guess I'm primed. That's a one of Richard Pryor's crimes. You couldn't, you couldn't, he couldn't really say anything on prime until he was clean, but like a rich little and Google rich little, because rich little was the first person that I saw doing personations. So there was a, this was, this had to be, this had to be like 76, 1976. So like fifth grade for me.
The joke was Jimmy Carter, which was the president at the time, singing, you light up my life. And at that time, his brother was getting caught drunk all the time, like Billy. So it was a Jimmy Carter gun. So many nights, me and my brother Billy would sit by the window waiting for somebody to bring some peanuts and beer. And so that was my first attempt at an impersonation.
And then it went on from there to do a Richard Nachshonari or a metal hook. So, you know, who else would I do? Reagan. I came later. But Reagan came later, but Reagan came like in the 80s when I was actually like 21. And I was the first black guy doing the Reagan impersonation, probably the only one. So I would be on stage doing my impersonations and going to Ronald Reagan people like, no, it ain't no way.
Well, as a matter of fact, I, uh, well, and oh, no, there you go again. And so that, that being, being young and, and, and that teacher must read and miss, miss Douthit and all those teachers allowing, miss Cole, allowing me to be myself. Um, you know, help me hone in on what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life, like, like literally my friends from Terrell go like, how the fuck did you do that?
This is the shit you used to do. You turned your throat back. It was literally the same shit. I'd be like, wow, millions of people are watching this shit. And it's the same thing. And then, you know, as people came, came up, you know, the impersonation, you know what, the Cosby is back in to do the Cosby impersonation is back in. Don't know how I'm going to do it, but there's definitely a Cosby joke somewhere. I don't know where, but I used to do.
because of the people in the jello pudding and the and the filth and the flying the farm which Eddie Murphy did but people didn't know like Cosby's real speaking voice. It's not like that. What's the speaking voice? It's speaking voice was different because I remember I got in trouble with Mr. Cosby because he felt that the movie booty call
was not cool. And he said some things in the press about us. And I was like a young comedian like, man, I'm just trying to work, you know? But his speaking voice, he was on the phone. Well, the thing is, is when you do something like booty call, what does a booty call say? Why are you calling the booty? You know, whatever, but it was so, it wasn't that it was because, and then you find out that that was your stick.
because a kid and a child and people and a far, but you know. So I know that that will, that will come up. I'll find the joke for Cosby that of course is gonna be a little, ugh, people gonna be like, ugh, but it's gonna be funny and shit. And now, who's now Doc Rivers from the Clippers? Hey, you know, we're gonna try. You know, it's not Blake's fault. You know, next year we gotta,
You know, so I'm working on like the new impersonations now. And so that's, and the way you do an impersonation is usually about, it's musical. Like say Kermit the Frog, right? So Kermit the Frog is, so it's sort of like what you do, you know what I'm saying? It's fine. Right?
So the actual voice tone is in the key of G for Kermit the Frog. So that and then once you get the voice tone it's how you make it's how you
manipulate your mouth to get the sound. Because you know it's, so it's sort of constricting. And then it's asking the character to come sit with you. And at the same time, Kermit the Frog, who else sounds like that? Sammy Davis Jr. a little bit.
and because you know man. So now I come with the frog is one way but if you just twist your voice or twist your mouth to the right and grab some swag now you're saying me there's union. I can't even get because man you know it's the same.
voice, you know? So that's, that's sort of like the mechanical way of, of getting to them. So you would start with not the visual because obviously those people who are listening can't see this, but the mannerisms are also very much on point. Manarisms are important because like, like I, I, I do it in LeBron James impersonation, which is really not a, a, a voice. It's more of his mannerism. It's the jar. You know, it's the look.
Let's go row, you know, let's go row, you know, the game of basketball, you know, we just try to, you know, you know, it's that, you know, it's right, it's right after playing, you know, when it comes up to the court, they catching me still tired, you know, you know, the game of basketball, we just try to, you know, do the best, you know, so it's the mannerism. So people will appreciate the mannerism. Physicality of someone like LeBron or, you know, different, you know, like I said, different, different personalities bring about different things.
When you look back on what, uh, what Ray said to you, if you can play the blues, you can do anything. If you had to translate that for your own kids, let's just say, if you can do X fill in the blank, you can do anything. What would you put in that blank? I would say this. It's a, it's a couple of things when you have kids who grow up around Hollywood. If you can stay motivated,
And if you can not do some things, not be jaded, not being titled, not be spoiled, not do drugs, not get into all of the bad stuff because it's, you know, our kids live in an elevated space. So what I try to do in Ricardo sees this all, Ricardo sees this all the time. So there's just a, we don't play around when it comes to discipline as well. Like when the kids are here and all of our friends,
size of the house means nothing to if you don't do the right thing, you're going to get in major trouble and you're going to get in Texas trouble. You know what I'm saying? Like how my grandmother disciplined. So it's a different thing when it comes to kids that are living a privileged situation. Luckily, my daughters are very, very, especially my oldest daughter. My oldest daughter never even asked me for money.
Never asked for the new car, never asked for a plane to ride coach. I mean, you know, so I think she really, really has a great head on her shoulders. I remember I got this Rolls-Royce and I went to go pick my daughter up in the Rolls-Royce thing. And that's going to mean, you know, pick her up in the Rolls-Royce. Drop the top, drop it, what up, now? So I'm riding, go to pick her up at school. She won't get in the car.
I said, baby, what are you doing? Look at the top, it comes up. She says that I'm not getting the calls on mine. I said, could you pick me up? I said, what are you doing? I said, I'm not getting you, you goofy. You make me, you make me look stupid in front of my friends. I said, oh, so, you know, she's really, and that's something she has on there. So my youngest daughter is a little different. She wants to ride in the rain, in the Rolls Royce all the time. Let's take this car. We ride now. Sunset Boulevard. She playing Rihanna. You know what I'm saying with her shades on.
So she's a little different in that sense. And I remember telling her, I said, well, on Elise, we can't ride around in LA in the limo, in the Rose Rose with the top down. And we're on our way to the Soho House and this sort of finicky of that. So I got to at least put the top up. She's like, why? I said, just, I said, let me ride until I get to Soho House and then I'll put the top up as we get there. Okay. So we ride up in the Soho House, we're in the valet and all of these, you know, celebs and people are coming out.
And she yells out, Jamie Foxx in the house. And I'm like, hell no. So I'm trying to pull the top down and all the other celebrities are like, look at this motherfucker being arrogant and shit. He's so Gody. This motherfucker. And he's got the kid announcing him. So, so, you know, it's a lot of things you could tell your kids, man. And then you just have to hope for the best and be there. What? What is your birthday? Eric Marlon Bishop.
How did Eric Marlin Bishop become Jamie Foxx? Man, I was Eric Marlin Bishop, graduated high school, 86. I get out to California and I started doing
You know, I'm in college and doing the music, but I will go up on these open mic nights for comedy. So I go, I do really well. I get like standing ovation. And then I came to LA, got a standing ovation. And then when I came back every week, I wouldn't get called up. I was like, man, why can't, what's going on?
But what I noticed is how does the open mic work? Well, how does it is? What you do is you put your name on a list, put your name on a list, and they pick from the list, and they say, OK, these are people who are going up.
So I went and I had a great set then for the next three, four weeks. I didn't, they never called my name. I said, yo, man, did you see me? Yeah, yeah, you weren't on the list. You were on the list, but we, we got other people. But I found out that the comedians were actually running the list. So the comedians they had been here for a while was like, we don't want him on here. Cause he showed us up. So I was like, fuck. So I ended up going to this evening into improv, the improv like in Santa Monica.
And so I had never been there. So I wouldn't notice that a hundred guys would show up. Five girls would show up. The five girls will always get on the show because they needed to break up the monotony. So I said, hmm, I got something. So I wrote down on the list, all of these unisex names, Stacy Green, Tracy Brown, Jamie Fox. And now the guy chooses from the list.
He says, uh, is, uh, Jamie Foxx, is she here? She'll be first. I was like, no money. That's, that's me. Oh, okay. All right. Well, you're the fresh meat. I said, what's that? They were shooting evening at the improv, this old, old common show back in the day. Said you'll be the guy that will just throw up to see if you get a laugh or two. You know, it's going to be a tough crowd. Fresh meat, fresh meat. I said, cool. So I go up in between two of the guys, get a standing ovation.
People are like, who's the kid? Is he on the show? Oh, he's fresh means amateur. So then they started yelling my name. Yo, Jamie. Yo, Jamie. Hey, Jamie, but I'm not used to it. So now they think I'm arrogant. This motherfucker thinks he's the she's not even listening to us. So I took that name and it stuck.
And then I started building everything off of it. Back in the day, people used to wear jackets and put names on the jacket. So I had Sly as a dot, dot, dot, uh, coming to the foxhole, foxhole, you know, things like that. I'm gonna grab a little something. Yeah, sure thing.
Okay, we are back after a little food break. Yeah. And we talked about some of your comedy starting in third grade, maybe earlier, we talked about grandmother. And what I like to talk about a little bit more is fear. So you mentioned on the other side of fear, by the time you got to doing the open mics, getting up on stage, were you nervous? Were you afraid or were you over it? Because
First I looked at it first. I went to an open mic night and saw the guy. I was like, man, he dudes is terrible. And so when you go on stage and your whole life is not, I want to be a comedian. I went on stage like, yo, let me just fuck around.
So if I hit, cool, if I miss, I wasn't trying to be there anyway. I wanted to do more music. But when I went on stage, it was just natural. I belong here. So I think that's the thing, too, when it comes to entertainment.
Uh, there's a certain like, oh, I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to do. How successful I will be or won't be. That's something out of my hands, but I do know that this is where I belong. And that's with anything and anybody like when you can, when you can sort of listen to that.
Voice in your head or what's in your heart and you get a chance to do something that you really feel like you're supposed to do that alleviates a lot of the fear now if it was Surgeon or lawyer or something, you know, so you know if something that I'm not You know versed in or something like that then maybe there will be more fear But with this you don't have well I don't have those types of fears and and then as I've gotten older in the business I sort of simplify things like
Now, I just execute. I have to ask people like Ricardo, Justin, Justin, what should I execute? So the fear of a celebrity or an artist now is, how do I get my art off?
in a world where it's the social media driven sort of ridicule and criticism. Like I always say like this, like a person like Prince or a person like Michael Jackson could have never survived in today's world.
because in the day of the internet and where everybody has a voice, most of the voices are hateful voices or not understanding. Like if you saw Prince with a guitar and a bandana and the way he dressed, people would meme the shit out of it. So now it's not a fear, but it's just a
question that I have to always ask them, like, yo, is this the cool shit to do or not the cool shit to do? And so what I learned is when it's just executing something, when it's either executing a song or executing a joke or executing things within entertainment, it's cool. But then you have to wonder, like, how do you get it off? Like, how do you, like, even now, when you talk about the Bill Cosby joke back in the day, we just tell the joke.
Now you gotta be like, okay, I gotta tell the joke in a way that is still funny. It still keeps the bite on it. But you know, so those are the different like for me as a entertainer where there's not fear is just like, you know, questions. Does that make sense? Makes sense. No, that makes sense. The considerations when you when you
Have you bombed on stage before? Oh, yeah. Two things. When you are bombing, what is your internal dialogue or response? Internal dialogue is, boy, you staying. Boy, you bombing. I bombed, and it wasn't a lot. I only bombed twice. Do you remember your first? Yeah, yeah. I did this show for this guy named Latimore. Old Blue Singer.
I'm 21. What was this name? Lattimore. Lattimore. Sounds like Voldemort. Yeah, Lattimore. Lattimore. So this guy saw me at this other club saying, hey man, you know, Lattimore's performing around the corner. Man, why don't you come open? I said, whatever. I said, how much you paid? He said, pay $50. I said, I'm there, $50. I need it. So this is like 1989, 90. So I get there and I don't know who Lattimore is. I just know it's a lot of older people.
Like I'm being like, oh, oh, I'm like, oh shit. Where do people at? And these other people. So I'll go up and the setting was different. It was like the chairs and stuff away and it was like a banquet setting. And it's in the middle of the hood, you know, Crenshaw and like the tables or like from here to where like 20 feet away, 30 feet away from me. So I don't have it. And I had to have that proxy. And I hadn't been doing stand up comedy that long. I don't even been doing it for like a year. So I had,
If I'm funny, I got an hour. If I'm not funny, it's about 10 minutes worth of shit, because I would just take a joke and just keep spending it and spending it. So my first joke, they didn't get second joke, they didn't get it. I said shit, I'm damn near all the jokes.
So I said, well, let me do this before I do anything. Let me just talk about people in the audience. So I looked and I saw this guy with this sort of suit on with a butterfly collar. Like, oh shit, I'm gonna talk about him with the butterfly collar. But before I could say that, I looked around, everybody has a butterfly collar. This is what they really want to look like. And so I just said, hey, man, you know, I don't know what else y'all want.
And pretty soon, Lattimore is going to come up. You guys ready for Lattimore? And I'm just doing that. So I'm going to take a break. So I get off stage. And the dude that was washing the dishes takes his apron off and goes, man, I got it. As a mic. How y'all feel? And he started doing these old stock jokes.
kills. And so I said, okay, now I know what it is. You got to have jokes that are appropriate for your audience. So I learned on how to tell jokes for everybody, because at first my jokes was geared towards women, it was singing. So what I started doing from that, from that day on, I would go to like Des Moines, Iowa, Davenport, Iowa, Boise, Idaho, where it's all white, Gunnar, some Colorado, all white,
And I will go do like 40 minutes of all black material to see what they understood, what they didn't understand. So if I go to these all white places and if they understood 15 minutes, I logged that 15 minutes. I can go to any place where it's just all white. And you would determine if they understood it by the laughs. You would determine if they understood it by the laughs. And why would ask? Y'all know who this is?
As I would tell the joke if 15 minutes they understood that I can go to any place in the world That's all white and they get it then I will go to my chocolate city Chicago DC Florida and do all of my Political highbrow stuff and see what to see with the black folks understood man. What the fuck you doubt my doubt? Now they understood 15 minutes now I got 15 To 30 minutes of 45 minutes there were ever I go no matter what age
They'll understand no matter what gender, no matter what race, they'll understand the 45 minutes. So I had to learn how to use the formula in order for you to be funny. And then once you got your comedy license, once you've been seen by enough people in the highest way, like if you look at, like if you look at the arc of a Kevin Hart, like Kevin Hart,
takes that art, takes the same formula. I'm not for sure how he put it in his mind, but he's doing the same thing to where he's going to all of these places all over the world.
implementing his comedy and if they get it, he's gathering all that so that now when people see Kevin Hart, no matter where in the world, they're going to laugh. Becoming a great comedian is also having that formula going on in the head because if you
If you paint yourself into a corner like you're only the black comedian or you're only the Hispanic comedian or whatever that is, then it's hard for you to become universal. Eddie Murphy was great. He had an opportunity to Saturday Night Live to get it to everybody. But it's definitely a formula to not bomb it. So what would you say to yourself? So that's the first bomb you mentioned too. What was the second?
If it's hard to recall, the follow-up question is going to be, what is the post-game analysis when you step off the stage after bombing, say the second time? When I bomb, the second time was way later in my career when I'm working out jokes.
But I don't like to work out jokes and tell people I'm working out. I like to actually do a show, come and do the show. So when I think it was Irvine... So you don't tell people you're working on the show? No, no, no. I think that's cheating and I think you get bad habits. So I do a show in Irvine, California. First show, I kill. It was just ready for him. I'm like, oh man, everything works. Second show, bombed.
because I didn't take time to dig out the jokes. But when you bomb, you go like, OK, all right, let's go. Let's check it out. So I got a team of my guys. I said, let's go. OK, that didn't work. No, you got to put this in front of that. You're going to put that behind this because that's going to kick this off. People didn't know what that was. So maybe we don't say that. So you have to.
When you take the bomb, when we take the L, it's not like you're not funny. What's the L? Like you take the loss. When you take the loss, it's not like you're not funny. It's just like, okay, you just didn't put the shit together. So that's the other thing too. When you do become funny, it's gonna be harder now to make people laugh because you set the bar. So now you... So watch this. The hardest part for Chris Rock was after
he had done something great and stand up because now you gotta top that. The hardest part for Eddie Murphy, because Eddie wants to come out and do stand up is how do I top that in your head? The hardest part is coming for Kevin Hart in the fact that you smashed him. Now you gotta, you gotta, you know what I'm saying? You gotta know how to, you gotta know how to refresh because
When you do something like, I would look at my stuff and go like, I gotta quit doing that. Because that shtick that I'm doing, people are catching on. And they're like, okay, motherfucker, we done already seen that shit. So that's the other thing. You gotta have great material. And you gotta know how to move. Because right now it's the perfect time for Eddie Murphy to come out and do stand up. Because it's been so long. It's nostalgic. It was 30 years ago. So now you can catch a new young.
Uh, you can still excite the older, you know what I'm saying? So being a standard comedian is tough. And you've seen a lot of funny guys, not be funny anymore. Why? Because you can't top what you did. You look at the Jim Carrey, you go like, okay, man, where are you at? Where are you at? You know what I'm saying? You know, don't don't give up the funny, uh, or you look at Krista. I always look at Krista and be like, motherfucker, where are you at? Don't, don't leave, don't leave us because being a standard comedian is an interesting thing. Most standard comedians want to look good.
I mean, what way? We just want to look good. Think about this. When Eddie Murphy started doing standup, he was funny, but then he started doing, you know, the weather, let the suits and it was a fly shit and the rings and they don't want to look good. Joe Piscopo started working out.
with the muscles, you know what I'm saying? So as an extended committee, we got to be careful not to look too good because people start going, what the fuck are you doing? You ain't cute. We just want to laugh, you know what I'm saying? But when we started getting to our shit, that's when we look, because I did that. I got to, my thing was after a living color, this show called a living color that I did, I felt like I had made it.
So I wasn't necessarily on a good looking shit, but I was on the, I've made it jokes. I went on stage and was doing rich jokes. Just got that range Rover. Anybody else? It's crazy out here. You know, they're so finicky, right? My fuckers is looking at me like, what the fuck is you talking about? And then, uh, I said, my, you know, square footage of the house, man, when they get a certain square feet, man, that shit is crazy and maintaining, you know, motherfucker is like, motherfucker, if you don't get off the goddamn state, I'd lost it. I lost it. And I walked off stage and all of a sudden,
I walk upstairs and give it up to Jamie Foxx and I'm thinking that going crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm standing outside the club and I hear the crowd going crazy. I'm like, what the fuck they doing? I just went upstairs. What the fuck are they laughing at? And I opened the door and there was a kid skinny little tank top on barely fit. His name was Chris Tucker. He was smashing. He was no one has been that funny within 15 minutes.
I've never seen, I've never seen, and I watch them all. I've never seen a stand-up where people were laughing so hard. Like I said, he's gonna kill somebody. Like when he says, last night, how will you all? I kill. This is gonna be true. Somebody's gonna have a fucking heart attack. And I sat down and I said, and I went, I can't do that. I lost that. So I left, went to another club that night bomb. Like it wasn't just, you know,
So finally, I went over to Okimao, where the troops were, and started doing stand-up over there for the troops to sorta get back. It was my rocky moment, like, you know, I started running up the steps chasing chickens and shit. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, b
And for a stand-up comedian, that's the one thing. You can never let go. You can never stop being a certain goofiness to you. And so when you talk about fear or when you talk about bombing, it's different when you've done it for a long time. And when you do bomb, you just got to get very back up. And you got to acknowledge it. OK, I stonked.
because they're going to let you know. Like today's world, you can't do nothing. And today's world will have somebody letting you know, you fuck that up. What are the sources or where do most of your best bits come from? When you look back at the stuff that just killed, is it the shower, the thing that bugs you three times? So you write it down. I mean, how do you develop your material observation? And like, you know, I do jokes with them. You know, it's just sort of like observation.
You know, early on it was the black and white thing, you know, black folks do it this way, white folks, which was the way we were doing comedy in the late 80s and 90s. Oh, the average white man's heart. It has no, it has to do with the heart. The average white man's heart beats like this. Or the average black man's heart beats like this. You know, ladies, that's why you have a choice. We'd rather make love to somebody like this.
Or would you rather make love or something like this? I mean, that was the jokes at the time. It was observational. And then it was personal. Like, do your observation first, and then it was personal. My grandmother, who was...
You know, we lived together, you know, and when she first heard like on television what age was, being old, she didn't know what it exactly meant. She just knew that it was bad, but she thought that since she's always on me anyway, then I'm gonna catch AIDS. But it was for the wrong reasons. Like she would say, boy, you gonna, it's six in the morning. You gonna wake up? Shit, half the day done gone.
I said, Granny, what you mean, is it sick? Shit, I'm now sleeping. Anybody sleep that long, got to have AIDS. I said, Granny, I don't think they're saying, no, I saw it on TV. You sleep it too long, you got AIDS. I said, Granny, I don't think that's how they exactly what. And then I would use her towels. You know, old Southern women had them, there was a towel used and it was a nice towel. So I used a nice towel.
Well, I know you ain't use my towels. I said, yeah, you don't put the A's on the towel. I can't use everybody's towel. Anybody use the towel like that? Got to have A's. I said, Grammy, I don't think that's how, you know, so it was opposite. And this is what she was actually saying. So when I did that joke on stage, people was just, you know,
would die. So it's observational, then it's personal. And then some of the comedians are great politically. I'm not necessarily a political guy. My thing was the impersonation of the politician, like Bill Clinton. You know, I did not have sex with it.
You know, it was, you know, things like that, but it's so many different ways and so many different guys out there that you look at and go, ooh, like when I would look at a young Christian Rock, the way he was a technician, just me, or you look at Jay Leno, or you look at even Arsenio Hall, when he would work out, or you see Eddie working out a joke,
You know it's they are watching George Lopez who knows how to tap into the base and just really bring you into his world and stuff so it's some it's some Some guys that Sarah Silverman Just I mean a technician
Amy Schumer, watching her own on just a Saturday Night Live, when she's working her shit out, a young Whoopi Goldberg at the Met. There's so many people that you can watch and see how to tap into your own skill set.
I try to look at all of them and try to just, you know, not steal from it, but just get inspired by it all. Who are some of the most underrated comedians who come to mind are people who you'd think haven't had their due, haven't been appreciated? Oh, I wouldn't say underrated, but I think there were just, there were just like warriors that never got that shine. Oh, there was a guy named TK Kirkland who was a warrior.
but he never got to shine. And TK had a colorful past, you know, and he'll let you know. He said, you know, he was a crazy motherfucker, but TK had jokes like, and Wanda's Kermit the Frog always say, hi-ho, hi-ho. Is he a pimp? And why do fat people wear leather pants? Do they think that shit is cute? And why do people in wheelchairs tie their motherfucking shoes? Do they think they gonna trip? Oh man, it was just,
He was just amazing and his delivery, you know what I'm saying? He said, he says,
because I'm T to the motherfucking K. That's what type of motherfucker I am. Don't play me, play Lotto, you got a better chance. And he made himself a character on stage. That was just, you know, you guys are too young to know this joke, but the bugle boy jeans, bugle boy jeans used to have a commercial where a girl would pull up in a car and says, excuse me,
Are those bugle boys, she would say this to a guy, like he's walking on the street with his jeans. She says, excuse me. Are those bugle boy jeans you're wearing? Well, yes, they are. She get in the car, right? TK had a joke, man. It was so funny. He said, man, let, man, let that motherfucker be a motherfucking black girl in the motherfucking car. Excuse me. Are those bugle boys Asian wearing? Yeah. Getting a car, motherfucker. I mean, people would just go, the dude has so many like levels.
And he's just, you know, he's an underground guy. Who else? There's a lot, I mean, a lot of people. Earthquake, amazing. Earthquake is amazing. What's my other dude's name? Tony Roberts, amazing. Tony Roberts, man, I've never laughed. So he said, oh, man, I had to dig out some of his jokes.
But he talks about, uh, it's very physical, but he talks about being on the plane and the plane is going down. And he says, he said he was doing a plane. He thought the plane was going down. So he says, so I wanted to fuck everybody before, you know, I want to fuck before he says, oh, while the plane's on that, he's fucking everybody, you know, he fucked. He fucked the, uh, he fucked the nine. He was looking at everybody and then the plane leveled off.
Oh, I'm sorry, y'all. That's not my bad idea. That's hilarious, man. And there's so many, man, so many. Not a lot of new comedians now that are actually, it's funny, right? That are actually dangerous now. We don't have dangerous comedians. We don't have dangerous comedians. The only dangerous comedian that we have right now is Amy Schumer. She's dangerous. In what way? Like she'll say it.
It'll be hot button, you know what I mean? Have you ever heard, I saw this guy on a, I actually heard of him through a guy named Evan Goldberg, who's Seth Rogen's writing partner. And so Gerard, exactly, that was good. So Gerard Carmichael.
Oh, yeah, his special. Oh, my God. It's like, I would never make a rape joke. This is more of a rape question. And it's like, oh, my God, he's dangerous. Well, he's dangerous. And it's not a lot of that anymore. It's not a lot of dangerous comedians. And I think that's where we sort of go like, you know, where's that danger? Like when you when you when you see Amy Schumer, you see, like, I saw her in a room.
talking about catching a dick in front of Robert De Niro, like we were at the American Film Awards, whatever like that. And she's just, I mean, hardcore dang, which is what Sarah Silverman started out as, you know? But Amy looks like she's rounded the corner and is now, you know, really making it, you know, making a dope for herself. If you look back at In Living Color, and I watched the show, and it just, in retrospect, it seems like
such a, such a magical combination of people. So how did that group get assembled? And, I mean, what made that team so special? Because, I mean, you look at the list, right? I mean, you've got Chris Rock, you've got Jim Carrey, you've got the Wayans, you've got, it just goes, Jennifer Lopez, you got like, you go down the line, it's just, it's an all-star roster. Well, at that time, he and I be Wayans was a, he put it all together.
And he was able to grab all of these incredibly talented people and make them get along and figure out how to squeeze all of this talent into 22 minutes of programming. Sure. Because it was only, it was 30 minutes show, so it was 22 minutes. But he was very disciplined in how we make jokes. You were not allowed to come in and be half-assed.
He pulled you to the side and say, as a Black comedian, you cannot be half-assed. You're either great or you don't exist. And he says, don't take the racial part of that in any kind of way. That's just the way it is. Because he wrote for Eddie Murphy. He was around the greatest. He says, I'm around the greatest all the time. So that's what we gonna do. So when you see Damon Wayans come in,
And I just got hired, like they had already been doing the show for like a year or two years. So when I saw Damon walk in and Jim walk in, it was like, it was like fucking Jurassic Park. It was like fucking T-Rex and fucking, you know what I'm saying? And the way I got on the show was, was crazy too, because it went from the auditioning process, it was a hundred comedians down to 50 down to 25 down to 10 down to five. I was part of the five, but I was losing.
I wasn't doing well within the improv of it, because I just wasn't catching the right shit. And then Keenan said something incredible. He said, well, I dig this, but I want to see y'all on stage doing stand-up, because I want to have stand-up comedians. I was like, oh shit, that's my shit. That's my shit. And the other four people didn't do stand-up. It was only one other girl that did stand-up. God bless you, Yvette Wilson. But the other three didn't do stand-up. So I was like, oh man.
So that night, everybody's going to the laugh factor, which was just starting, because at the time the comedy store was dominating, laugh factor was just, and they begged, can we please have the audition and the laugh factor? So I show up late on purpose.
because I wanted to be last. Smart. So I show up late and tomorrow, Robert, who was the producer. Now, what are you doing? You're late. Oh, my God. Why aren't you here? I was supposed to go on up early. You're supposed to be first. Jamie. Oh, my God. You're going to kill me. I saw what they were working. Can I just go up last? Yes, you have to. Because we've already started getting here.
So go ahead. Now, this was interesting for me because I was in white world. I was like on the mainstream, I did all my jokes in the hood at that time, you know what I'm saying? I was the hood guy. So I was like, oh shit, you know, up town, you know what I'm saying? It's like everything's clean and shit, you know, ain't no weed in the air and nothing, you know what I'm saying? Anybody snuck no drinks and shit.
And it's an audition thing. So I'm watching the guys and, you know, God bless them. They just had never done stand up before. So I had my cassette tape and I knew what I was coming up to. I'm coming up to heavy decent effect with more bounce to the ounce. So I get to do my tape. He's like, what's this? That's my tape. You know, going with music, you know, up there, they didn't go on with music. They just went over hand clapping. Listen, man, I got to, I got to come in with heavy decent effect or more bounce to the pumps. I need a crowd going, it's okay. Sure.
So he standing there with the tape. And then Sean Williams gave me a great tip. He walked up. He said, yo, Jamie, just go up and do your act, man. Just stop worrying about them. Don't worry about the characters. Just do your act. Your mauling mauling. Come here. Chill Jamie. Just do your acts. I don't really do my act. Do my act like I do. Yeah. Do you act like you're doing it? I said straight. Cool. So I go up. They don't play the music. I'm waiting on that. Oh, you got my music to do is over.
I said, well, I suppose I have some music. And I said, if this shit goes wrong, you will actually see me working across the street at the gas station. And I went into a character, man, I was in there with Keenan and all of them, dawg. And it just didn't. So I did this little character, then I went into my act. And I got to start an ovation.
And I remember seeing Jim Carrey and Keenan fly girls like on their feet. Like, I said, oh, man, this is great. And that's how I got on the show. And during that show, I did this character called Wanda, where I said, all the good looking ladies clap your hands. And everybody said, I said, now all the ugly ladies, let me see you make some noise. It was quiet. I sent out a business and all the ugly ladies I tell him, hey, for real though, he ain't talking about me.
So we did this character. Keenan was like, I want you to do that character on the show, because I think that's where you really flourish. And when I did that character, that's when everything sort of changed, because I was trying to find my parents on the show, because we got on the show.
but we were there for a trial basis. But when I did that character, it was like, it was like playing football and I was like the punt returner and I was a rookie and I ran it all the way back to first day. So nobody really knew who I was, but they knew that this character was slamming.
And so that sort of gave me like my stripes because these guys were jugging us. I watched, I watched Keenan. I said, Keenan, these jokes ain't funny. There's the rights that the writers wrote. He says, get on your feet. Everybody get up. Let's do this. So he was like, there's never a joke that's not funny. You just got to work and find it. So he taught us a formula of finding the jokes. And he was right every single time. And so like I said, to be there watching Jim Carrey,
like create pet detective on set. He's writing pet detective as a warrior. I said, what's that you're writing on? Hey, man, just saw, you know, working on some stuff, you know, just got some stuff I'm working on. So what is that? Man, I see the little thing called pet detective. I said, okay, sound funny. And was he developing for the show at that time? He's developing for you for much later. For his own shit. I got to make one phone call.
No problem. All right, so we're back. We took a little breather, but we'll catch us up. What were we just talking about? We were talking about how nowadays is that you don't get a chance to control your own narrative. Like we were talking about is there's two different people. Some people think that the tech world and the social media and things on the internet is taking us to a great place. And then there's people who think that it's a horrible place. I had, I spoke with a young lady who had been burned bad.
Bad by the press, bad to where she lost her job. And what was interesting about her job was that what they were scolding her about was, like me knowing her, I was like, you're not like that at all. I can't, it's not negative. Everybody thinks so. And they took something like they went through emails and through our personal emails and all of a sudden, what it was, but it was just like,
You're not like that at all. So when I was on the phone talking with her, she was like, they're saying this and I don't worry about it. You're cool. Like you're not like that. But I hadn't, I'm bolding. I'm like, I don't even need to read it. What could they possibly say? And when I look, it was a national story. I went, what the fuck? She lost her child. And so like even like you'll do something where you think that it's either you're making fun or you having fun.
but they'll take whatever it is that you say and make it what they wanted to say. Or craft it where, like if you do a joke, it's not about doing a joke anymore. Jamie Foxx slams Caitlyn Jenner. Jamie Foxx trounces, like, nah, I'm a comedian. We do, but everything is something that they control and it's tough because when I say Justin Bieber, what do you think? Plus the first thing comes to mind.
Be honest. Hair that I'm jealous of. Yeah. But what do you think? But what do you think? Something about a kid who can't get it together. When I say Chris Brown, what do you think? It's something negative. When I say Jennifer Aniston, what do you think? What do you think of cover of Rolling Stone, photograph, black and white?
You say what? Cover of Rolling Stone magazine, black and white naked laying on a bed. Oh, that's hilarious. The average person would think of not what they do. Right, but the impression. The headline, the subliminal images they got at the checkout counter. Yes, it's the headline. If I say, if I say Jennifer Aniston, you automatically because nowadays they control, we don't control our own narrative to where it's like,
They talked about this thing with Quentin Tarantino, which I thought was sad because usually when you see a story about black lives matter or anything black, it's usually the same black folks with the coofy who's trying to be heard. And they're absolutely right. They're absolutely, it's so much wrong going in black world. There's black on black crime.
then there's the divide that is, because of social media, that is going on between the police officers and black folk. Police officers on the whole are great folk. I know them. Shit, I know a gang of police officers. But the one or two that have been caught on social media makes it look, paint the picture, that it's all of them. Now granted, we've known for a long time
Blacks and police officers have always had a divide. We've done movies about it. We've done books about it. It's just is the way it is. Now my take on it is because I call it residue. It's slave residue, meaning that slavery for 300 years, you saw a person of color a certain way for 300 years.
You've always saw him as a slave or the criminal or something that you didn't value. So therefore coming out of that, of course, there's gonna be a divide when it comes to police and when it comes to blacks and when it comes to, that's always been that way. So take that off the table.
But in today's world of how do we bridge that gap? I've gone to Quantico and Virginia, saw what a police officer sees. I've talked to police officers that, how can we bridge the gap? I've suggested that you go get a white police officer who you think might not like black folk. You know what I'm saying? Get that person to go into the hood and throw a picnic.
for a kid that's 8, 9, 10 years old who's African-American so that he can see another side of the police officer because right now in social media or in media period, the stories that are the most salacious where it's the black person, the black guy being killed by a cop, it's hard to erase those images. I'm a black man. When I see that, I have to react to that because I'm like, wow,
You know, that troubles me, but then I have to sit down and think, okay, let me not think of the worst thing to say, but let me think because I know how media tries to make things or heighten it. How do I bring people together in spite of the headline? Because what people don't understand is that when you keep showing the images,
of the black guy being killed by the cop, that does something to you. That's like whatever you believe in, if it was a Jewish person, if it was a gay person, you cannot sit and not be bothered by that. At the same time, that cop, when he sees the other side of it, when us saying, all of you guys ain't shit, which that's not what's really being said, most of the time it's with the individual cop. Now the cop sees the story.
In his mind now, well fuck it, well it's a problem now. So now imagine that cop who's watching the story, driving on the street, that young black kid who's watching the story, walking on the street. What happens? Dynamite. Dynamite. Because we can't get it, we can't, we can't get anybody responsible.
on the media side to say, let's stop interviewing people and putting labels on them. Let's interview this man and this woman, but don't say that they're Democrat. Don't say that they're Republican. Don't say that they're cop. Just have them talk because when you see, when you're watching TV and you see something that you agree with, you agree with them only and you can't hear the other person. That's the first thing. Two, like when I look at Quentin Tarantino to demonize this guy,
can in just because people might be listening to this for years. Could you catch people up on it? Well, let me catch up. The confusion. Quentin Tarantino, who is a purist when it comes to
his opinions and his emotions. Even if, even if you could go, I could go to Quentin Tarantino and say something, man, I think, you know, as a black person and so and so and so. He said, well, stop doing that. Stop hanging it just on black, hanging on things that are substance first and then let it be. I mean, so I've heard this guy speak when there's no cameras. I said, wow, you know what? You make a lot of sense. So Quentin Tarantino,
seized the Black Lives Matter campaign, seized the individual stories, 40 different people of individual stories where a police officer had killed the person who was unarmed. It touched him. The reason I thought that was an impactful because you seldom see the white superstar
go and stand with the black folk who just trying to be heard. Even high end black guys don't go stand with the black folks that's trying to be heard when it comes to like, especially Hollywood. Cause you know, people in Hollywood are so scared. Oh, they won't see my movie. They won't see my song. If I stand, if I stand up for anything of substance, they so fucking scared. So when I saw this dude do that, I was like, wow, that's great.
But then the misinterpretation of his words, where he says, I'm standing here with the murdered. Quentin Tarantino speaks that way. He speaks, if you've read any of his movie, or saw any of his movies, he speaks in those terms. He says, I stand with the murdered. When I see someone being murdered, I call him what it is, it's a murder. That's a murderer that killed this person. However the story got spawned was that,
Quentin Tarantino is a cop hater. He hates all cops and all cops have murder us. And I was just like, oh, here we go again, man. Here's a person who's willing, and I'm gonna speak like it, willing to put aside his white, cushy Hollywoodness. He could live on his mountain and never give a shit about anything. He came up and said, man, I felt something. And now,
They painted so bad. And now you got the New York cop. So we got so far as that. Now it's a beef. That's not what we trying to do, but you can't do anything right now because the media story, if it's not salacious, we don't want to report it. We have to.
You feel what I'm saying? No, I do. And it's, I mean, if it bleeds, it leads, right? So they put the salacious, the visually viscerally impactful stuff up front because it gets the clicks or the purchases, see the advertising. The only, I suppose, flip side to that. And I have a very specific question for you that, from a fan, I'd love to ask related to some of these race questions. But the good news is, if you can look at it in these terms, is that
the necessity for new is so high that if you starve a story of oxygen, it'll often die on its own because they can't regurgitate the same thing if there's no response. And so you can let it kind of die on the vine. But we were talking about this before. I mean, I've had instances, and I won't bitch and moan too long because I think the question is more interesting than my bitching, but I've had instances where these formerly, I would say,
Outlets of record, very prestigious outlets, magazines. I'm not going to mention them by name because I know what you're talking about, but I was interviewed and profiled by magazine at one point, very, very highbrow magazine. There were six or seven misquotes or erroneous facts in the piece, and I corrected those with the fact checker and went to press with no corrections.
What do you do in that situation when those things then end up in Wikipedia? So you have to develop a sort of strategy. And I mean, this will get even more interesting. Once we have smart stadiums, once we have facial recognition, like you see on Facebook, once that's implemented across the board, it'll get very interesting. But I'm going to go down that rabbit hole. And instead, I'm going to bring up a question that I'd love to get before you go into that. Yes. Here's the problem.
back in the day, if there was a misquote.
And you went to that entity and said, hey, you quoted me wrong. Oh, we'll release a statement saying that we misquoted you and it erases. The problem with today's world, once it's out there, you can't get it back. You cannot change. You cannot change because it's gonna stay there. When I punch up your name, that's the first thing that's gonna come up or the second thing that's coming, you can't get rid of it. And when you talk about the regurgitate or just letting it die,
You can let it die, but the problem is you have to at least once it starts.
give another, hopefully that you can give another side of it that people may see a little bit. They don't want to say, what's crazy about our society right now? No one wants to see anybody reconcile. No one wants to see anybody come together or say that, like when I, when I think about Quentin Tarantino, I spoke and said, I back you as a friend and keep, keep speaking the truth and don't worry about the haters, meaning speak the truth from you.
not whatever the comment was, but whatever you're saying in your truth, you say that because you ain't out there, you could be promoting your movie. You could be trying to make money. You actually trying to see how you could get, how you could go. I know the way he thinks I'm gonna go talk to them. If they are wrong and what they're saying, I'm gonna tell them. But if they are right, he says, I'll be the one that can go to the cops and say that. And now,
Look at how it is. It's so great. Go ahead. Ask questions. Oh, no. I mean, I think you're right. I think that people want gladiatorial games, and we don't have gladiatorial games, so they use the front page of gladiatorial games. But speaking of conflict resolution, so this is a question from a fan TJ. My wife is pregnant. We're moving to a very non-diverse neighborhood. We are kind of worried on how it will go. She is black and I am white. What is some advice he can give to a young couple raising a child of color in today's world?
I'll say this, I'll say this about America. Let's use America as an example. To me, America is the most incredible civilization that has ever been created. Hundreds of years from now, people will look at this place and marvel. There's the bitch in the complain aisle where everybody bitches and complains about every single thing. But the one thing about America that is incredible is
the evolution of freedom, the change. When I talk about slavery that happened, it was 300 years of it. Look at the evolution. We come out of it. We have a black president. People are more welcoming now.
We used to live in the world not too long ago where it was frowned upon, it was tough, it was this. What I would say to people like that, just live your life. Like I live my life in places where at times it was definitely racial misunderstanding. But I would talk to that person.
I would make sure that person understood who I was as a person. I'm not going to compromise who I am as far as a black man, but I'm also going to give you another, another version of it, not the version that you necessarily see on television, the version that you see on the internet. I'm going to give you me. And most of the time, we are alike in so many different and so many instances. So when he's saying moving to that non diverse place, it's different, man. Look at the, look, I hate to say this way. Listen to the kids, bro.
But when you talk about the kids, the kids today, I met the gym last night, 24-hour fitness. The kid is playing in the future, white kid. Well, it was as exact when I, white kid. When I first moved into my neighborhood years ago, and I felt like I made him, I'm in the white neighborhood now, I'm here.
Oh, I'm so, I've made it. And I hear NWA blasting. Look out there with these kids, I was 16 years old. So times are changing, man. And you have to start giving people the benefit of the doubt that they'll get it right. And for all those people that were here back in the old days and that are now 50 and 60 and 70 years old, that's dying out. The way of thinking is dying out. You may be looking in a situation where you may have the first female president.
It's the evolution of freedom. Think about how we treated women at one point. No voice, no rights, no nothing. I've heard people say, I'd rather have a black person tell me something to do than a woman. But now it's so we are.
on the right path, man, love who you want to love, be where you want to be because we are evolving. Look at the steps that gay rights took in the past few years. Man, that's huge when you're talking about people in the Bible Belt and how they felt. So if those things are now
Like my daughter taught me, like when she was 13, she's 21 now, she was 13 and it was, this was nine years ago and I was talking about gay rights and things like that. And I asked her friends, I said, what do you think about it? We don't think about it. She said, that's you guys. That's a good answer. She said, that's you guys. She said, that's old people. She said, that's why we're turned out from religion sometimes. That's why we're turned out from all of these different things because old people argue about where you're from, what you do, what you look like. We don't give a shit.
And so thank God for the youth. Thank God for that couple, because what they're doing is they're showing a new world. She said, Dad, if someone was doing something somewhere that was straight, gay, black, white, or brown, somewhere else, does it affect you at all? Does your air change?
Does anything around you change because the people who live in the way they want to live as long as they're not breaking the laws? You know what? You made great points. She went on to my radio show and talked about it. So we are in a new day. What we got to do is
We got to stop. I said, like I was telling Justine, I said, we got to make sure it's to say, let's put media out of business. We got to quit allowing them to control the narrative. Those people like with Quentin Tarantino or the Black Lives Matter or people that speak up on something that is broken or that is wrong.
you don't give them a chance by painting them in a bad situation. Are you going to do another comedy tour? Yeah, I'm going to do another comedy tour. But I'm going to start it organically, like maybe 100 people, 200 people started organically and just sort of grow it. I got some great jokes. And that's the thing, like when you're when you're when you're when you're comedian, it's like you have to pray that the jokes will open up.
So I got some great jokes that people will get and understand. And then just the stuff that's been going on with me, getting older, not realizing you to OG, the young hip-hop guy. What's up, OG? Yeah, that's right. It's just some funny stuff. And that's what any comedian will tell you that it's hard to be funny when there's nothing funny happening.
but there's been so much funny shit happening. I feel like my mom who, you know, adopted and who gave me a for adoption in seven months and she comes back to live with me. And as she's living with me, she walks down the first day, she's here, she walks down the steps and says, I want a phantom. I'm like, bitch, of the opera, what are you talking about? She's talking about a phantom, Rose Royce, right? And it was just funny to just certain things that
The fact that everybody lives in my house, the fact that my mom, my dad lives here, my two sisters, my dad still dates. You know, and my mom is going on his side of the house when she, when he has a date, you know, just assessing, like just being in a way like, oh, hey, hi, I didn't know you had company joy. I mean, just, and that they've turned, they've turned into kids.
So, you know, my dad had come to my room, could you tell her not to come on my Saturday house when I got a date? And I'm like, now parents. So, you know, it's funny things have happened. So it was organic material. It was organic, man. So we got fun. When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind? And why? On the bigger picture, because I witnessed this in 2008, to see President Obama
become president to me, 2008, not talking about after he became president, because everyone will have the views on that. I know what it meant to me to see him stand up there, put his hand on that Bible and say, you know, become the president of the United States. That is success in so many different ways. And it also it jars you
for every person that says, oh man, just because I'm black, maybe you can't use that all the time, because this man now shows you. And what ever side you end up on, because it's not a political thing to see that.
And the reason that it means so much to me to see African American man like do that. Like, and literally when he was, this was interesting. And this is how we're connected. When he was 30 points down for the nomination, 30 points down. No one knew who he was. I get a call from Oprah Winfrey. Hi, Jamie Foxx. It's Oprah. Hi, Jamie. I'm like, what's going on? There's this guy named Senator Obama. I think he's going to be the next president. Then I got a call from Norman Lynn. Jamie, it's Norman Lynn. The senator's on fire.
So who is he? It's Senator Obama, but he's 30 points down. So I know why I know it. The reason they're calling me is because we have a radio show that was reaching everybody, especially the huge urban market. So I go on my show and I say, I'm voting for this guy named Senator Obama because he's black and I go to commercial. When I go to commercial, my phone lines light up with all black people saying that we will not vote for this guy just because he's black. Don't treat us that way.
So we ended up educating everybody about him. He's a nomination and he goes on and he went. And to me, it was all odds against him. And I thought that type of success.
Regardless of where you come from, like I said, whatever side you stand on to me, that was something monumental. When we talk about where this country has come from, when you talk about the greatness of America evolving and evolving to that type of freedom and him taking advantage of being in America and becoming a president to me, that's just success that he redefined what it is. What historical figure do you most identify with?
Who do I identify with historically? When it comes to entertainment, Sammy Davis Jr. is a person that I look at all the time who I go on the internet and watch him play the drums, or watch him sing, or watch him dance, or watch him do jokes, or watch him do a movie, or watch him spend guns. To me, he was just the ultimate entertainer. He was like, yeah, full stack entertainer as one engineer said. That's what he called you. He had all the tools in the toolkit.
