“So you’re telling me that I should talk about what’s going on with Torrei?”
“Damn right.” Keith and I were on our way to New York again. “Every time we’re in the car, you’re telling me about all this shit you’re going through with her and getting mad cause I’m laughing at your dumb ass. But it is funny. Problems are funny. You think you’re the only one in the world that’s going through relationship problems, dummy? How many guys will breathe a sigh of relief if they can look at their woman during your set and say, ‘See, we ain’t the only ones who get like that. There’s other couples that’s crazy too.’?”
The problems in my relationship felt like something I should be hiding, not talking about. But the truth was, Torrei was one of the only things I was qualified to talk about, besides sneakers. People call this the elusive obvious: It’s right there in front of your face, so close that everyone can see it but you.
“Talk about shit that people can relate to,” Keith went on. “You don’t have to make it up. Your life is funny, stupid. You’re making up a story about being robbed by a midget when you don’t have to make up a story about calling the cops on your girlfriend cause you’re scared of her. How many times do I gotta tell you to talk about your real life before you get it? Use real names, real conversations, real feelings. Tell ’em what Torrei looks like. What she said, what you said, what you felt. It’s so easy that it’s hard.”
I listened in silence. I didn’t have a rebuttal. I could see his genius. Finally, after so long, I truly understood what Keith had been saying since the day we met—and what I’d been moving toward in small, reluctant steps. After that conversation, I started thinking differently and performing differently.
The next day, while Torrei was at work, I sat at home talking out loud about our fights and the police coming to our house. I was terrified to share this part of my life in public, afraid that I’d be judged harshly by the women in the audience. This was stuff I didn’t even want my mom to know. Most of all, I was nervous about the scariest piece of advice that Keith had given me: use real names.
I ran through the stories of our arguments over and over—they weren’t jokes. They were the shittiest parts of my life. But they passed the Keith test:
Is this person real? She’s my girlfriend.
Did this story really happen? It happened yesterday.
Did the police come? They sure did. I’ll never forget it.
There was no question Keith could ask that would receive the answer, “I made it up.” For the first time, I was truly going to be me on stage, talking about my life, not a life I’d made up.
That night, my heart was pounding through my shirt as I told a roomful of strangers about fighting with Torrei and the evening I called the cops. To my relief, the audience cracked up through the whole painful mess. It wasn’t the loudest laughter I’d ever received, but it was deep, rich belly laughter. Just on its own, the situation was as preposterous as the joke about the midget robber, but it was real and it was true, so it had an integrity and believability that the other story didn’t.
I understood then what Keith had meant about the audience needing to know who I was. All along, I’d been trying to write jokes. This was another level: I was finding my pain points and transforming them into something that could touch and maybe even help other people. An entertainer makes you laugh, I realized, but an artist makes you understand.
The butterflies in my stomach settled as I painted a picture of me standing in the house, blubbering to the police, “I just want y’all to take her as far away as possible!”
On the surface, it wasn’t a funny line at all. It was just a comic exaggeration of something I’d said. But the look on my face and the image of me begging the police to save me from my girlfriend were all the audience needed to laugh. I didn’t need to be clever.
That night led to perhaps the biggest epiphany of my career: The audience wasn’t laughing at the jokes. There weren’t really any punch lines. The situation itself might have been funny, since it was a role reversal, but it wasn’t that funny. What they were laughing at was my reactions. The humor was in my uniqueness, my personality—not the way I saw life, but the way I did life. That was the payoff; that’s where I struck gold. For the first time, I could see it wasn’t my jokes or my delivery or my ideas that were funny. I was actually funny.
52
* * *
SNAP-YOUR-FINGERS FAMOUS
After that breakthrough night, I started to observe my life and what was going on around me in a way that I hadn’t before. I started looking not externally but internally. Over time, my set became more about the situations I found myself in and my responses to them. The smallest thing could turn into a hilarious story if I noticed that my response to it was way out of proportion.
That’s when I started to get consistent headlining slots in New York. Being myself was actually paying off. The money started rolling in: four hundred, sometimes five hundred dollars a week. I began not just paying my rent on time but saving money so that I could pay off the overdue bills that had gone to collection agencies. Things were finally turning around.
After a headlining set at Carolines one night, I was downing a Ketel One and tonic at the bar. A couple of guys approached me and said, “Hey, man, Dame Dash wants to say what’s up to you.”
I scanned the back tables and, to my surprise, saw Damon Dash, who founded Roc-A-Fella Records with Jay Z.
“Hey, man, I think you funny as hell,” he told me. “You made me laugh. I think I got a movie for you.”
A movie? You want me to act? Is this, like, a bit part as a stand-up comic, or a real role? Do I need to check with my manager? Why me?
These were some of the hundred questions that went through my mind in that moment. But I only spoke one word: “Okay.”
“You got a number or something so we can meet?”
“Yup.” I gave him my number, and the next afternoon, my phone rang.
“Can you meet Dame in New York?” boomed the caller.
“Sure, when?”
“Tomorrow, two p.m. At our offices.”
I caught an early bus to New York the next day and went to the Roc-A-Fella office. There were framed multiplatinum album awards all over the walls. Everybody was dressed in Rocawear. They were all talking excitedly about new albums, artists, and deals. Jay Z walked through the front door and right past me.
This was a level of success I hadn’t seen before, even on the Def Comedy Jam tour. I made mental notes of what it looked like, so I could strive to reach that level too. One day, when I succeeded in comedy, maybe I could have an office buzzing with employees and awards and people making deals.