We live in a culture where it’s so hard to make money, yet so easy to spend it. Whoever designed the system is a genius: I never even saw the money itself. It was just a big number on a small piece of paper.
But that number made it possible for me to sign a rental contract for an apartment on Poinsettia Place in Hollywood and a lease agreement for a two-door Ford Explorer Sport. Then I got a magic plastic card that fit in my pocket with my keys—except it was better than a key, because it could unlock every item in every store in the world. It wasn’t even really my card: My credit was so bad from all the bills that had gone to collections in Philadelphia, I had to get a card through Torrei’s mom’s account.
With that magic plastic, I picked up a watch that was priced expensively (which I now know is different than an expensive watch) and enough throwback jerseys for every day of the month. I furnished my new apartment with the biggest bed, the nicest couch, and the most expensive coffee table I could find, so that I felt like the Godfather every time I walked in the door. Everything was so easy to get, it seemed more like stealing than shopping.
Of course, the person who was really being robbed was me. Because it didn’t feel like I was spending money, I didn’t think I was. If I’d had a stack of hundred-dollar bills in a drawer and no credit card, I’d have been able to see that stack rapidly shrinking and know to slow down. Instead, what happened was that the stack got smaller, but the magic card kept working.
Meanwhile, Torrei gave notice at work and I booked a flight for her to make the move. This meant I’d now be supporting two people in Los Angeles. And that was fine with me: I was going to be the next prime-time star.
Whenever I drove down Sunset Boulevard, I thought: Man, I can’t wait until I’m on one of those billboards . . . Man, I can’t wait until my face is on the side of that bus . . . Man, I can’t wait until that celebrity tour is stopping outside my apartment, saying, “That’s where Kevin Hart used to live when he was doing all those hit shows for NBC.”
* * *
As I was setting up my new life in Hollywood, my mom came out to see where I was living and how I was doing. Though my money was already starting to get tight, I made sure to take her to nice lunches and dinners so that she felt like her baby had made it.
She gave me some wise advice before she left: “If you ever hear the words no and can’t, ignore them. They don’t exist. Don’t let them get in the way of the goals you need to accomplish.”
It was advice she followed herself: While working at the university, she was also studying for a master’s degree. “Mom, why do you even need a master’s degree? Like, what are you studying for?” I asked.
Her answer: “Everything.”
She loved learning, which is something else she passed on to me. I must have attended four different graduation ceremonies to celebrate degrees she’d earned.
Eventually, NBC cast me in a pilot. It was called Class of ’06, and was described to me as “a younger Friends, with freshmen roommates on a college campus.” It also happened to be written by one of the writers of Friends, so of course it was going to be huge.
It ended up being as huge as North Hollywood—we poured our hearts and souls into it, and it didn’t get picked up.
With stand-up comedy, the better I was on stage, the more successful I became. With television, it seemed that talent had nothing to do with success. Because a corporation was making the decisions, the criteria were different: The decisions were based on numbers. We didn’t talk about ratings measurements and quarterly earnings at The Table.
After the pilot failed, NBC didn’t bring me any more work. A holding deal, it turned out, is exactly what it sounds like: NBC held me. And I couldn’t do anything on television for the rest of the year.
While waiting for my freedom, I decided to hit the comedy clubs and work my way toward becoming Multi-Set Hollywood Kev. After my first performance at the Comedy Store, I spoke to one of the other comedians and tried to figure out where the L.A. equivalent of the Comedy Cellar comedians’ table was.
Me: So, what are you doing afterward?
Him: Going to where the women are at.
Me: Is there a table where all the other comedians hang out after their sets?
Him: What you talking about?
Me: Y’all don’t hang out? Discuss material?
Him: You can come to Xeni.
Me: What’s that?
Him: A dance club with bangin’ women.
Me: But where’s The Table?
Him: Naw, you don’t wanna pay for no bottle service!
The comedy scene in L.A. was different than in New York. Comedians didn’t shuttle through the city doing spots at multiple clubs in a night. There were good places to perform: the Ha Ha Cafe, the Improv, the Laugh Factory, the Comedy Store, a few others. But I was lucky to get a booking a month. A lot of performers there were bitter. They’d been in Hollywood for ten, twenty, even thirty years and hadn’t made it, so they had no patience for a young, enthusiastic kid with a holding deal. Rather than trying to elevate the art of comedy, they were trying to elevate their mood with clubbing, drinks, and women.
So I adapted and became Multi-Party Kev. Every night, there was a different club, lounge, or mansion that was going off. There was always something to do—anything but work on the craft.
During the day, I killed time on the basketball court, at the gym, and playing video games with other young comedians I met, like Nick Cannon, Rodney Perry, and a guy named Harry Ratchford, who soon became one of my closest friends.
Since the bowl-cut years, one of the most important things to me has always been a good haircut. But every place I tried in Hollywood was an overpriced beauty salon where some hairdresser to the stars fucked up my shit.
Finally, one night at Xeni, I was bitching about it to some guy, and he said, “You can’t get your hair cut in Hollywood. Might as well get it cut in a mall. You gotta go down to Inglewood, man. I got a goddamn place for you there!”
He sent me to a hood barbershop called Platinum Cuts on Manchester and La Brea. He didn’t give me anyone’s name, so I parked my Explorer and walked inside to check it out.
The first rule of the barbershop is, never go with the motherfucker in the first chair. That guy’s always the hustler, hitting up people first when they come in: “Yo, yo, what you need? I got you.” The guy in the second chair is better. He’s competent and has some regular clients. But whoever’s in the last chair, that’s the man who’s confident in his skills and the demand for them.
I went straight to the last chair. The dude standing there looked like Ice-T—if Ice-T worked a nine-to-five job, never exercised, and smoked so much weed that he could barely keep his eyes open. He was with a client and talking about how Busta Rhymes was one of the greatest lyricists of all time.
“Hey, man, how many you got?” I asked him.