Club Shay Shay - Roy Wood Jr. Part 2

Transcript

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Speaker 2 Thank you for coming back. Part two is underway.

Speaker 2 You own Better Call Saul, The Last OG, Confessed Fletch, Only Murders in the Building, and Space Force.

Speaker 2 Been a lot of things. I mean,

Speaker 2 all those different experiences. Do you take, I mean, when you go on a set, I mean,

Speaker 2 you try to make friends or you trying to, you know, try to gather information. I mean,

Speaker 2 what is Roy Woods Jr. when he goes on a set? What's his mindset?

Speaker 2 I'm usually chill. Okay.
I keep my distance. Really? I don't know.
Damn, you don't get nobody. You don't get close to nothing, huh?

Speaker 2 I don't know Steve Martin like that. Like,

Speaker 2 I'm happy to be here. Right.
But I don't want to. I've seen cats get fired for being too chummy.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, what's going on, man? What's going on, man? You're looking good. And then they be like, yeah, cut.
And then you come back from lunch. He ain't there.
Nigga, gone.

Speaker 2 So I'm not finna be that.

Speaker 2 Steve Martin was real cool, man. Martin Short.

Speaker 2 I tell you, man, Space Force was probably some of the most fun.

Speaker 2 There's not enough said about the daily show and the fraternity, sorority, whatever that it is after you leave it. Right.

Speaker 2 But those folks look out.

Speaker 2 They really do. Sam B, Jon Stewart, and Steve Carell and Space Force.

Speaker 2 Like, they make sure that you're comfortable on set.

Speaker 2 I just did a joint. It's not out till top of next year.
I just did a joint with Jonah Hill and Keanu Reeves. Yes.

Speaker 2 Keanu Reeves, man.

Speaker 2 That's a funny ass motherfucker. Really? It's a comedy, but

Speaker 2 it's called Outcome. It'd be out soon.
John Witt, Keanu Reeves, funny. Hilarious.

Speaker 2 Hilarious. Neo

Speaker 2 Matrix. Don't forget he was Bill and Ted, Excellent Adventure.
He got the muscle. Like, if he want to be funny, he's not like dude, bro, funny.
Like, he's legit, like, quick.

Speaker 2 Like, I was like, we was drawing in the scene straight improm. Speed, Keanu.
Yes. Hilarious, sir.
Damn. Hilarious, man.

Speaker 2 And so you get around people that respect the craft and respect the fact that you're present.

Speaker 2 And they give you the freedom to kind of,

Speaker 2 I don't know how to put it, like be yourself without penalty. Because Keanu ain't afraid of you stealing his shine or something like that.
Does that happen?

Speaker 2 No, but that's a big issue on a lot of comedy sets is that you'll have one star that is like, like yeah don't do that then the writer will come the star will never tell you the writer will come up like yeah don't do that joke like just we're gonna give that joke to them instead of you but uh whoa whoa whoa what you're doing great in action

Speaker 2 yeah

Speaker 2 damn that's what happens you get so you they dulling your star

Speaker 2 I guess. I mean, it's your job to come in and just do whatever is asked of you, especially in film.
But there's a lot of cats that

Speaker 2 that are not like that.

Speaker 2 And it's important that people know that about them.

Speaker 2 Kevin Hart is definitely, he definitely passes the ball in a scene to make sure you shine.

Speaker 2 John Ham

Speaker 2 passed the ball.

Speaker 2 I gotta give a shout out to the homie Andre Holland as well. We did Love Brooklyn.
And that's like a romantic black, you know, Love Jones.

Speaker 2 Let me be funny.

Speaker 2 Let me be myself. I don't, man, I go to work.
I go home. I ain't drinking with y'all because then that's when the cocaine come out.

Speaker 2 You just be somewhere and it just be cocaine, but it's time to go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's where, that's where probation helped me. Cause them first three years of stand-up, because I was on probation, I was like, oh, it's a felony for me to even be in a room with this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the last thing I need is somebody to come up in here,

Speaker 2 them people to kick that door in, and here I am.

Speaker 2 But I ain't nothing in my sister, but you ain't supposed to be around. Bro, I spent that first year of probation suspended from college, just working the road, and it was all I had.

Speaker 2 It was the only thing that I looked forward to. I'm not fucking this up.

Speaker 2 I ain't really drink. I definitely wonder if it would be like, so those behavioral habits,

Speaker 2 they just stayed with me. And you can tell who the cocaine people are on set.
You know who's snorting.

Speaker 2 So it's easy for you. It's easy because of what you went through early in your career.
It's easy for you to say no.

Speaker 2 It's easy for you to leave of the room or not be in that situation or put yourself in that situation because you're like, bro, I was on probation and this could have all ended.

Speaker 2 And now, if I be in this bull drive, it still could all end. I'm out of here.
I don't ride in cars with people. I drive where I'll meet you there.

Speaker 2 I don't know what's in your car.

Speaker 2 Wow. I don't know how you roll.
I don't know what's in here. And you get the wrong cop.
It's the wrong state. It's communal possession.
It's our gun. Oh, boy.
So I'm not, I'm good.

Speaker 2 I'll meet you there. And if you feel some kind of way about it, then I don't need to break bread with you no way.

Speaker 2 That's just, I don't know. I just,

Speaker 2 that's how I've always looked at shit. Like, I'm just not going to find myself in a situation where I lose out on an opportunity.
because you acting a fool.

Speaker 2 I get it. You just started a show with Whoopi Goldberg, even though it didn't get picked up or piloted.
What did it work like working with Whoopee?

Speaker 2 She doesn't do very much now, but there was a time that Whoopi was,

Speaker 2 I'm pretty sure she's still Whoopi.

Speaker 2 She was great. Whoopi Goldberg is like, so Whoopie.

Speaker 2 Two of the greatest performances I've ever witnessed:

Speaker 2 Whoopi Goldberg on that sitcom and Solange Knowles Essence Fest rehearsal 2017, might be 2018. Really?

Speaker 2 Whoopi came into like so, like with sitcoms, they do rewrites.

Speaker 2 And we had a table read, which is basically a sit-down performance of the show for all the people who decide whether or not this show is gonna get made.

Speaker 2 And there was about 30 pages of new dialogue from the previous night. They had changed and tweaked stuff.

Speaker 2 Whoopie came in.

Speaker 2 Never opened the script off book

Speaker 2 for an hour.

Speaker 2 I ain't never seen no shit like that before in my life, man. And I granted, she comes from theater, so she's had to

Speaker 2 memorize three, four hours of dialogue with her stuff. But for me, the young, happy comedian, I was like, oh my God, this is wild.
Like, Whoopie was

Speaker 2 electric and kind. The premise of the show, it was me and Jermaine Fowler.
Jermaine Fowler played my son, my boy from Superior Donuts, and he was the prince coming to America too. Right, okay.
And so

Speaker 2 Whoopie plays his grandma, and it's about Jermaine living with his grandma. I'm the crazy ain't shit daddy, whatever.

Speaker 2 And it was a funny ass show, bro. And this goes back to what I'm talking about, about stuff getting taken away from me.

Speaker 2 It's for ABC.

Speaker 2 This is 2015, summer of 2015.

Speaker 2 It's for ABC. The sitcom is a go.
We're going to make the sitcom. We're going to make the announcement.
But first, we got to get, this is the story that was told to me. I don't want to get sued.

Speaker 2 But before we announce the sitcom, we're going to lock up Whoopee's contract with the view. She's up for a re-up.
We got to get her money right with the view because that's the main thing.

Speaker 2 They were taking so long, ABC, and booking the new co-host with Whoopi

Speaker 2 that it took so long to go. We can't negotiate negotiate Whoopi's deal until we negotiate the deals of the new co-host.

Speaker 2 That took so long that the deals on the other actors on the sitcom expired. Sitcom was never greenlit

Speaker 2 because it took too long to get everything to get the main thing negotiated.

Speaker 2 Because you get signed to do a sitcom, they gotta, you know, you got a shit to get off the pot in like two, three months, because otherwise, I need to go and be on another show.

Speaker 2 I think I'm gonna be on a sitcom with Whoopi Goldberg,

Speaker 2 and I get a call a month later that the sitcom ain't happening.

Speaker 2 And that's how this game is. Two weeks later, I get a call from Neil Brennan saying that Trevor Noah is looking for correspondence when he takes over for Jon Stewart for the daily show.

Speaker 2 And the only reason I end up on the daily show is because the whoopee sitcom didn't work.

Speaker 2 So if it had to work, you wouldn't have been able to do the daily show. I'd have never been on the daily show.
You see how God worked that out? That's how it was supposed to be.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's the game, man. It's just

Speaker 2 all of this can be snatched and taken away from you.

Speaker 2 And nine times out of ten, it's not even

Speaker 2 because it's something you did.

Speaker 2 But if you control it,

Speaker 2 they can't take this from you.

Speaker 2 That's what I want for myself. Man,

Speaker 2 I just remember so many times watching people think they got something,

Speaker 2 and then you don't have it no more.

Speaker 2 But yeah, Whoopee was great, man.

Speaker 2 You compared

Speaker 2 your character on outcome

Speaker 2 to Deion Sanders.

Speaker 2 That's not all of it.

Speaker 2 As a civil rights lawyer. I said, the character I play in that Keanu Reeves movie is essentially a mix between Deion Sanders and Hal Sharpton.

Speaker 2 If If Deion Sanders was a civil rights,

Speaker 2 if Deion Sanders was Ben Crump,

Speaker 2 hey, you know, baby, prime time is going to get the case straight, baby. We're going to get the racism back.

Speaker 2 Like that.

Speaker 2 I know that's a tough shit, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 HBCU. Why do you decide to go to an HBCU?

Speaker 2 I feel like I would be

Speaker 2 appreciated there

Speaker 2 it's a beautiful thing black colleges man

Speaker 2 i

Speaker 2 you know my mother

Speaker 2 you know my pops graduated more house and then he taught at fam you okay

Speaker 2 my mama fam she was delta state before that then fam for grad

Speaker 2 my aunt was fam then tennessee state mm-hmm

Speaker 2 it's just culture there

Speaker 2 Also, I feel like in Birmingham,

Speaker 2 Birmingham city schools are all predominantly black, and marching band culture is a big deal. So

Speaker 2 there's

Speaker 2 this kind of

Speaker 2 a natural graduation from a black school system

Speaker 2 to an HBCU. Like it just...
It just felt no brainstorming.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it just, I'd never thought about anywhere else.

Speaker 2 I only applied to three colleges out of high school.

Speaker 2 I applied to Fam, Clark, and Tennessee State.

Speaker 2 Clark,

Speaker 2 you go to the AU center, huh?

Speaker 2 I found out Tennessee State didn't have a baseball team, so they was out. Because I thought I was still

Speaker 2 every month. You'll be Jackie Robinson.

Speaker 2 Well, I was going to be Ryan Sandberg. Okay, right.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Take a basement.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I ended up going to Fam

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 I felt like it was just going to be a better experience.

Speaker 2 You know, it wasn't a knock on Clark, but I was just like,

Speaker 2 smaller school, and there weren't a lot of people from my school going to fam.

Speaker 2 I think Stephanie and Shauna, it was like two or three people

Speaker 2 from my high school. I just wanted to be in college, you get to reinvent yourself.
Correct. You get to be a whole.

Speaker 2 They don't know you. Correct.
And so I chose fam.

Speaker 2 I tried out for baseball,

Speaker 2 got cut in 30 minutes. Damn.

Speaker 2 Are you sure you were a baseball player?

Speaker 2 I was in high school.

Speaker 2 But, you know, like baseball,

Speaker 2 I thought I had a week, bro.

Speaker 2 I thought I had a week. Like, you know, like in high school, tryouts is a week.

Speaker 2 Yes. We will evaluate you on these disciplines every day.

Speaker 2 College baseball, they say we're going to give y'all 45 minutes, and every 45 minutes, we calling out numbers. And if your number ain't called, go home.
Wow. And my shit got called in 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 I said, I thought I had 45. They said, we've seen enough.

Speaker 2 So, what? Was it the fielding? Was it the hitting? Was it the throwing? It was everything. They got terrible.

Speaker 2 What do you mean? What specific did? No,

Speaker 2 I just did. I didn't play in high school enough.
I didn't play summer ball. I didn't play fall ball.

Speaker 2 You know, my parents used to argue a lot. And

Speaker 2 in those times, my pops wouldn't pay bills. Oh, I'm going to show y'all what the, you know.

Speaker 2 So sometimes a bill wouldn't get paid. And so a bill couldn't get paid.
You couldn't go play baseball. You come home, the lights off.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you go through that freshman and sophomore year.

Speaker 2 By my junior year of high school, I was working 30 hours a week, man,

Speaker 2 which is illegal.

Speaker 2 I should be at home

Speaker 2 playing,

Speaker 2 but I'm working. I'm literally,

Speaker 2 I figured out, you figure out how to circumvent all that labor law shit. You theoretically the man of the house as a teen, as a kid.

Speaker 2 I'm not paying the bills, but my mama knows I got it upstairs in that Batman can.

Speaker 2 At a little Batman can with Michael Keaton on the side.

Speaker 2 And I had cash in that.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 All right, he ain't paid a light bill.

Speaker 2 But now my grade's suffering. But I knew I did really, I was good with standardized tests, so I wasn't really tripping on it.

Speaker 2 So you've always.

Speaker 2 But I worked, man. I worked so that I could have independence.
I didn't want... You grow up listening to your mama borrow money from niggas over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 The only way to keep that from happening is to be able to self-sustain. Right.
So, to self-sustain, you got to work.

Speaker 2 So, I rate leaves. I walked up to the church's chicken across from West End High School.
Hey, man, I know you clean this parking lot every day at three o'clock. Give me $10

Speaker 2 and I'll do it.

Speaker 2 Start working with him, go across the street to the sit. Go, hey, man, I clean church's parking lot.
Tell you what, instead of giving me $10,

Speaker 2 give me $10 worth of candy and write it off his shoplifting. Say, bet.
I take that $10. I walk it back to school the next day, sell that for $30.

Speaker 2 So, yeah,

Speaker 2 I missed the baseball camp.

Speaker 2 And then you get to college and you go, oh, shit, they got Cubans. I had never seen a Cuban.

Speaker 2 Ain't met one.

Speaker 2 Because you got to remember, I'm all black neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, there are no Cubans in Birmingham. Two Guatemalans and a Vietnamese.

Speaker 2 That's all I knew until last School.

Speaker 2 I got to college. They had a Cuban on the mound.
That motherfucker.

Speaker 2 I said, I'm going to Shawnee's.

Speaker 2 Fucking left.

Speaker 2 Did you understand?

Speaker 2 the responsibility that you were undertaking even though you were a child and you were working and your mom would, you know, you would help your mom with bills, but you had, so you kind of grew up as a responsibility as the man of the head of the house, even though as a child, that's not a child's responsibility.

Speaker 2 Do you feel like you ever had a chance to be a child? No.

Speaker 2 Not once we moved to Birmingham.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 I mean, I went through therapy for a while on it, but even when I look back on the credit card licks I was running in college,

Speaker 2 originally I thought my thought was,

Speaker 2 oh, I act act like this because I'm an adrenaline junkie. There's a degree of excitement to committing crime.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It just is. And if you're into jumping out of planes or whatever, I highly recommend committing felonies.

Speaker 2 They read that car, you're like, oh,

Speaker 1 damn.

Speaker 2 Hey, I ain't Mr. Purcell.
I ain't Mr. Purcell.
So they don't know right now. It's called a code six.

Speaker 2 So in the 90s, the machine was short of code six, which means that the card was stolen or they need to call the card company to verify that shit.

Speaker 2 And then they call the card company in front of you at the register and then hand you the phone and you on the phone with the card company. Hello, yes, I am Mr.
Purcell.

Speaker 2 And then they go, what's your social and your billing zip code? And I go, 32J9X.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 2 Well, you know what? I thought I had more money on the card.

Speaker 2 So that's why it didn't go through. It didn't go through because I don't have enough money on the card.

Speaker 2 Great. All right, no problem.
Thank you so much. The whole time, the person on the phone is going, Give the phone back to the cashier.
Get the phone back to the cashier.

Speaker 2 Oh, so it didn't go through because I don't have understood. Click.

Speaker 2 Now you have as long as it takes them to call the store back to get your ass up.

Speaker 2 A rush.

Speaker 2 But when I really started digging deep on myself,

Speaker 2 I did this so I wouldn't be a burden on my mom.

Speaker 2 My mom, absent of my father, those first

Speaker 2 K through three in Memphis, calling asking people for money.

Speaker 2 I don't want you to have to do that no more.

Speaker 2 Did you feel a sense of embarrassment? But were you embarrassed by that? Embarrassed.

Speaker 2 Nobody you knew, maybe the grown-ups, but you didn't have kids. Like, it's one thing if kids know you're poor or know you don't have things to eat or you don't have decent clothes.
That's one thing.

Speaker 2 That's something entirely different. Did anybody, did any kids know that you were in this situation or were they just grown-ups?

Speaker 2 No, because I'm the son of the most popular journalist in the city of Birmingham. So they think you got it good.

Speaker 2 They think you, I mean, man, they're like, man, Roy got it good.

Speaker 2 We had a nice two-story house. I had a basketball goal.
I had a plexiglass backboard. We had a couple of decent things right

Speaker 2 but also the heat wasn't on

Speaker 2 so what the

Speaker 2 so yeah you get a little older you start working you start raking leaves around the neighborhood bro i would rake leaves

Speaker 2 i would rate leaves ten dollars front 15 front and back

Speaker 2 and then i would take the bags of leaves and at night I would go to a house that didn't have leaves in the yard

Speaker 2 and pull the leaves out. Come on, come on roy

Speaker 2 i just see a criminal enterprise right here this is what i see a criminal enterprise roy

Speaker 2 wait two days come back to your crib look like you got a lot of leaves

Speaker 2 well i did before you pulled about my yard ten dollars fifteen front and back ten dollar front fifteen front and back that was the lick but now i don't have to ask my mama for a nintendo tape I don't have to ask her for the Ken Griffeys.

Speaker 2 I ain't got to ask her for the Sammy Sosa Cubs batting practice jersey, 1994.

Speaker 2 I got it. Just give me a ride to the mall, Joyce.
That's all I need because the bus don't go that far. I wouldn't even burden you with the transportation.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 you grow up like that.

Speaker 2 And the other thing, I think the other downside to all of it is that within that hustle, you grow up alone.

Speaker 2 I think the best and worst people are comfortable alone.

Speaker 2 I'm extremely comfortable alone.

Speaker 2 I got suspended from school.

Speaker 2 You made your whole lick.

Speaker 2 You made your whole lick selling stolen shit on a college campus.

Speaker 2 If you ain't the plug no more, what's your social capital?

Speaker 2 Who with you?

Speaker 2 Nobody.

Speaker 2 You on the road doing comedy. And

Speaker 2 when I first started, I was on the bus.

Speaker 2 I'm ironing my suit on fucking baby changers.

Speaker 2 I'm alone.

Speaker 2 You get used to that.

Speaker 2 Can I ask you a question? So you get to

Speaker 2 where I am now, and it's like, well, the relationship.

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Speaker 2 can you just distinguish the difference between being alone and being lonely

Speaker 2 i don't know

Speaker 2 because i don't believe those things are mutually exclusive i think i believe you can be alone i think the problem with loneliness is that you will sometimes remedy it with people that are corrosive or activities that are corrosive.

Speaker 2 Agree.

Speaker 2 And I think that's the problem with

Speaker 2 true loneliness is that

Speaker 2 you can immediately become

Speaker 2 so desperate for human contact that you're willing to do anything, go anywhere, hang with anybody. You accept anyone into that circle.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm blessed in that, you know, I had a couple of tight partners in college, you know.

Speaker 2 My partner, Brooke Williams, you know,

Speaker 2 there was a time when a lot of people didn't with me in school. You become radioactive once you get arrested.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you're on probation, so I can't even be around the people that I used to hang because they doing dirt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You might need to snitch. And

Speaker 2 keep in mind, when you get arrested, they show you pictures of every that's committing crimes within the metro area and ask you if you know them.

Speaker 2 No, I don't. Damn, I know.
And you do.

Speaker 2 You know, 90% of the mug shots. But you go, I don't, I don't know him.
I ain't never been around here.

Speaker 2 So I can't come around you anymore because if they catch you, what'd that make me look like? Right.

Speaker 2 So you're alone.

Speaker 2 Comedy is a loner sport.

Speaker 2 You live alone in your thoughts on the long drives. You're alone in the hotel rooms.
That's why so many comedians fall into drugs and women. You know, Kat, that's what Kat said, because it's alone.

Speaker 2 It's, you know,

Speaker 2 you work at, you start work at 10 o'clock at night and you sleep till 6 o'clock in the afternoon because you don't go to bed till 2 o'clock in the morning. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I'm interested to know, were you always funny? How did you decide to get in the stand-up?

Speaker 2 The itch was always there. I've always had a sense of humor.
Okay. Were you a class clown?

Speaker 2 No, not till college.

Speaker 2 But in high school, I wrote the bench. When I played baseball, I wrote the bench.
So we just crack on people. Yeah.
So that was my contribution to the game was just we would sit.

Speaker 2 Bro, we would sit in the parking lot and we would watch and see what kind of car your mama dropped you off in.

Speaker 2 Make a note of that. You come up to the play.
Yeah, your mama got the raggedy Taurus.

Speaker 2 Strike.

Speaker 2 Your ass ain't paying attention. Right.
Like, we would, we would heckle, man. I mean, granted, it was the 90s, so it was a lot of what you couldn't get away with now, but I mean.

Speaker 2 We'd call you gay, we'd call you poor, we'd call your grandmama ugly. Damn.

Speaker 2 There was no rules, bro. There was no rules.
And

Speaker 2 that was

Speaker 2 kind of the first open mics for me was just heckling opposing teams. And then

Speaker 2 I got to college,

Speaker 2 seeing Ricky smiling on B.E.T.'s Comic View do

Speaker 2 My Name Lil Darrell.

Speaker 2 That validated,

Speaker 2 okay,

Speaker 2 bet.

Speaker 2 I can be from here and do it. And do it.

Speaker 2 now how do I get over there

Speaker 2 and I saw the first stand-up show I ever saw was LaVelle Crawford and Corey Zuman Miller and they came to Fam You my freshman year for homecoming and they

Speaker 2 and it was the first time I saw the power of words

Speaker 2 just destroy the room man

Speaker 2 And I had a plug over at Florida State and she was from Birmingham and she ran the student activity shit.

Speaker 2 Earthquake came, then Bobby Lee, then Michael Blackson. This is all within, like, like Florida State had more money.
So they had comedy on a regular basis.

Speaker 2 Fam you, you get one nigga a semester.

Speaker 2 Florida State, every two weeks, they had a comedy show. And so I got, I had my fake ID plug, make me a fake seminal card.

Speaker 2 And I would go over to Florida State and pretend to be a Florida State student and would just watch stand-up. And like, that's what I was like, that's what I want to do.

Speaker 2 As much as I love Stuart Scott and Kenny Main and their ability to bring humor to sports, I think there's something different that I want to do. And that's kind of where the itch was.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't until I got arrested that I was like, all right, I have to do it now. Because you don't have much time.
I'm going to prison. Right.

Speaker 2 Like, I didn't know I was going to get probation. I thought I was going to prison.
So let me try it before I go to prison.

Speaker 2 Riding, it's the loneliness that you mentioned, riding the Greyhound buses, sleeping at rest stops, nobody but you. And

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 everybody is not going to get the standing ovation the very first time to get on stage. There's going to be some booze.

Speaker 2 There are going to be some trials. There are going to be some tribulations.

Speaker 2 It's an uptown in Atlanta. Keep going.
Uptown Comedy Car.

Speaker 2 I go to all the time. I used to go there all the time.
The old one when it was upstairs. Yeah.
Next to Puffy's right, the Justin's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's right down P Street. I used to get booed, and then I would walk over to Justin's and get me an $8 water

Speaker 2 and wait to catch the bus to go back to the Greyhound station. So you're riding Martyr? Yeah, I would take the Martyr downtown.

Speaker 2 There was a Martyr. The Martyr was right down the street from Magic City.

Speaker 2 There was a Martyr Greyhound

Speaker 2 hub station downtown.

Speaker 2 So you could either sit at Justin's and be sad, or you could go to the Greyhound station and be sad.

Speaker 2 And if I had $8,

Speaker 2 I would go to Justin's and get me an $8 Voss water. They was charging $8 for them fucking waters.
That's why they closed. Fucking.

Speaker 2 Did you ever think about quitting comedy?

Speaker 2 Did it ever get that bad? Like, man, F this, man, I, I, man, I, I,

Speaker 2 no.

Speaker 2 I got lucky, bro. I got lucky because I started so young.

Speaker 2 So by the time I graduated college, I was three years in it. Wow.

Speaker 2 So when I graduated, just for the math, I was making, I had two jobs, I had two job offers in journalism with two jobs I could have gotten.

Speaker 2 Tampa Tribune and the Birmingham News both were going to pay about $14,000 to be the page two sports. I forget what it's called, but like back in the day in the newspaper, page two was just the score

Speaker 2 of every.

Speaker 2 sporting contest in the country that day. And you just, it's clerical.

Speaker 2 $14,000. By my estimates, I was going to make $18,000 that year on the road.

Speaker 2 I'll just do it. I call my mom.
I go, yo, can I move back in with you?

Speaker 2 If you give me two years, I'll be out of your house. She said, cool.
I call my probation officer. He said, I'll give you nine-day visitation forms every ninth day.
You got to come back to Tallahassee.

Speaker 2 We got to do, you know, I think it was 21 days.

Speaker 2 Come back to Tallahassee every month, do a face-to-face,

Speaker 2 stay at my partner's crib, couch surf with him, get back to Birmingham. And that was it.
You know, but I never thought about quitting.

Speaker 2 I'm lucky, man.

Speaker 2 I'm just, I'm so blessed and I'm so thankful because so much of my journey has been from people who

Speaker 2 didn't have to take a chance on me. Right.

Speaker 2 Taking a chance on me.

Speaker 2 Every fucking step of the way for 27 years, it's been that. And,

Speaker 2 you know, I even look at radio where, you know, I did, I did prank phone calls. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I went viral when you go viral over email. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's how old I am. Well, you wouldn't know.
You ain't got email. I ain't got email.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 what? So how did you get, how did you get into the prank phone calls?

Speaker 2 That's what Ricky did. It's morning radio.
You got to do what the, what the streets want. Like,

Speaker 2 I came in on morning radio. I'm like, all right, I want to do parody songs and funny commercials and weird political act they're like

Speaker 2 get in that fucking room and get a black person to cuss you out

Speaker 2 go in that room and let black people cuss you out right and record it i go yes sir and so i got good at it i put them on cds and what happened was that we had a webmaster at the radio station who was just lazy And I go, hey, man, these prank calls do really well.

Speaker 2 We only play them that day. I work really, it's hard to do it.
To get one prank call, you got to call four or five people.

Speaker 2 Could you put these on the website so that people could download them? No, that's too much work. Lazy MoPo.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, I'm not like, I'm not saying it's like I know coding or some shit, but I taught myself rudimentary web design to build my own website.

Speaker 2 There used to be an app called Microsoft Front Page, which was like, it's Squarespace now, but it's basically, if you know Microsoft Word, you could build a website. Right.

Speaker 2 Built my own website, put my pranks on the website. First week, my website crash.

Speaker 2 Second week, my website crash.

Speaker 2 Third week, I get a call from the website server people. Yeah, you're getting a lot of traffic from all over the globe.
We need you to, you got to purchase gajillion billion terabyte, whatever.

Speaker 2 I have been putting my pranks on my website strictly for people in Birmingham to download. But the folks in Birmingham was taking them and emailing them to their folks all over the country.

Speaker 2 And then those people were emailing them all over the globe.

Speaker 2 Word of mouth. And that was

Speaker 2 that validated me to be able to sell prank calls C D's.

Speaker 2 And those CDs carried me for four or five years, man, at a time where a lot of the comedy clubs weren't paying me what I should.

Speaker 2 I knew I could pull up and sell the CD.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 there's a cat,

Speaker 2 this is cat Akil back in Birmingham. And

Speaker 2 Akil ran the black-owned music store, Music and More. Right.

Speaker 2 He carried my CDs on the strength of just me.

Speaker 2 But because he carried my CDs,

Speaker 2 every other white store wanted the CDs because they didn't want to be the one to miss out. I was selling them on consignment.
I had my shit in Sam Goody. My shit was in Turtles.

Speaker 2 My shit was in Blockbuster D.

Speaker 2 And that's all because

Speaker 2 this black-owned business took a chance on me at the time.

Speaker 2 And like that type of stuff got me buzz

Speaker 2 because this is, you also got to remember the early 2000s, comedy and hip-hop still had a relationship.

Speaker 2 It was more, you know, like you had like Lil Duval was just starting to come on the grand hustle.

Speaker 2 I think Cat was with Dip Set. He was.
You had

Speaker 2 D-Ray and them was running with Kanye. Henry Welch was running with Outcast and Organized Noise, right?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Uptown Comedy. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 So King Henry, he a Birmingham nigga.

Speaker 2 So the idea of

Speaker 2 hip-hop and comedy was starting to work.

Speaker 2 Word get back to me after a couple years, they go, hey, man.

Speaker 2 Chameleonaire put one of your pranks on one of his mixtapes.

Speaker 2 Just a chameleonaire doing that opened up the whole state of Texas to me because now if I'm on chameleon ass mixtape, Texas DJs are going to want my pranks.

Speaker 2 And if I'm on the radio, then the comedy club in that market wants to book me.

Speaker 2 That's more valuable than a TV credit, bro. Yep.

Speaker 2 Cameron did the same shit.

Speaker 2 Now, granted, I couldn't drive all the way to New York to take advantage of being on dip set mixtapes, but there's just so many.

Speaker 2 I look at my life and times, man, and you know, CeeLo said, everybody's somebody because of somebody else. And that's the truth for me, man.
I'm just thankful.

Speaker 2 How did shows like Comic View and Apollo? Because I read that you were like turned down by Comic View. Yeah, early on.
I mean, a lot of cats did. I mean, but my comedy's more preppy and upright.

Speaker 2 Like, it wasn't like

Speaker 2 coming off of Def Jam. You wanted loud, boisterous, bombastic comedy.
So I get why I didn't get it, you know, to start.

Speaker 2 Other comedians, like growing up, you said you, you know, you always had a sense of humor. What were some of the comics that you looked at, like, man, I like that?

Speaker 2 You know, a lot of people say it was prior and it was Murphy. Obviously, now you have Chappelle and things, a rock, things of that nature.
But when you were a kid, who did you look to in comedy?

Speaker 2 Sinbad, Chris Rock, George Carlin.

Speaker 2 Sinbad was just a beast, man. He was a machine.
He was.

Speaker 2 People forget that

Speaker 2 Sinbad did

Speaker 2 a live stand-up special on network. You're talking about freedom of speech.
Who you know do a live comedy special on network television? That's crazy. Oh, I'm live on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You don't know what I'm going to say.

Speaker 2 Sinbad was live on ABC with commercial breaks, which means you got to write commercial breaks into your set because you're still performing even while the nation isn't watching.

Speaker 2 That's psychotic behavior. And then, with an all-black camera crew, then gives the all-black camera crew a shout-out on live TV while they're shooting the special.

Speaker 2 He does not get his flowers, he does not get the respect that, in my opinion, he doesn't get the praise that he deserves. Um,

Speaker 2 but it was Chris Rock, it was George Carlin,

Speaker 2 a little bit of Martin Lawrence early on. His first CD, Funket,

Speaker 2 was like, what was it? You so crazy. I'm not sure.
But Funkett was the one that, like, got you. That's the one that got me.
Like, my early stand-up was a terrible Martin Lawrence impersonation. Right.

Speaker 2 If you get every comic, when they start, you're just impersonating somebody else until you figure out your voice. And for me, it was Martin.

Speaker 2 You mentioned that DL gave you your first big break.

Speaker 2 Did DL actually know that he was giving you this break? No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 That's one of like

Speaker 2 DL is one of those OGs that

Speaker 2 gives more than he has to.

Speaker 2 And I would also put that on Marlon, Marlon and Sean Wayans, too. For sure.

Speaker 2 You know, I used to do, so when I was doing mornings,

Speaker 2 One of the advantages for those 10 years that I was on the Aaron Birmingham while doing stand-up

Speaker 2 was that any black comedian that came into the city did our show. Okay.

Speaker 2 So I got to meet you. I got to see your approach to marketing and analyzing, which bookmarked Lavelle Crawford and Bruce Bruce, most brilliant marketers ever in black comedy.

Speaker 2 Marlon and Sean would do our show every year, even if the show was sold out.

Speaker 2 And the only other person I knew who would do that was Sinbad.

Speaker 2 Sinbad would come in and do media even if the show was sold out because he knew he was essentially selling next year's show

Speaker 2 right now.

Speaker 2 BL,

Speaker 2 what happened with DL,

Speaker 2 so when I got hired at the radio station,

Speaker 2 I lied, bro.

Speaker 2 The one thing I also learned in entertainment is that nobody's telling the truth.

Speaker 2 So just fucking lie. And if they catch you, apologize or figure your way out of it.

Speaker 2 But most of what you're saying, nobody's double-checking. So just lie.

Speaker 2 So it's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. So 95-7 Jams at the time, Ricky Smiley leaves.
They do a contest to see.

Speaker 2 And, you know, and my man Said Delaney, who I had to give a shout out to, Said was there for a couple of years after Ricky.

Speaker 2 And then they get into what they're trying to do with a new comic after Said and them leave.

Speaker 2 I called the DJ, my man Buck Wild, still there now.

Speaker 2 And I go, hey, man, I'm a young comic. I got a degree in journalism.
I think I could do comedy. He goes, I don't know if you're funny.

Speaker 2 We're just not going to do any more auditions right now, but thanks. I go, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 I called the comedy club because I knew DL was performing that weekend and I knew Jams promotes the black comics.

Speaker 2 I called the comedy club. I go, hey, Bruce Ayers.
He's the owner. I go, hey, Bruce, I just got hired at 95.7 James.

Speaker 2 That man told you they wouldn't tell me any more auditions.

Speaker 2 Buck Wild said there wasn't no more auditions, but Bruce Ayers don't know any more auditions.

Speaker 2 So I called Bruce. I go, hey, big dog, I just got hired at 95.7.

Speaker 2 They say they want me to host for DL instead of doing the station promo t-shirt toss.

Speaker 2 Bruce goes, cool. See you Friday.

Speaker 2 I get off the phone with Bruce. I call Buck Wild back.

Speaker 2 Hey, man, I just got booked to open for D.L. Hughley Friday night.

Speaker 2 Watch me.

Speaker 2 If I'm not funny, then don't f ⁇ with me. If I am funny, give me that job.
Give me the job. He goes, cool.

Speaker 2 That's Tuesday. Friday comes.
All I got to do is keep Buck Wild. and Bruce A.
Keep them separated.

Speaker 2 And this is not Buck Wild star in Buck Wild. This is a different Buck Wild.

Speaker 2 Friday night comes. I keep them separated.
I go out on stage. I do my five.
And it's one of those nights where just everything worked.

Speaker 2 It's just God.

Speaker 2 Every joke, every syllable, and I'm from there. So I got home fill advantage.
I'm destroying, bro.

Speaker 2 And as I come off stage,

Speaker 2 Buck Wild is standing there and he goes,

Speaker 2 See you Monday morning. Bring 12 Krispy Kremes.

Speaker 2 And next to Buck is Dio Hughley. And Dio goes, Hey, young brother, that was a good set.

Speaker 2 Will you say you stay and open for me for the rest of the weekend?

Speaker 2 Now, at this time, at this comedy club, the Stardome in Birmingham, this is my home club.

Speaker 2 You don't get to open for a fucking weekend headliner until you've done all of these other progressions within the club. You got to perform on this night for this type and this night for this type.

Speaker 2 DL's vouch skipped me straight to the front of the fucking line.

Speaker 2 And now I have tape opening for him, which essentially opens up me to work Nashville, Chattanooga.

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Speaker 2 Knoxville, Memphis, and Atlanta.

Speaker 2 Because now I can put your name on my resume and that validates me. And

Speaker 2 that's what I mean, man. It's just Dio didn't know he was doing all that.
He was just like, you're funny. Do that same five.
Yeah. He didn't give a fuck.
Yeah. I mean, maybe he did.
But

Speaker 2 it's like that type of stuff, man. I've never forgotten.
And I've tried my best to be that for

Speaker 2 others when I can. You know, I try.
You mentioned about how hard it is to follow it. And I've heard a lot of people had Ricky Smiley on.

Speaker 2 As you know, I've had a lot of comedians on because I love comedians.

Speaker 2 And Ricky said, the one thing I ain't following LaBelle Crawford. I ain't doing it.
And

Speaker 2 you mentioned Patrice O'Neill and Tommy Davis and LaBelle Crawford. How hard is it actually?

Speaker 2 Even though you good, like, man, hey, I'm good.

Speaker 2 I do what I do.

Speaker 2 But how hard is it to follow somebody like a LaVelle Crawford? Rest your soul, Patricia.

Speaker 2 I don't know because I've never done it and I never will.

Speaker 2 I will never follow LaVelle Crawford. I will just quit comedy and

Speaker 2 become a podcaster. LaVelle and Bruce Bruce.

Speaker 2 I see Bruce. I used to see Bruce all the time when I was in Atlanta.
I have the utmost respect for them because when you do morning radio, I watch, I get to see you market, and I see how you move.

Speaker 2 LaVelle and Bruce would come to Birmingham the night before. Now, granted, y'all Atlanta, you can drive over in the morning, be in the studio at 7.30,

Speaker 2 promote the show. Not a minute.

Speaker 2 LaVelle and Bruce would come into Birmingham the day before,

Speaker 2 and they would go to the Black Mall. They would go to Century Plaza at that time.
They would go to Century Plaza and Western Hills Mall,

Speaker 2 and they would just crack on in the food court.

Speaker 2 Like, you talk about word of mouth. They literally would just go in city trends.

Speaker 2 You gonna buy that? That shit don't look good.

Speaker 2 And just roast straight, then

Speaker 2 bounce around to all the barbershops in the city in the afternoon. Then that night, go to the club, go to one or two just to be like

Speaker 2 it's one thing to be funny if that's funny blah blah blah but to market yourself and understand the importance of outreach and connecting with people like you can do it all through social now and you can connect all right fine but in those days you had to really grind to create an audience, man.

Speaker 2 And those brothers,

Speaker 2 I watched them. I watched them for a decade coming to town and they would have a Thursday through Sunday.
And then it became a Friday, Saturday. Then it became a Friday, Saturday.

Speaker 2 Instead of four shows, six shows. Instead of four shows, eight shows.
Gary Owen, two. That's another one.

Speaker 2 Like they were just, and they not only understood being funny on stage, but they understood how to be funny on the radio. We used to call Lavelle a pushback.

Speaker 2 Where

Speaker 2 in radio, you would turn on the mic. 957 James Wilson's in the studio.
Lavelle, Crawford, start start on. LaVelle, how you doing? And you just push back from the mic.
He did get away.

Speaker 2 That nigga going to talk for four minutes straight. Choke, choke, choke, choke, choke.
Roast everybody in the room. We take a call.
He roasts they ass too.

Speaker 2 The marketing of it was

Speaker 2 intentional and it was diabolical. And I just, I didn't understand it at the time.
I wish I did. There's just so many balls I feel like I dropped when it comes to understanding

Speaker 2 marketing with stand-up that I feel like I'm even now still making up time for.

Speaker 2 You got to open for Cat who opened for cash money. Let me ask you this.
Let me tell you about that night.

Speaker 2 I caught a lot of criticism for the cat interview because

Speaker 2 Cat peeled back a scab that if you're not in that business, you didn't know.

Speaker 2 You didn't know so many comics didn't like each other until Cat revealed that unless you're in the comic, you're in that area. As a comic, I was like, oh, yeah, I already know.
Yes.

Speaker 2 But the world didn't know that.

Speaker 2 So he pulled back a scab and allowed the world to see what was going on in that business. You mentioned, and I was like, and people got upset at me.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people have, you know, been very outspoken and said some things, and I've gotten some pushback. I'm like,

Speaker 2 y'all could say what y'all said to me. Why don't y'all say that to Cat? I didn't say anything.

Speaker 2 I said, that's cat experience. That is cat experience with said individuals.
When I allow people, this is your story. You coming on and telling your story about your father.

Speaker 2 Now, me pushing back, well, your father did the best he could and he did X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 2 But this is your story. I should allow you to come on and tell your story.

Speaker 2 I want to ask Cat to come on and tell his story, but everybody got upset at me. And not Cat for saying.
And he got mad at Cat.

Speaker 2 Have you talked to him since the interview? Cat? Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2 And he said, he's like, they're not going to say anything to me. What are they going to say to me? Because this is what I do.

Speaker 2 And he said, that was just, he said, that was not a direct hit. That was just a flyover.

Speaker 2 It absolutely was.

Speaker 2 I mean, knowing some of the infighting in comedy, you know, I try to.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I move in love.
And usually when beef start within black comedy, I already went home because the cocaine is out.

Speaker 2 My goal, you have to understand, my goal at any comedy show is to leave before the cocaine comes out.

Speaker 2 So most of the shit Cat was talking about, the cocaine was out.

Speaker 2 The liquor was flowing. There was some shit going on.

Speaker 2 The funniest shit about

Speaker 2 Kat, and I've only worked with him that one time. I can't even say that he ever did our morning show because by the time he became Cat, there was no need for him to do local radio on a Friday morning.

Speaker 2 Cash money

Speaker 2 cat is going up, and cash money is on the show.

Speaker 2 I don't know which in the hot boys, but somebody in the hot boys

Speaker 2 would not come off the bus until they got a bottle of crystal.

Speaker 2 It's 10:30 on a Thursday night in Birmingham, Alabama.

Speaker 2 There ain't no fucking crystal. Yeah,

Speaker 2 where the

Speaker 2 we gonna get crystal

Speaker 2 where

Speaker 2 in Birmingham, nowhere, strip club.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay, right.

Speaker 2 So, our program director called some folks at the strip club and was like, We need two bottles of crystal. Can you sell us two bottles of crystal out the back?

Speaker 2 And they was like, Yeah, who are they for? Lil Wayne, I want tickets

Speaker 2 then. We get there with the Christian, and the club owner bringing a Christian.
Now, he wants to meet and greet with Wayne.

Speaker 2 If you don't stop, you are fucking, and this is like the back to school backpack concert. So, like,

Speaker 2 we need this concert to happen because the proceeds

Speaker 2 go to help the community. Nah, I'm just saying, I need to meet Wayne.
I don't even think that's cool. But, yeah, Cat was there, man.
He showed a lot of love. I bombed.

Speaker 2 Ooh, I bombed. And it's worse when you bomb at the crib, because you called the station the next day.
Damn. Why'd you bomb? Because I don't know.

Speaker 2 Some days it ain't your day.

Speaker 2 And it had to be that day. I bombed one time.

Speaker 2 I almost got booed. Well, technically, I did get booed at the Apollo.
The Sandman didn't come out. If the Sandman don't come out, did you get booed?

Speaker 2 I mean, if they booing, I mean, nah, technically, I guess not. No, technically, a boo is a boo.
Nah, but sandman, they got to come get you.

Speaker 2 Okay, I got booed, but no sandman. So, whatever you want to call that, right?

Speaker 2 Next day, it airs on like apolly used to come on Sunday nights on VPN at Birmingham.

Speaker 2 Next day, I'm at the radio station, somebody called, they said, Man, if that's the best you can do, tell you from Montgomery.

Speaker 2 I ain't never forgot that shit, bro.

Speaker 2 I ain't never forgot it. But no, I think Cat Williams is one of the best comedians doing it right now.
It's not even close.

Speaker 2 And what's interesting, what's fun about watching Cat is that you can see him

Speaker 2 turn the political switch on

Speaker 2 and then you see him turn it off. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't want to talk about that no one.

Speaker 2 Anyway, let's talk about ladies. Right.

Speaker 2 Like, and that's a beautiful, it goes back to that, to that Dick Gregory separation of the two. You know, Granted, Payne versus politics, Kat can just be silly, and then he can be poignant.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The Washington Post said you occupy a space filled by Chris Rock in the 90s, Dave Chappelle in the early 2000s. Black comedians who double as one of the most thoughtful and political commentators.

Speaker 2 That's kind of that.

Speaker 2 Did you intentionally try to occupy this space? Because like I said, you know, Pryor did for a little while, but mainly it's Mooney, carlin rock chappelle

Speaker 2 yeah

Speaker 2 i don't even think i'm in that

Speaker 2 oh you you are i'm not

Speaker 2 there's more work to be done

Speaker 2 in my opinion to get to that pantheon

Speaker 2 i have just tried to make people laugh by showing them

Speaker 2 my perspective on the world as I see it. Right.
My first three comedy specials were very political.

Speaker 2 The one I just did for Hulu was about loneliness and just how we're fucked up inside as a people. That's really all I wanted to talk about.

Speaker 2 That special, the first half of that special is y'all are fucked up. And then the back half is, I'm fucked up.

Speaker 2 That was it. I didn't try to give a deep analysis of

Speaker 2 politics in that particular special by intention because I was just tired of talking about the world. I wanted to talk about us and me.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm thankful to the Washington Post for those words. Because isn't a comedian's job to take real events and make them funny? Yeah.

Speaker 2 That in and of its nature.

Speaker 2 Or it's events from the world or events that happen to you. You, right.

Speaker 2 Comedy is journalism.

Speaker 2 We're all reporters. Every comedian you name is a reporter, and they're either reporting on the world as they see it or themselves and their own condition and their state of mind.
To me,

Speaker 2 that's what this is. I didn't set out to talk about a bunch of politics.
I just woke up one day and I kind of started caring about racism more than I did talking about paying back my student loans.

Speaker 2 Y'all put that on me. They put that on me.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm thankful for that time at the daily show because, you know, Trevor Noah gave me a lot of runway to talk about a lot of black shit

Speaker 2 and take cameras into places where normally black folks

Speaker 2 mainstream media is not going to. Right.

Speaker 2 They're not going to allow that.

Speaker 2 I don't know any other program that would have even attempted to look at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March.

Speaker 2 Right. Okay.
With jokes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And somehow still remain respectful to what black people were doing. I mean, we spoke with Nouri Muhammad from the nation

Speaker 2 in that piece,

Speaker 2 which I would have even, and that's also

Speaker 2 why I've tried my best, man, to be kind to people

Speaker 2 and to be polite because you don't know when you're going to need those favors. Like, that was the second piece that I did for the Daily Show was talking about

Speaker 2 the Justice or Else march. Right.

Speaker 2 I don't know anybody in the nation. I'm not plugged in like that.

Speaker 2 But I know Charlemagne the God is.

Speaker 2 And I don't know at the time, I don't know Charlemagne,

Speaker 2 but I know Andrew Schultz.

Speaker 2 And I know Schultz knows Charlemagne.

Speaker 2 Hey, Schultz is wood.

Speaker 2 Wouldn't call you if I didn't need this. Can you hit Charlemagne? Tell Charlemagne to hit.

Speaker 2 Made the call, telephone game. Two days later, we get an email from the nation.
Wow. Here's who you can talk to.
Here are the terms.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I never saw that as some sort of crusade of blackness.

Speaker 2 It was just,

Speaker 2 these are the stories that are interesting to me. How can I make them funny so that they'll be interesting to you?

Speaker 2 Let's go to the south side of Chicago and do a walk along with strangers who diffuse gang conflict.

Speaker 2 What's funny about it? Not sure. We'll figure it out, though.

Speaker 2 But the what is more important than the funny.

Speaker 2 So let's go out and do that. Hey, Roy, tell your camera crew to stay over there and don't point the cameras down the street.

Speaker 2 We're going to go up the block and make sure it's cool for y'all to even come up the block.

Speaker 2 That type of shit. Wow.

Speaker 2 And I have to give respect to Trevor Noah

Speaker 2 for giving me the runway.

Speaker 2 Because here's the thing:

Speaker 2 I'm the new dude at the Daily Show. I'm not going to come in and go, yo, we should talk to the nation and we should go to Chicago.
It's like, hush.

Speaker 2 So you need Trevor to come in with that accent. Right.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 what Roy is trying to say, we're like, yeah, tell him what I'm trying to say. That's what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, so having producers that cared enough

Speaker 2 to allow me, I mean, man, one of the last stories I did

Speaker 2 before I left Daily Show was about Cop City in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 We in the forest with people who are shitting in buckets

Speaker 2 trying to stop police from building a training facility that's just going to make the police more militaristic and ruin the environment. Wow.

Speaker 2 So did I set out to do that? I don't know, man.

Speaker 2 That's just the stuff I'm drawn to. And I don't know if that's because I did ride-alongs with my dad.
And you got an opportunity to see what was.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I don't know where it got planted, you know.

Speaker 2 You ever think about,

Speaker 2 do you ever concern yourself with how much of a burden you want to give your children

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 being black?

Speaker 2 Versus what being black could be?

Speaker 2 How do you teach the history without giving them the burden? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I try.

Speaker 2 I've tried to shield them as much as I possibly could.

Speaker 2 But I think they did a lot of research on their own and they understand

Speaker 2 what that, even though that last name

Speaker 2 is still attached to a black man.

Speaker 2 You know, it's wild.

Speaker 2 I did finding your roots, and they found the white family that purchased

Speaker 2 the first black wood of my bloodline

Speaker 2 off the slave ships in Charleston. Yep, that's what we came off of.
If I wanted to today,

Speaker 2 I could find the white wood descendants in southern Georgia and pull up on a fucking house.

Speaker 2 One day I will. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They ain't got no money, though.

Speaker 2 Izillo'd their crib.

Speaker 2 They broke.

Speaker 2 That's the thing we'll talk about with slavery, man. It was a lot of white people fumbled.

Speaker 2 They fumbled a bag. Yeah, you had

Speaker 2 working for you. You still couldn't come up.

Speaker 2 How you broke and you had slaves? Yeah, that was bad. That was gold.

Speaker 2 They fumbled, bro.

Speaker 2 Have you ever met Rock and Chappelle?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Uh, Rock and I are cool.
I'm cooler with Rock than Chappelle. I see Rock more frequently than Chappelle.
Yeah, because let me say it that way.

Speaker 2 You know, Chappelle is show up like Yoda and then be gone. But Rock, I've seen from time to time at the comedy clubs and stuff around New York.

Speaker 2 Number respect for both of them, you know, and just what they've worked to build. You know, you also have to really think about

Speaker 2 a lot of what Dave built and what we know and love Dave for

Speaker 2 came from rejecting the industry. Yes.

Speaker 2 And not knowing. He didn't know what was on the other side of going to Africa,

Speaker 2 but he followed his instincts and he knew that was the right thing to do. So

Speaker 2 that's a lot. I mean, to turn that down, but now what makes him so impressive is that

Speaker 2 they can't take something that he didn't value. See,

Speaker 2 once he found out what they value that he didn't value, now you could no longer harvest.

Speaker 2 You couldn't harm him. See, it's hard to starve a man that can grow his crop and cook for himself.

Speaker 2 You can't starve him. Yeah.
Because he can live off the land. He knows how to survive.
And that's what I want.

Speaker 2 Chappelle, once Chappelle found out he could survive,

Speaker 2 He can do a show. He don't really need anybody.
He could like, I'm doing a show at such and such. It's sold out in five minutes.

Speaker 2 It's probably going to crash the site, but it's sold out in five minutes. It's like that old school Prince shit where Prince would just tell his tour bus driver, drive west.

Speaker 2 What city? I'll tell you later. And then sell out Staple Center on two days' notice.
Yep.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I really

Speaker 2 want for myself. You know, I think that

Speaker 2 I can look at so many times in my life where I got fucked in the game and it wasn't my fault.

Speaker 2 You didn't know.

Speaker 2 I got fired from radio.

Speaker 2 I found out I got fired from radio over Twitter. Damn.

Speaker 2 People don't even have the

Speaker 2 least have some compassion. God damn, why are you saying like

Speaker 2 but I'm saying they don't have the common courtesy to call anymore?

Speaker 2 What is common courtesy? Hey, Roy,

Speaker 2 we're going in. Look, it's going to hurt the same.
I'm going to be without a job. The income's not going to be coming in.
But, you know, Roy, you know, what we're doing, we're downsizing.

Speaker 2 We decided to go in a different direction. We really appreciate your contributions

Speaker 2 to the network, to the station. We wish you the best of luck.
But unfortunately.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I was giving that speech before. If you Google Roy Wood Jr.
Show Fired,

Speaker 2 You read the article, it's still up.

Speaker 2 They fired us, and I found out that morning on Twitter,

Speaker 2 I thought I was dead. They were like, man, I'm a Miss Roy.

Speaker 2 What did I do then? Am I dead?

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 I gave my heart and soul to that show, and it ultimately came down to

Speaker 2 what they saw as a conflict of interest. I booked a sitcom.
I'm a comedian. I can't say no to a sitcom.
No.

Speaker 2 Can I do the show from LA while I do the sitcom?

Speaker 2 They say, well, think about it. Next day, file.

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Speaker 2 Sprite.

Speaker 2 That's the game.

Speaker 2 I think that we have made the mistake

Speaker 2 of thinking that

Speaker 2 the people who have Lord over us have the same compassion.

Speaker 2 They don't.

Speaker 2 And once you accept that,

Speaker 2 you're free to move.

Speaker 2 It's like comedian Doug Stanhope would say, once you accept that you're completely and unapologetically fucked, only then are you free to move throughout this country without care and concern.

Speaker 2 I had a sitcom on TBS. We went three seasons.
We got a handshake for the fourth season. The next week, the show was canceled.

Speaker 2 That's the game.

Speaker 2 It's unfortunate,

Speaker 2 but that is the game.

Speaker 2 You work daily show for eight years. They say you're in the running for the host.
And then you find out somebody else was already in the running for

Speaker 2 the promised a job. Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 2 You couldn't tell me because you thought I was going to tell him. Okay, cool.

Speaker 2 But now,

Speaker 2 where do I fit into the new structure of the show and i know i can't trust you

Speaker 2 because you already said the bullshit

Speaker 2 if i stay here

Speaker 2 and you merge

Speaker 2 will the new host fire me

Speaker 2 will i even like the new host

Speaker 2 will the merger require a cut in salary.

Speaker 2 Will I be fired because of the merger and there's a salary fucking consolidation? Am I truly safe here?

Speaker 2 I don't know. But I do know if I'm going to find something next, it's going to be during an election year.

Speaker 2 So I should quit.

Speaker 2 It's nothing personal.

Speaker 2 I should quit.

Speaker 2 I'm going to quit. And I'll figure it out.
The same as I did after getting fired over Twitter, the same as I did after the handshake sitcom.

Speaker 2 I'm not scared because I've slept in fucking bus stations.

Speaker 2 All I need to do is make sure that the boy got a roof, he got clothes, and he got food.

Speaker 2 And we'll figure everything else out. Everything else out after that.

Speaker 2 When you called that prank

Speaker 2 J Prince, did you know who Jay Prince was though?

Speaker 2 Did you know who Jay Prince was when you pranked him? Yes.

Speaker 2 And that was one of of the reasons why you wanted to prank him, huh?

Speaker 2 I wish we still had the audio of that prank phone call. What happened to it? Deleted it on the day.

Speaker 2 You deleted it?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 You think I want that shit to leak?

Speaker 2 So for the people who don't know.

Speaker 2 So when the pranks were bubbling and

Speaker 2 chameleonaires running with me, I'm on a Pimp pimp c

Speaker 2 ugk mixtape and dip said and all of that yeah i get a call from a company and they go hey

Speaker 2 we want to do prank calls on texas celebrities we think your prank calls are great come on down to texas we're gonna do the prank calls we're gonna prank call celebrities i go yeah and they they cut me a check

Speaker 2 i'm there it wasn't a lot it was like ten thousand dollars but that's a lot of money back then wasn't it it was a lot to a nigga making 500 a week on the road yeah you straight so

Speaker 2 they go come down here and uh make these pranks i go bet

Speaker 2 and they have a list of texas celebrities and it's like paul wong michael irvin

Speaker 2 td jakes

Speaker 2 and they got jay prince on the list and jay prince is

Speaker 2 i understood i grew up listening to ghetto boys i grew up listening to till death do us part and we can't be stopped and so i knew he was an imposing figure, but I figured him to be able to take a joke.

Speaker 2 Well, I called his ass and he just kept asking me where I was. Like, where you at?

Speaker 2 Where you at? You talking all this shit. Where you at?

Speaker 2 And then the engineer came on the phone. He goes, hey, Jay, it's us.
We're just pranking you. It's no big deal.

Speaker 2 This is Roy. He's a comedian.
And Jay goes, oh, if you with him,

Speaker 2 I know exactly where you at.

Speaker 2 And he hugged up the phone. And I'm like, he's on the way here.

Speaker 2 And everybody in the room is like, no, he's not. Jay can take a joke.
We spend the next 20 minutes trying to call Jay Prince to like make sure shit is cool. You're right.
He ain't answer the phone.

Speaker 2 He ain't answer the phone. So

Speaker 2 I told the people at the studio, I go, hey,

Speaker 2 I'm going to run to the hotel and drop my bag because I came straight to the studio from the airport. I go, listen, I'm going to run to the hotel, drop my bags off, get some lunch.

Speaker 2 Let's do the rest of these pranks after lunch. Cool, cool.
I went to the airport.

Speaker 2 Did he show up to the station?

Speaker 2 So years later,

Speaker 2 Jay calls Sway

Speaker 2 on MTV. He's talking to Sway,

Speaker 2 and Jay Prince confirmed

Speaker 2 he was on his way to the fucking studio to f me up.

Speaker 2 Oh, wait, no, it was Drink Champs. Shout out to Drink Champs.
Yeah, he was on Drink Champs.

Speaker 2 And Nori asked him. You slide just like you're too bad.
Nori asked him. He was like, yeah, man, did you?

Speaker 2 Well, you know, I was just going to f him up.

Speaker 2 I think that what I didn't realize with that prank was that because of what Jay meant to the streets,

Speaker 2 you can't clown nobody like that, but I'm a comedian, bro. Like, I just did.
We clown there, you clown everybody. We clown everybody, but

Speaker 2 you can't clown Jay in his own town.

Speaker 2 Because I was in Houston when I did this, bro. I was in Houston a total of three hours.

Speaker 2 I landed, went to the studio, Prank called Jay Prince. The shit went sideways.
I got in the cab, went back to the airport.

Speaker 2 Back in Birmingham, whole day. Got back to my mama's house.
Where you been? Don't worry about it, Joyce.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, that was, that was,

Speaker 2 we laugh about it now, Jay and I, but at the time,

Speaker 2 I was violating

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 the premise of the prank was

Speaker 2 I own a mom and pop record shop.

Speaker 2 These rap-a-lot albums ain't selling.

Speaker 2 Rap-a-lot then fell off.

Speaker 2 And I'm naming artist by artist, which rapper out.

Speaker 2 Terrible. And I'm just naming rapper.

Speaker 2 You can't do that to the head of Rapalot Records.

Speaker 2 And claim you're in Houston. Yeah, he was coming to see you.
He, as he should. Like, you have to come beat the shit out of somebody who's talking.

Speaker 2 Is it true you were slapped by the co-worker but snitching?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 You say it like it was some sort of big.

Speaker 2 You snitched on a man, Roy damn. The n ⁇ wasn't doing his job.
Him. That is your place of employment.
I understood that after the slap.

Speaker 2 Let me explain it. Because I tell the story in my book, but let me explain it.
Because I told the story in my book. All right.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 did you ever work any type of food service job? Dishroom, anything? Okay. That's right.
You too busy running routes. Yeah, I was in the fields.
I do a manual later. Okay.

Speaker 2 Cropping tobacco, picking up peacetimes, clipping onions, catching chickens. Running that route tree.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So I worked in a hospital. You know, Health South.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Health South has a rehab hospital in Birmingham. Okay.
I worked in the cafeteria. We go to the floors, collect the trays.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Wash the tray. We worked in the cafeteria.
Okay.

Speaker 2 It is your job to help me collect the trays. Right.
It's a two-man job. Two-man job.

Speaker 2 This motherfucker in the gym hooping for money

Speaker 2 Because there's a rehab hospital. They got a gym he down there playing 21 $10 a point motherfucker

Speaker 2 We have a job

Speaker 2 We have a job can't break you off fuck no he hooping he earned it

Speaker 2 So I'm for perspective. I'm 16 This man is like 35 36 years old.
This is a grown man hooping for money. He makes his money hooping right at work.
And when he's free, he helped me in the dishwasher.

Speaker 2 I go to all the floors.

Speaker 2 I do the pickups. I do the drop first.
I drop all the trays.

Speaker 2 Hour later,

Speaker 2 do all the pickups. By myself.
By yourself. Because he down there hooping for $10 a point.

Speaker 2 I come back to the dishroom and I'm behind. And like in the dishroom in those days, you make lunch and the same hot plates and plates, whatever that they need for dinner.

Speaker 2 You got to wash them so that they can flip them for the bake the dinner plates. They got to turn it around.
Supervisor come in and go, hey, but the dinner plates, it's taking too long.

Speaker 2 I go, well, that could be quicker if motherfucking Mike was here.

Speaker 2 Is that snitching, or is that me just going, hey, man, get off my ass and look for the other nigga that's supposed to? Why are you in the dishroom mad at me? I'm here. Right.

Speaker 2 This goes.

Speaker 2 What you wanted him to ask, where is Mike?

Speaker 2 But instead, you on my ass talking about I ain't washing fast enough. Of course I ain't washing fast enough.

Speaker 2 It's a two-man job, and it's only one man here.

Speaker 2 I say, Mike, down in that gym, go ask Mike.

Speaker 2 He goes down to the gym, get Mike.

Speaker 2 Mike comes back to the dish room, slap shit out of me.

Speaker 2 Grown man, slap a 16-year-old. He's a

Speaker 2 Mike, slap the shit out of me.

Speaker 2 Then this motherfucker take a little vial out. Motherfucker, twist that

Speaker 2 motherfucker

Speaker 2 Tells me to get out of his dish room

Speaker 2 and this man for the next 30 minutes Shannon Does the work that it should take two men to do an hour One bump of cocaine

Speaker 2 And that motherfucker washed all them dishes He ain't wearing no gloves. You know industrial dishwasher.
That's 200 degrees. Yes.
Touching a bare hand, skin, touching the dishes, silverware.

Speaker 2 It's like holding a fucking hot pot. Yes, that's a hot poker.
Like you stick.

Speaker 2 It's holding a hot poker. Yes.
You pull dishes out in industrial dishwasher. Mike was pulling them, stacking them, had the whole thing straight.
We never were behind schedule.

Speaker 2 And he turns back to me and he goes, Don't you ever question the master.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the whole time I'm thinking,

Speaker 2 I snitched on him. He's going to be in trouble.
He's going to get ridden up.

Speaker 2 Nothing happened to him.

Speaker 2 And it was like the first time I learned a very valuable lesson that

Speaker 2 if you're exceptionally good at your job,

Speaker 2 the rules do not apply to you.

Speaker 2 And all you can do is what you can do. So if you ain't as good as Mike, just do your best.

Speaker 2 Supervisors see you in respect, but it's the first and only time I ever snitched on anybody in my life was Cocaine Mike at Health South Rehab Hospital, Lakeshore Drive.

Speaker 2 Mike, if you out there, A, you did your A.

Speaker 2 No, Mike, if you out there, f you.

Speaker 2 37, slapping a 16-year-old.

Speaker 2 I can talk that shit now because I know he's old and I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Did you ever get called a Nepho, baby?

Speaker 2 Because your father was an icon.

Speaker 2 I never got called that. Maybe because you didn't go in the profession that he was in.
I mean, technically I did.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know what's interesting is that I don't feel like black people get called Nepo babies in the same way that white people do because I feel like.

Speaker 2 Bronnie James did.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Bronny, that's a whole nother.

Speaker 2 That's a whole nother level.

Speaker 2 Oh, your dad, civil rights icon, and you're on the daily show talking about black issues.

Speaker 2 The only reason you there is because my daddy didn't give me this.

Speaker 2 I mean, there are definitely, you know, my pops died in 95, but also

Speaker 2 there are a great deal of people who I, I'm sure, give me opportunities because they knew my dad or they because they respect his legacy. But I still think we're in a show improve

Speaker 2 atmosphere, Bronny included.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Okay, you got skipped to the front of the line.

Speaker 2 We could argue the stats and say somebody else should have went in the second round, but sooner or later, Brian ain't got to put the basket in the hoop or he's going to be gone.

Speaker 2 Same as anybody else in the week.

Speaker 2 We're going to finish up on this. You said your dad was a good father, but a questionable husband.

Speaker 2 Terrible husband.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You think your mom,

Speaker 2 did you ever see your mom stay up at night crying, wondering where he was, when he was coming home? She just accepted the fact this is who he is.

Speaker 2 This is who she married, and this is what I'm going to do. My mom knew what it was.
My mom had an exit strategy.

Speaker 2 You're in a fucked situation. You don't gain anything from sitting here being sad about it.
What's your way out? Okay, grad school, law school, bet. How do you pay for it? Move in with him.

Speaker 2 The boy gets a dad to beat the shit out of him if he jump bad.

Speaker 2 And at night, I can go be in school. The boy will be straight because the pops will be home and latch key.
He's

Speaker 2 okay.

Speaker 2 That's gonna be my way out.

Speaker 2 I don't think that my mom,

Speaker 2 and I say think because she and I never talked about it. We still haven't talked about it yet, but I think that my mom and I

Speaker 2 we just looked at it as you know, I've always looked at my mom and I as a team,

Speaker 2 we've always had each other's back,

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think that to some degree,

Speaker 2 the way my pops chose to treat her,

Speaker 2 she did not allow to define her.

Speaker 2 You can get the divorce, you know, okay, fine, but that's the playbook she chose to run.

Speaker 2 I never saw my mama cry over that man. I never saw my mama stressed out over

Speaker 2 how he chose to treat her. I just saw a woman every night who worked hard and asked for help when she needed it.

Speaker 2 And now in the later years of her life is a vessel of kindness to so many other people. Like she's the epitome of paying it forward.
I just

Speaker 2 so would you would you say we are not our circumstances, but what we become from our circumstances? Because a lot of times people will let their circumstances define who they are.

Speaker 2 Man, I came from this situation. This is how I am.
I grew up like this. This is how I am.

Speaker 2 What did you become?

Speaker 2 Who are you from those circumstances? I didn't have the best father, but I became a great father.

Speaker 2 You didn't let those circumstances define you? No.

Speaker 2 I didn't have the best examples of love, but I still seek the opportunity to create that construct for my son.

Speaker 2 And I will.

Speaker 2 You know, I just think that there has to be an order

Speaker 2 to some of it because what I don't necessarily know, and I think a lot of men deal with this and don't necessarily admit it or know how to explain it to women.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 finding yourself and being comfortable with where you are career-wise and fiscally,

Speaker 2 a lot of that is a solo journey for men.

Speaker 2 Oh, you want to help me? You want to pour into me? You want to be my helpmeat? You want to be equally yoked? Okay.

Speaker 2 But there's still part of this for me

Speaker 2 that I have to go at alone first.

Speaker 2 And then you can come and merge in and pour into me and help.

Speaker 2 Because if you don't know whether or not you can do this yourself, then there's a degree of wondering who you are and what you are.

Speaker 2 The book,

Speaker 2 The Man of Many Fathers, comes out October 28th. What are the top three lessons you hope men learn

Speaker 2 from this book?

Speaker 2 I hope that men learn from my book that

Speaker 2 it is okay if you didn't get everything from your dad.

Speaker 2 That was the first thing that I really learned was that,

Speaker 2 oh, I didn't get it all from him, but I got everything I needed.

Speaker 2 When we talk about values, if it could be something as silly as don't snitch, but it could also be something as random as, you know, comedians that I know that have passed on who gave me the game on the importance of picking someone in terms of a mate that's supportive of you.

Speaker 2 I think that's a mistake that a lot of people make, you know, in this game.

Speaker 2 I hear Mary Harmon say that the most important thing you'll ever just, the most important decision you'll ever make is who you choose to marry. It's very true.
I agree with that.

Speaker 2 And I mean, as an unmarried man, I couldn't agree with that anymore.

Speaker 2 I think that also the degree of knowing and understanding that

Speaker 2 you're okay in spite of how you came up.

Speaker 2 I don't think that

Speaker 2 it's very easy as a man to just write off

Speaker 2 the who, what, whens of a lot of shit and just go, oh, well, my daddy didn't do this so I ain't shit no you got worth man

Speaker 2 you matter

Speaker 2 and being present for those kids

Speaker 2 that's important it's paramount and I think that

Speaker 2 regardless of when your father passed I think we're all men of many fathers

Speaker 2 We're all poured into by innumerable people in our lives. And I think

Speaker 2 if you stop and took stock of any of those people, you would be blown away at how many lessons you might have missed.

Speaker 2 That it's dope to be able to sit back and just think about now and reinforce and be able to pass that on to your kids. I just

Speaker 2 look at my son every day, man, and I'm just grateful. I'm grateful that I wouldn't have achieved half I've achieved in the last 10 years if not for

Speaker 2 his presence. There's a drive in that.

Speaker 2 Two weeks after your dad passed he was like

Speaker 2 you heard from him

Speaker 2 showed up as a ghost

Speaker 2 For two weeks straight

Speaker 2 and it's weird because number one I believe in ghosts. I believe

Speaker 2 all that

Speaker 2 That you believe in the supernatural yes, I don't with Ouija boards. I don't with haunted houses.
It's all real to me. That was a big thing when I was in college.
They wanted to play the Ouija board.

Speaker 2 Oh, because of Bone Thugs and Harmony. Ouija, are you with me?

Speaker 2 And you remember that eight ball, that thing you...

Speaker 2 Maggie Eight Ball?

Speaker 2 No, sir.

Speaker 2 Don't touch it.

Speaker 2 Do not touch it. Not my thing.
Like, that stuff, man.

Speaker 2 It's weird because, like, I heard about Pop's ghost, but all I heard him doing was getting ready for work. Yeah, he's going through his normal routine.
I'm like,

Speaker 2 you still got a job?

Speaker 2 You're dead.

Speaker 2 Kick it.

Speaker 2 I thought you was coming back to tell me you had some money buried somewhere. Sure, he came back because that's how bad the economy is.

Speaker 2 You got to stay at it.

Speaker 2 Trevor Norris said your book is honest, raw, and an absolute treat to read. What was it like working with Trevor?

Speaker 2 It was a blessing.

Speaker 2 I've never met a black man with a better understanding of what to do with his anger than Trevor Noah.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 Very upset about a lot of the same things, but

Speaker 2 I think that's part of why he and I worked so well together.

Speaker 2 I'm the angry motherfucker from Alabama.

Speaker 2 I don't have patience or a tempered response.

Speaker 2 But Trevor was very measured and very kind.

Speaker 2 Still very on the nose, but he knew how to not lead with anger,

Speaker 2 which gave more understanding to the issues. And I think it helped more people look at it and see, and oh, well, what does Trevor have to say?

Speaker 2 I never possessed that. And I think sometimes it is time to guild.
It is a time to be angry. And I think in that regard, he and I complemented one another.

Speaker 2 But Trevor had the ability to take anger and quantify it into feelings and make people feel seen.

Speaker 2 And then through those feelings, try to make sense of what was happening.

Speaker 2 Roy, thanks for stopping by Club Shea Shea. Guys, make sure you go out and check Guess's book, his book out, The Man of Many Fathers, Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir.
Man, brother, thank thank you.

Speaker 2 Ah, thank you, brother. Lloyd Wood Jr.

Speaker 2 All my life, been grinding all my life.

Speaker 2 Sacrifice, hustle, paid the price. One a slice, got the roll of dice.
That's why, all my life, I've been grinding all my life.

Speaker 2 All my life, been grinding all my life.

Speaker 2 Sacrifice, hustle, paid the price, want a slice, got the roll of dice. That's why, all my life, I've been grinding all my life.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 15 only 10 more presents to wrap.

Speaker 16 You're almost at the finish line.

Speaker 2 But first,

Speaker 18 there, the last one.

Speaker 5 Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes.

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Speaker 10 Filled with scandalous secrets and shifting allegiances, both in the courtroom and within their own ranks, these ladies know that lawyers are a girl's best friend.

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Speaker 37 Mothers, fathers, children, friends, gun violence affects us all. Every day in America, 125 people are shot and killed.
But behind every statistic is a story.

Speaker 37 A child who never made it to their next birthday. A parent who will never walk through the front door again.
A survivor who carries invisible scars.

Speaker 37 At every Town for Gun Safety Action Fund, we believe in a different future, one where kids can learn without fear, where we can enjoy the movies or a concert without looking for the nearest exit, where common sense gun laws protect lives.

Speaker 37 We are a movement of nearly 11 million Americans, moms, students, veterans, survivors standing together to end gun violence.

Speaker 37 We've helped pass life-saving laws in states across the country, and we're just getting started. But we can't do it alone.
Your support powers this movement.

Speaker 37 It fuels our advocacy and grassroots action, and it saves lives. If you believe in a safer future, go to everytown.org and donate today.
That's everytown.org.

Speaker 37 Because together we can build a future free from gun violence.

Speaker 38 ABC Wednesday, it's the CMA Awards Live.

Speaker 2 That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 38 With performances by Lainey Wilson, Kelsey Ballarini, Zach Top, Riley Green, Ella Langley, Teddy Chesney, Megan Maroney, Brandy Carlotta, and The Hottest Collabs.

Speaker 38 Miranda Lambert and Chris Stapleton, Shabuzzi and Stephen Wilson Jr., Big X the Plug, featuring Luke Combs.

Speaker 2 It's country music's biggest night. Wow!

Speaker 21 Hosted by your girl, Lainey Wilson.

Speaker 38 The CMA League's live Wednesday, 8-7 Central on ABC and next day on Hulu.

Club Shay Shay - Roy Wood Jr. Part 2

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