Ali Siddiq critiques luxury scams like fake wine labels and sneakers, mocking exclusivity’s hollow allure while debating systemic failures in Uvalde’s school shooting—where law enforcement’s inaction and foreign aid priorities exposed deeper societal cracks. He contrasts comedy’s "famine mindset" with community-driven hope, citing Rodney Dangerfield’s influence and his own tiered recovery proposal for poverty. Siddiq praises Houston’s hip-hop and stand-up legacy (Scarface, Bill Hicks) but faces backlash after HBO pulled his special for controversial views on LGBT parenting and trans issues, arguing honesty shouldn’t be censored. Rogan agrees, favoring YouTube’s open platform over HBO’s gatekeeping, framing free speech as essential even amid polarizing debates. [Automatically generated summary]
And one of the Koch brothers, someone was going through their collection, going, what the fuck is this?
And he's like, oh, that's a...
And they're like, no, it's not.
And then the next thing you know, he gets his wine examined, and he's like, bro, you have a bunch of fake wine in here.
And then they find out this one dude had been making these fake labels and blending these cheaper wines together to try to create a taste that's similar to a really expensive wine.
That's a part of mental health, healthcare, you know, getting your feet done.
He's like, man, I ain't fucking with it.
I'm scared.
I'm not doing it.
And I'm ticklish.
I don't nobody touch my goddamn feet.
I'm like, I'm going to go with you.
And he's like, I don't give a shit who go.
I'm not fucking with it.
I said, listen, I got you.
I'm going to go with you.
I'm going to take you to my place.
And he said, all right.
And I said, listen, before we get in here, We're getting a deluxe.
We're getting the highest package.
The lady gonna put all types of shit on your feet.
Mayonnaise, cucumbers, all type of buttermilk.
She gonna boil the motherfuckers in acid.
She gonna do everything to your feet.
Trust me.
One of the toughest dudes.
I'm like, I've had situations.
I've called him and he showed up with no problem.
Like, yo, what's up?
I'm killing everybody.
But you would think that I was taking him to the electric chair.
I'm like, yo, man, are you going to come in the place of nothing?
I ain't fucking with you.
He looking in there like it's a setup, like it's a mob hit.
Like, who all in there?
Man, listen!
Elderly people come in here, women come in here, women be fucked up.
You know what I'm saying?
Listen, So he sits down, takes his shoes off, and as soon as he put his feet in the water, I'm talking to him the whole time, just trying to get his mind off of it.
And he's like, man, fucking water.
The water bubbling.
He's like, I see him easing up.
Then she comes out with this tray of all sorts of fruit and oranges, put them on his legs.
He's like, man, type of fucking fruit salad shit is this.
Right when he getting the cucumber rub between his toes and all that, he look over at me as he's drinking it.
They bring you drinks.
I'm having a mimosa.
He having an orange juice because he tell me I got to stay on my toes.
You know, if you go on the road, and you go to Cincinnati, and you've never been to Cincinnati before, and they've got a local guy opening for you, and he's annoying, you know, and you wake up, and it's 11 a.m., you're like, fuck, what am I going to do today?
But I said this about every single problem they have in this country.
Every time there's like a report on the shootings in Chicago.
How do we have money to send to other countries when we don't have enough money to fix whatever's going on the south side of Chicago or Baltimore or parts of Detroit?
So, in most cities, you have these abandoned buildings.
You have a lot of abandoned buildings.
You go in, you refurbish this building, and you start people right at the top.
And it's a tier system that...
As you tear out the door.
So whatever your situation is, whether it's mental health, you get that fixed there.
Whether it's financial literacy, you get that fixed there.
Whatever your situation is, you get fixed in this building that this is what this recovery center is for.
Then you put them in jobs within the building because it's ran by grants within the building to heighten the skills that they already have.
And you ask people, what are their interests?
What do they want to be?
What were you before this happened to you?
How did this happen?
You get all that back information.
And as they are tearing out, the money that's allocated for each particular client through this grant, half of that money is being put to the side for when they get ready to come out.
You're not letting them out of this program.
Just naked with just the skills that they acquired in this program.
You're giving them a new lease on life.
This is the money that you acquired by being through this program.
Let's help you start your life from this point.
And you invest in the businesses that they're starting.
You invest in their life, whether it's a trade center.
You invest in these people.
And with the notion of they're going to reinvest a percentage back into the building to help more people.
And you keep recycling people back into the world In that manner.
So when you see somebody homeless, they're like, I'm homeless, I can't help myself.
They're like, bullshit.
It's a building right there that helps every single person that even falls on hard times.
We throw away more food in this country than most countries produce in a year.
Our waste ratio, if our waste ratio change, then our condition change.
Because if you allocate funds to the right thing instead of wasting funds, Even with this, people say it's a misinformation in certain things.
Yes, it is when the federal government doesn't allocate funds to certain people to eradicate the misinformation in media.
In media, it's federal funds that go out to media companies.
Why you don't get that to some of the black media outlets that you say that don't know what's going on?
Because you're not helping the situation either.
You're hurting the situation.
You're saying that if you know that the number one thing that cripples people in this country is health, and then you don't make it where they can have quality, free health care in this country, then you don't feel like the consumer...
The human being is the most important commodity on this planet.
If you invest in the human being, and the human being does the good works that he's supposed to do with that investment, and they invest in more human beings, you create this utopia of I'm
I'm sitting there like, It feels good to call somebody and tell them that too.
And I'm like, God damn it, Dan, so are you.
You are fucking amazing.
And that's the thing.
I watched earthquakes and I felt good for Quake.
And that's the thing that you want to do in this business.
I remember writing With Bill Bellamy on his special and when he's getting ready to go out and we talking and I'm like, my last words was like, yo man, just go and just do what you do.
And when it came together, I called him like, yo, I watched it live.
I was there through the whole process and this shit is still good.
DL with Clea, I was like, and you, and I think that comics don't understand.
I'm not chasing other comics in an aspect of the new guys.
I'm chasing the classics.
I'm chasing Carlin and Cosby and Pryor and Eddie.
I'm chasing them so what you're doing doesn't We're good to go.
Man, Sinbad, like the memorable things that I'm like, I want my special to be in that when people say, hey man, Live from Sunset Strip, Elephant in the Room, Domino Effect, Ali Stik.
Like, I want to be mentioned amongst that.
And I tell people, I'm not playing the game for riches and all that.
I'm playing for that yellow jacket.
You know, a lot of people...
They satisfaction that you play football and you play through high school, you win a high school championship, great.
Then some people want to go to college, win a college championship, great.
Some people want to go to the NFL and get to the NFL. They want to go to the All-Star Games.
Because even if you don't get there, you get pretty fucking excellent.
Because if you're trying to get pretty good, you'll get pretty good.
But if you're trying to achieve excellence, like real true excellence, where you can be proud of something, you know, Even if you don't get to where you wanted to go, you get a lot further than where you would go if you have low expectations.
That's the thing where Ari, when he put together that storyteller show, that was his idea.
He was like, these stories are too hard to develop when you're doing a 15-minute set on a stacked comedy store lineup.
You know, you got 10 fucking killers, you want to kill two, and if you're trying to develop a story, and it's a story about going to the park with your dad...
It's a long ass story.
People are like, where are you going with this?
But if you could do it on a show that's just people telling stories, then you could develop it and tighten it and then get to the point where it might be your closing bit.
But Bill Bellamy, he's a nice guy, but he has a mean streak in him that is outstanding.
On the tour with him, I used to host this tour, and somebody would ask for a guest spot, and he would come in and be like, I'll eat 777. I'm like, oh shit, who just asked for a goddamn guest spot?
So now...
People don't know what we about to do to you.
Like, I'm going to come out, and usually I would do 15, I'd just skate into it, but I'm coming out with seven minutes of straight fucking home runs.
But for that person that did that set and bombed, if they can figure out how to follow you when you're crushing, if they can figure out how to ride that wave, that is so important.
That lady, Mitzi Shore, that's what she did every fucking time.
If you were a good comic because she thought you had some potential and you were young, she would throw you on after a killer.
Who's on?
Who's on the lineup?
For me, it was Martin Lawrence.
In the 90s, dude, you never saw anybody eat it.
Like seeing me going on after Martin Lawrence when he was in the leather jumpsuit days.
People don't remember.
They don't remember.
95 Martin Lawrence?
1995?
My God!
My God!
His timing, his facial expressions, the power!
Chris Rock, to this day, talks about a time where he bombed going after Martin Lawrence and it changed his career.
Because he had been doing too many easy shows.
He'd been doing too many of those New York City, like, cellar spots.
Like, everybody's so happy to see you.
You can kind of be casual.
And he's headlining.
And Martin Lawrence is throwing lightning bolts.
Just.
The whole room was just.
He was so good.
He was so dynamic.
He would pace the stage.
He had so much energy when he would hit his punchlines and hold his facial expressions.
It's Martin Lawrence in his 30s with a leather jumpsuit on.
You're fucked.
You're fucked.
People don't remember, man.
If you go back to You So Crazy, goddamn he was good.
In my mind, he's like, you know, when you talk about the greats, because, you know, he went and did the TV show and didn't tour as much and didn't put out as much comedy material.
So a lot of people that weren't around in the 90s forget how good he was.
The Coconut Grove improv is where I saw Joey Diaz put people in their grave.
Because Joey Diaz would go up there and do half his punchlines in Spanish.
And you would have like a 40% Cuban audience.
And Joey Diaz would have la binga!
And he would hit some fucking Spanish punchlines.
And people would just throw their chairs up in the air.
They were falling down to the ground, knocking over tables.
It was chaos.
And then Joey was middling.
So Joey, this was back in the day when Joey was coming up, and they would have some road act who did HBO in 1984 and still has the same material, and they would have to go on after Joey.
If I'm watching at home, I'm in my living room, I want to watch it in an intimate environment.
I want to be in an intimate environment in the audience.
If I'm watching someone on stage and they're in a fuck, like Kevin Hart did his shit in like 50,000 people.
It's like, Jesus Christ, how do I even pretend I'm there?
But when I'm watching you, and I'm watching you on stage at a comedy club, there's a normal-sized stage, intimate with the audience, you're seeing the people in the front row, you're smiling, you're having fun, I'm there.
So the people who saw the show on Thursday and Friday is like...
That shit didn't happen!
So then the people who saw it on Saturday got the whole Hollywood...
Right.
Because, you know, Eric Abrams, the same person who shot my stuff for Comedy Central and This Is Not Happening with Ari, I got them.
I wanted that look.
And Eric is a fucking great director.
Like...
It's really not about him.
It's about what you want.
And he just suggests shit like, what do you think about this?
I wasn't thinking about it, but now that I am.
So he just suggests, do you really need that?
And he's like, I don't.
And it comes together.
Him and Jordan.
Jordan did the lights.
It looks like, that was one of the things, and especially when somebody notices it, when my guy called me and said, man, let me tell you the most amazing shit.
Maybe it's me, because I guess I don't have a permanent audience just yet, but some of these clubs, when you go in, it's not even the club.
The club is fucking fantastic, but the audiences that come there, you're like...
Hey, look, do I need to read all the shit that I read first and tell y'all about it so I can come do it so you can be familiar with some of the shit that's going on in the fucking world?
I like going there, but when you think about shooting, the room feels warm and you feel like I can do some other things to the room to make it a little warmer and just go in and fucking crush it.
Man, it's weird that I can go into this same dimension.
Alan Jackson.
Like, I grew up, I didn't listen to country music, but I knew about country music because my granddad would watch westerns and, you know, you listen to Hank Aaron.
I'm just flipping through the stations one time and I heard, you know like when you go to another city you put on Scan and going through the radio station, trying to find a radio station.
And way downtown on the Chattahoochee, this is, and it called me, a whole bunch of lovin' in a oochie coochie and I had to find out who the fuck sung this song.
Well, I'm a giant Hunter S. Thompson fan, you know?
And so, like, when I read his writing about it, it just, like, brought me there.
Like, I was appreciating his appreciation of just the fucking scene.
Just the wild scene of it all.
And how crazy it was to him as a writer, as a journalist, going there to cover it.
And he's covering it on acid, and he's all fucked up, and they're drinking all day.
And, you know, Hunter's writing was always like that.
It was always this wild mixture of...
Pure exaggeration and fiction with fact and reality and like an assessment of the social dynamics, like a psychological examination of the people that were involved.
That was one of the first pieces that he did, I believe he did that before he did his big Sports Illustrated piece, which turned out to be Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
1970. Yeah, so that was...
And then Fear and Loathing was when?
I think Fear and Loathing was his breakout thing.
They hired him.
I feel like they hired him for Sports Illustrated to go and write about...
1875. 1875. But when a thing becomes a thing, like a place where people go and they know they're going to go get fucked up, and they know they're going to gamble, and it becomes a thing.
They wear the big hats with feathers and shit, and the ladies wear all their jewels.
I wonder if Hunter caused more people to act more crazy there, because his writing was so influential and so popular.
I wonder if he probably accentuated the experience for people that wanted to go to just get fucked up and just watch.
But it's like you have the aristocrats, the socialites, the people that go there and they wear their expensive suits and their big rings and they pull up in chauffeured cars and they get out.
And it's so crazy that they know that you cannot get to the bar.
They know that you can't get to the bar.
They have bartenders with coolers strapped to them where they end up on the floor in different places and they flip the cooler up and they make your drink right there because they know you're not going to be able to get to the bar.
It's insane in this spot.
It's a live band.
It's like 12-piece live band and it's fucking insane.
And if it's 5,000 people, it's 1,000 men and 4,000 women.
If it's 4,000 people, it's 3,000 women and 1,000 men.
And I know we went in, it was maybe about 12. I know I came out of there, it was 8.30 in the morning.
I know for facts it was 8.30 in the morning.
And it's right off the beach.
And it's like, this shit is insane.
And when you fall down there, it's like people that you didn't even see in there.
You're like, oh, she was in there?
I can't.
Damn, where was she at?
Because you and your element.
I never left.
Once I walked through upstairs, I never came back.
Like, I walked through downstairs.
I went upstairs.
I never came back downstairs until it was time to leave.
Like, I never came back downstairs.
Like, it wasn't happening.
I was having a great goddamn time.
Like, I walked out of my hotel, and it was maybe like 30,000 people on the street, on a side street, dancing.
And it was people on a bus, people on the street.
And I just walked into this shit, and I was like...
Like he just does it so much like the shit is a problem some guys can keep it up they can like Floyd 45 years old looks fucking amazing the best example is Tyson 55 years old and they're still talking about him fighting either Logan or Jake Paul like that is crazy and I don't know what would happen if Oh, man.
I look back and I noticed that I wasn't that type of person.
All throughout my years of destruction, I wasn't that type of...
Like, this special is from 10 to 15. The next one will be from 16 to 19. But in that, I wasn't...
Because I didn't...
Especially when people watch it, they'll know that I'm not this hardcore criminal or I came from some bad family where you had to sell drugs and make it like my mom had a job and I'm just out being influenced by the people that's outside.
I never understood a couple things in that life.
I never understood, as I got older, I never understood why there was no honor amongst these.
Why were you making these transactions so dangerous and so hard?
And then I never understood people doing things to their customers just to stretch it or adding drugs to the drug that you're selling.
I never understood that desire I still don't understand.
The amount of people that are going to buy their cocaine is endless.
It's the only way to get it.
It's coming in over the border.
They're constantly bringing it in.
And if they can cut it and make more money, they don't give a fuck.
And if they sell it to you, you think you're going to buy what you bought last month, but you're buying a totally different thing now because they decided to try a new formulation with fentanyl.
And maybe you do one bump, you're okay.
Maybe you do two bumps, you're dead.
That's the fentanyl deal.
Like fentanyl.
You've ever seen the amount of fentanyl that'll kill you?
Like in comparison to a penny?
It's crazy.
Pull out the image.
When you see it next to a penny, you just go, what the fuck?
No, I know it seems like it can't be right, but the folks that are just listening at home, we're looking at a penny from 2012, and the amount of fentanyl that'll kill you will cover up the number 2012, and that's about it.
It's a small...
It's Lincoln's beard.
Lincoln's beard is the amount of fentanyl that'll kill you on a penny.
Like, we on the road, we in different environments all the time, you traveling, you in different hotels.
Like, your health should be a priority to you.
And I know some of us, we just fall, and you eating terrible food, if you, you know, you in a lot of these clubs, you eating at the club, you eating everything.
By the end of this year, I just don't know if I can do this anymore.
It's too demanding.
It's too draining.
People are getting the entirely wrong image of what kind of person I am.
Amen.
Amen.
And now I repent for it.
Today, that kind of life out there.
Amen.
But I tell you this, I know what I've been commissioned to do.
I know what God called me to do.
do I know my purpose is.
I need your purpose.
Amen.
If I ever cross your heart, it's because God's laid me on it.
Amen.
And if I cross your mind, if I happen to just, you're driving sometime and I happen to cross your heart or your mind because I'm out there praying for the body of Christ to pray for me because I need you.
Amen.
Yeah.
Amen.
I'm telling you something, this world's about to be shook up.
And I'm just glad I have a part in it.
I'm glad you have a part in it.
Because I wouldn't have made it without the prayers of this church, without the support of this church.
I couldn't have took it.
Amen.
I couldn't have lasted.
Amen.
I have one spiritual friend out there.
That's it.
Out of all the people I know, out of all the people I deal with and talk to.
I know one spiritual friend.
You say, well, why don't you go to different churches out there?
I've tried and they're nothing but the law.
I don't need to know about being saved.
I've been saved.
I don't need to know about being filled with the Holy Ghost.
Honey, I've walked in it for the last 12 years.
It takes a lot to feed me.
Amen.
The law doesn't cut it.
Your little list of rules doesn't cut it.
Because you can't...
This is why the world won't accept it.
Amen.
The priesthood is going to have to come to humanity.
Humanity's not going to come to the priesthood.
Amen.
This is why Jesus left the temple, Brother Marty.
Amen.
Praise God.
They tried to accuse Him of all kinds of things.
They said, He's a blasphemer.
He's a wine-bibber.
He's irreverent.
He's not a truth-teller.
He's a liar.
He's Beelzebub.
He's this.
He's that.
Amen.
And Jesus said, listen, amen, the well don't need a physician.
I didn't come for you.
I came for the lost.
I came for the lives without hope.
People without an answer.
People living on the edge of their existence.
Amen.
Now I'm telling you, people would do their job spiritually.
If they'd walk in this spiritually, you wouldn't have the drug in this country.
Amen?
You wouldn't have the alcoholism in the youth that you have in this country.
Amen?
But it ain't going to be done by rules.
It's going to be done by reality.
It ain't going to be done by a little program for them.
It's going to be done by something they feel in their self.
They're not going to take your word for it.
They're going to have to feel it, Brother Marnie.
It's going to have to shake them.
And Kevin, I respect you because you didn't listen You just didn't accept it because they told you it was real.
Talking about getting his dick sucked and dead dudes getting fucked in the ass by gay guys.
Four years later.
I mean, four years later, he was the biggest comic on earth.
Look at him.
unidentified
that's four years later. - Besides you that has any good to it, that can shine a light into somebody's lost way.
Do you think if you had to, if your soul was riding on the line and you had to testify and you had to make a commitment, if it was a final answer, what would you do?
There's an entertainment value to the way they present that you could learn something from.
Because, like, that's one of the things that always bothered me about the alt-comedy scene.
The alt-comedy scene, specifically in L.A. They didn't want to try hard, and they didn't like it when people tried hard.
They would get upset.
Like, if someone came on the show, like, how's everybody doing?
They're like, oh...
What is he doing?
He's trying.
He's trying hard.
It's like a lack of entertainment value.
They wanted, it's almost like they wanted the bar super low.
And they could just go up and go, so I'm at Starbucks the other day.
And so the barista, you know, there's a barista at Starbucks.
It's a, you know, fancy word for guy who pours your coffee.
There's this alt style of comedy that's very low energy, very reference-oriented.
They say a lot of obscure references to be clever.
And if you're a powerful comic, like if you're a guy who's got a Bobby Lee type dude who runs up there and has all this energy, they don't want you there.
Me going into the alt scene, because I go in there, and they think that I'm like them, because I'm slow and methodical, and it's like, I don't think he's like us.
No, I'm not.
It's a weird dynamic and then it's the same dynamic, which is crazy to me, it's the same dynamics as me going into a hood room.
They want certain things.
And I'm not giving them that.
I'm walking up, I'm sitting down, and you'll hear people say, you all right?
Like, yeah, I'm all right, I'm just sitting down.
There's something wrong with me sitting down?
And they mind, like, why would you be sitting down?
It's stand-up comedy.
Then I go into what I do, and I have to win you over because I think that it's a thing with stand-up.
That the audience, a person goes and see, they're not adventurous in their entertainment value when it comes to that.
Like, if you like a Bruce Bruce or Earthquake, why don't you think you would like a R.S. Shafia and a Joe Rogan?
Like, what would make you think you wouldn't like them?
Oh, they not my style to stand up.
So, you come to an Ali Sadiq show, With a preconceived notion of what you feel like comedy is.
And if I'm not doing that, then you sitting there like, what is he doing?
I'm being the human being that I am.
And I'm going to deliver if you don't come to my show looking for me to be another comic.
And he goes, he said, if I could talk to my 14-year-old self, I would go back in the future and look, I don't have much time.
I gotta tell you.
And then he's talking and then he said, your 14-year-old self looking at your new self and he says, He looked at it and he's like, yo, look, some shit fails.
Like, of his hair.
He go like, look, don't fuck.
Fuck my hair.
Fuck what's gonna happen to you.
And then he says, you're an asshole.
That's why people don't like you in the future.
Because you're an asshole.
If I go back and look at my 14-year-old self, my 14-year-old self, looking at what he's going to become, I'm like, look, man, fuck you, man.
And my role manager, Dre, Dre's always with me, and Dre has probably learned so much about comedy, just being in the room and seeing the different dynamics.
And last night, He was in the room and he was like, he never knew that white comics talk so much shit just like black comics.
He was like, yo, this is the same shit y'all would be saying.
Yo, man, he just fucking sucks.
Like, yo, that lady would have got so...
It's comics that hate me to this day.
Because I told them that that shit was trash.
Like, very early.
I'm like, yo, man, you need to work on that shit.
That shit is garbage, son.
And now, I don't do that.
Like, I won't tell you anything.
If you think that you're good, like...
That lady...
The disservice...
By this sensitive culture that you don't get what you actually need to be a beast in this game.
Like, your fucking skin has to be toughened up.
And this is what I say about the new generation of the social media comedian.
When you started...
You weren't going to what they...
Let's go to politics, how it res is politics.
So Trump only did interviews on Fox.
Kellyanne Conway, she only does interviews on Fox.
And I know this because I listen to Fox.
And I'm listening because I want to hear these interviews of people who never come on Other media outlets to answer any type of fucking question and they call them softball questions.
They give them fucking softballs.
So as a comic, if you always get softball, like you bringing your audience to the club, like these are people and they love you and they come in just for you.
But you don't have a lineage of how you started.
Like you don't have a I used to be in the comedy store.
I used to be at the cellar.
I used to be just joking.
I used to be at the improv and I'm fucking getting this shit together.
And one time Joe came in like, yo, the joke is hilarious, but you need this.
You don't have this fucking lineage of shit.
That helps you develop.
So you just getting all softballs.
So then when you go into an audience, now you're on what I call one of these conglomerate shows with all different types of comics on the show and you don't have a lineage and you have to follow somebody.
You have to go up behind somebody.
And you see the difference, like, oh, you never had to go up after a monster and still get your shit off.
You never had to do these things, so it handicaps you in this business.
Because, yo, I'm on this show, you're popular, and he's popular, but you gotta go up behind Rogan.
And Rogan has taken the room on a fucking journey, and now you coming up with the Hey!
They like, the fuck out of here.
Like, what are you doing?
Then somebody else comes behind you and destroys the room again.
Because he would always talk to me about how great other comics was.
He would never fucking say anything to me about me.
It taught me that your perception of yourself is definitely important.
Because Jeff, I would run into other people And Jeff would be like, they would tell me like, Jeff Sewell fucking loves you.
I'm like, what?
He never says anything good about me.
Like, to who?
Like, he fucking raves about you.
When you're not there.
Like, you're like the one for him.
But he would always tell me about how great other comics were.
So Bill Burr wants somebody to open for him.
He's getting ready to do his special.
And he asked Jeff Sewell, he's like, yo, I need somebody because I'm doing the Paramount in Austin.
I need somebody who's going to come in that room and fucking destroy this room.
And did I want to come out on a high?
Who do you think?
So I get a call to open for Bill Burr.
And I'm like, okay, cool.
Bill Burr, he comes in my green room, he's like, yo, I know you're gonna be fucking great.
Jeff said, if you want a killer in front of you, this is one.
I'm like, what?
Yeah, Jeff fucking says that you like the man.
So whatever the pair of my hoses sold out, I walk out there, and it's literally two black people in the whole entire place.
It's me and an usher.
And I had on all black, and I'll never forget when I walked out, I said, "Hey, let me tell y'all something before I even start." This is the worst fucking place to wear all black.
And I want y'all to know, I do not work here.
I don't know where the fucking restrooms are.
I don't know anything, because people were stopping me like, hey, you know where the restroom is?
People ask me like I've done before.
And then I noticed that I had on all black.
I'm like, this is bullshit.
And I fucking destroyed.
And Bill came and said, yo, any fucking thing you need from me.
Like, you need me to help you in any way.
I will refer you.
I will do any fucking thing.
Thank you.
And I was like, Jeff.
I was like, thank Jeff.
Like, I really thought that he was like, yo, you shit.
But Jeff, Jeff was like, yo, you fucking.
But he...
He just couldn't give it to me because he felt like...
I've been in this room since 2011. It used to be Spellbinders before it was the improv.
They had a fucking rainforest.
And I used to go there and he just never paid fucking attention to me.
And when he told me he got sick, he was like, I always thought you were fucking great.
Like, always.
Like, what I can tell you.
Like, I didn't want you to fucking stop trying to get it.
Like, if somebody tells you that you're great up front, and you never, you never strive to be better, Even with myself, I do an album or I do a special and I want the next one to be better than the last one.
I don't see it any other way.
Why would you start declining or why would you go there?
It's different facets of your growth in stand-up.
I think you can always be original in this business if you're being honest about who you are and the growth.
You're not supposed to be doing the same thing I've been doing it, what, almost 24 years.
I'm not supposed to be the same as I was in the first 10 years.
Because the first 10 years, I used to do this joke about this story actually about getting body slammed in a fight.
I wasn't ready.
This dude, like, we fighting and we get close and he fucking picks me up and body slams me.
And I'm like, yo, after you get body slammed in a fight, you fucking lost.
I don't give a damn what happened after that.
You fucking lost.
It's like your shoe coming off in a fight.
You fucking lost.
And I would do this flip.
Boom!
I would land on my back and I'd be on the ground.
And I know the older I get, I'm not going to continue to be able to do this shit.
This is not a long-standing joke.
Fuck this story, because I have to do the flip in order to sell it.
Nah, I'm not.
So I'm supposed to develop into something a little better than what I was in the beginning, the first 10, the first 15. If you don't have a lineage, how do you do that?
Like, how do you learn to get better?
How do you have a desire?
I'm like Seabiscuit.
I see you running and I want to run faster to catch you.
But if I don't have that desire in me, I'm cool with being number seven and thinking and having this illusion that I'm great, but I'm only playing in front of these softball audiences for me.
LA's a pretentious place, and a lot of the people that are in that audience either want to be in the business, wish they were actors, wish they were famous, or they're peripheral to it.
They're agents or managers.
They're jaded and weird, and they're all social climbers.
So it's like there's a weirdness to it.
Like when someone famous goes on stage like, Oh, yes.
Someone who is of the caliber of fame that I... But there could be someone before them that's funnier, and they don't even care.
They don't care.
They're not just trying to have fun.
There's a pretentiousness to it that's more...
New York's got a hardness to it that I kind of like.
LA's got a pretentiousness to it.
But when you're in a place like Houston, all the pretentiousness is out the window.
Brad Jordan, Scarface, changed the cadence of people.
And Willie D and Bushwick Bill.
But then you had this whole entourage of other rappers that came behind Zero and Slim Thug and Lil' Kiki and Big Pokey and UGK. And that's phenomenal that Our first versus is about to be Bun B with UGK versus A-Ball and MJG. That's the first South versus.
Everything else has been in LA and New York.
This is a R&B. This is a South thing, and I know they're going to turn up.
Because Bun is like a...
He's becoming like the mayor of the city.
Then you have all these like Beat King and...
Megan.
Look at Megan Thee Stallion.
Look at Travis Scott.
These are people that's from Houston that this whole...
Toby.
It's this whole revolution of rappers that spawned from the initial style of the Ghetto Boys.
Look at Chameleon Air, Pimp C, Slim Thug, Bun B, Zero, J Prince, Lil Flip, OG Ron C, Michael 5000 Watts, my man right there, Mike Jones, and Scarface on the end.
Man, I remember getting chills when I saw this shit.
I was like, yo, man, Texas is on the fucking map, right?
And when you talk about comedy, it's like, if we did that with comedy, with Bill Hicks and Sam Kenison, Thea Vidal, Brumman, Billy Dee Washington, Ruchon McDonald, fucking David Raybon, myself, Marcus D. Wilding, Terry Gross, Keira Space, Dez White, Dave Lawson.
Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart and all these other people that come to my city and play the Toyota Center or Gary Owens and Michael Blackson come to the improv and sell out 14, 15 shows and shit like that and then I don't do the same thing.
Like that shit is a driving force.
How you get so much love?
What did you do?
I'm not an actor.
I don't look at sitcoms and movies and desire that shit.
I'm on stand-up.
And I want to do it from the stand-up position.
Because a lot of these other greats were doing it from the stand-up.
Colin was in Car Wash.
With fucking one of the greatest comics of all time, which is Franklin Ajay.
He was the fly in the car wash.
And I don't think that the movie was what compelled him what people wanted.
I think that I want to try to push the envelope to when people say, hey man, when they feel bad, they'll be like, yo, listen.
I know them other guys, it was on Netflix or HBO or something else, but it's gonna be a problem if we say this is the best special of 2022 and we give it to somebody.
The thing is to achieve some shit without them having to, like, I would, I remember DL told me when I was on Bring the Funny, and I was talking to him, he was like, you think he gonna win?
I was like, God, I hope, but I went in, I went in it, my agent Joe, Joe would tell anybody.
Because he talked me into doing it.
I said, cool, we'll do it.
I tried to lose every fucking round.
Because I was on tour.
I was like, yo, I'd rather just do the tour dates.
I don't need this shit.
And he's like, we're going to do it.
So every round, I was like, I kept my shit packed.
I was like, we're going to go do the round.
I'm shortening these stories down to two minutes and 30 seconds to get this shit off.
And I'm just, whatever job I'm doing, cool.
And I keep advancing.
And I would call Joe.
I'm like, I made it to the next round.
He's like, okay, good.
And I was like, fuck.
So I would make it to the next round.
And DL, by the third round, now I got the taste of blood in my mouth.
Like, I want to win this shit now.
And DL was like, I don't want you to win.
I said, what?
I don't want you to win.
I want you to be the person that people wanted to win and didn't.
I'm like, what?
He said, more people are going to see you.
More people are going to come to the shows to see you.
They wanted you to win and you didn't.
And they wanted to come tell you.
Sometimes I doubt my mentors.
Like I doubt the experience.
I don't know fucking why.
And I'm like, so then I lose.
And anybody who watched the show would see my face.
Like I don't have a poker face at all.
Whatever the fuck is on my mind is on it.
So they panned the audio.
I'll never forget that the cameraman did just like this.
So they announced the winner and everybody's cheering and shit.
But this is my face.
Like, your face is right now.
They was panning like this, and that man got right to me and went the camera up.
And then did everybody else, because my face was like this.
I'm not clapping for that shit.
Like, I'm not.
And when I didn't win, I was like, okay, fuck it.
And then people started coming to the shows, telling me how they, you should have won.
We did one just a few months ago, but we decided to do it again because on the last one, we were just talking about stuff and HBO didn't like what you said.
You're supposed to be allowed to have opinions about things, but when you have opinions about what they want to deem protected class, and that's like, I mean, we were talking about gay people, and your opinion was about gay people adopting children.
Yeah, I said my thoughts, and I didn't, the thing about a thought, I'm not saying I'm right.
I'm not saying I'm wrong.
I'm telling a thought.
Now it's on what I think to either be altered, corrected, more information, whatever the situation is, but that's not going to happen right off the top without me having a conversation about it.
And knowing that error is plays a large part in how people think the error that you grew up in and then your experiences.
My experience with things were that people who was in a certain lifestyle that I know didn't want certain things.
It wasn't a part of what they were doing.
So that's my experience.
Those are my thoughts.
Am I wrong?
Not in thinking a thought.
I'm not out doing the rallying for it.
I'm just saying what my thought was in a conversation.
I'm allowed to do that.
I'm not saying that you can't have anything.
I'm just saying my thoughts on something.
I didn't think that the Lakers should have got Westbrook.
I didn't think that it was a good fit.
Do the Laker Nation come after me?
Because I had a thought about, hey, I think that Magic Johnson is the greatest basketball player of all time.
I think Bill Russell is the greatest basketball mind of all time.
If you like Jordan, you like Jordan.
But I will have a discussion with you about the greatness of Magic Johnson.
They threatened me with violence, like a lot of people threatened me with violence, and I was sending my address to those people like, yo, you bring that shit on if you want to.
Spoken to my agent, and I asked for a conversation.
And when we had the conversation, I started the conversation off by this.
Do you think that I am an honest man?
Ali, this is not about your honesty.
Yes, it is.
Do you think that I am an honest man?
Yeah.
Now we can have the conversation.
Because if you don't think that I'm an honest man, there's no reason for me to go forward with this conversation.
Sitting across from me, do you think I'm a homophobe?
Sitting right across from me mean you having dinner?
No.
Okay.
Um...
I happened to watch New Rules with Bill Maher's last Friday.
I was tired, came from the show, exhausted.
Turned on HBO. Obviously, I have no problem.
I've watched a lot of HBO shows.
I have no ill feelings about them, their decision or whatnot.
No trip.
Still gonna watch my same HBO shows.
And then I hear Bill Maher talking after New Rules.
And he goes in, like really lays out some shit.
And then Sam Jay's show comes on right after that.
And Sam Jay is a lesbian, black lesbian woman that's a comic.
She has a show on HBO, which I'm on.
And she goes in about how the LGBT community does not represent her as a black lesbian woman.
And she's talking to these people and she's giving a whole candid understanding about how the shit does not relate to her.
Same thought patterns.
Of understanding, like, yo, explain to me why, X, Y, Z. And I'm sitting there looking like, wow.
Some people are free to say whatever they choose to say.
And some people are not.
And when you feel like you can handicap a person...
And she says on this, she said, I think that it's a bunch of entitled fucking white people that's pulling the strings of what...
And the lady that she says it to agrees and said, I think it's a lot of people that lobby for power and they feel like they can take a stance on this, that, and the third without no conversation.
If you manufacturing the consent of anything...
You manufacturing consent.
Everybody agrees, but I'm a part of everybody, right or wrong?
I have a different thought.
Your first thing was, because he has a thought, And a person that may not know him, because the person who knows me, who wanted the special, understands to a certain degree, but it's not in their hand.
It's another person that has this.
And we talk about it.
But this is a thing that I'm not rallying for anything.
But I understand.
That's why I have no ill feelings about their decision.
That's your decision.
To not put me on your network because of expected backlash that did not come.
So this is expected backlash from you doing the podcast and saying what you said, and then they were anticipating that there was going to be some attack on you.
If my son or my daughter wanted to do something that I know As a heterosexual parent, I'm concerned about the shit that I do that my kids have to explain.
They may not be equipped to explain it.
And you don't have a pamphlet of information that I can go to to explain anything.
Then right after that, I did this joke, which I still think is fucking funny because it happened.
And my four-year-old...
She, we in the elevator.
A man comes on there with a face full of makeup.
We got a full, what they call, beat face.
And my daughter's like, Daddy, why that man got on makeup?
I'm not thinking about this shit right now.
My mind's on something else.
I don't have time to explain this shit.
I said, he in a band.
That's all I said.
He's a band.
I don't know fucking band.
He ain't in the band.
So my four-year-old is still like, she see a man with makeup on, she doesn't think anything but, oh, he must be in the band.
But that's what I fucking, I don't have time to go into this shit right now.
So they want you to not talk about things as loosely, I guess, and take into consideration that you would hurt gay people's feelings that want to be parents?
I would probably hurt anybody's feelings if I'm up there talking about things that I think that's contrary to you, if that's where your feelings are based.
But my actions are Contrary to, like I say on stage, I'm not a handyman.
Am I really not a handyman?
Fuck no.
I have been not handy in the past.
But now I can figure out how to fix anything.
And if I can't figure out, I'm going to call somebody to ask.
Just like, I ask people, but it was all black people.
And by the way, that's an opinion shared by a lot of medical doctors.
That's an opinion shared by a lot of psychologists.
That's an opinion shared by a lot of people that are very concerned.
And he almost lost his job because you can't have an opinion that even...
Like I told you before in the first podcast, one of my old neighbors, they're gay, and they had a kid, and they adopted this kid, and this kid was great.
And they had a great family.
It does work.
I don't have the same opinion as you, as far as that.
But you're allowed to have different opinions about everything, in my mind.
And if you have a perception, and you have a way that you look at things, and it's different than the way I look at things, I just want to see why you think that way.
And you were pretty clear.
They're not making children.
This is a different thing.
You're adopting a child, but this is not the same kind of relationship as a man and woman who have a child and then raise a child, and it's like it comes out of the woman's body.
I think they just, like, in this situation, like, the subject that we're talking about, gay people adopting children, I think people just want compliance.
They want you to comply with whatever the narrative that they're trying to establish is.
The same thing when Mario Lopez was talking about children taking hormones.
It's like, there's a narrative, they don't want you to have an opinion outside that narrative, and if you do, they want to fire you from things.
And the situation with you and HBO is, look, I told you this last night and I believe it now.
I think it's good.
Not necessarily good to have these people upset at you, but good that you put it on YouTube.
Because the distribution is so much better.
You'll get millions more views.
Millions more views.
It'll be accessible anytime anybody wants it for free.
And so I think even when I'm a child and I'm walking through life as a child and I'm making a lot of bad decisions that I know that Now, I would never want my child to go through, hey man, let me give you a lot more.
I just want to build a confidence up in children that they will...
Not succumb to these outside forces that's pulling you towards things that's contrary to your moral standings on things.
It's hard for people because they get to school and there's so many people that want you to believe a certain way.
I've talked to kids that told me, and these are like 12-year-old kids, that they were getting bullied at school because they weren't vaccinated.
And other kids were vaccinated.
And I'm like, what 12-year-old understands the ramifications of getting vaccinated for something that they have zero fear of getting sick and hospitalized for?
Like, I remember homeschool had a phobia of, like, people, your kid's not gonna be socialized.
Your kid is gonna be this girl.
Homeschool is way better.
I remember my daughter, my oldest daughter, Jaden, she's a chef at James Harden Restaurant 13. She was in school and the teacher said that she was being disruptive in class.
And I went And I just snuck and looked to see what she was doing.
She was in kindergarten and she had already been...
My daughter was reading at three.
So now you're in there doing colors and numbers and she's in the back doing shit like this.
Every time I say this, I get backlash, but when people get upset about things, you have to think about it.
I've seen teachers walk out for more pay, maybe twice.
We walk, they get us on strike for more pay, maybe more times than that.
I'm just going on times that I just currently can think of.
But they never walk out for a better curriculum for children.
Like they say, the school system is not this, not that, and it is not challenging, but you never walk out for a better curriculum.
They can't get it together on the same page.
We want to teach these kids and really teach these kids, the United States kids, to be in the upper echelon of intelligent children and intelligent people in the world.
I wonder where we rank at right now Where does the United States rank in education?