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Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to a very exciting episode of the Tim Vera Show. At least I hope it will be because it was for me, of course, every episode it is my job to deconstruct world class performers, whether they're in entertainment, military, chess, sports or otherwise. How do they do what they do? What are their routines? What were their influences? Favorite books?

What did they do for exercise? What is their favorite cereal, if it comes down to that, etc., etc..

And this particular episode features Jamie Fox.

Jamie Fox is the most consummate performer and entertainer I have ever met, and I've met a lot of people. He blew my mind. We spent two and a half hours together in his studio at his home. He is an Academy Award winning actor, Grammy Award winning musician. And of course, he cut his teeth as a famous standup and improv comedian. He can do it all. And in our conversation, which goes all over the place, we do cover it all.

And that includes him playing live music just to off the cuff.

It includes impersonations, Oprah, Mike Tyson, Kermit the Frog, Bill Cosby, Clinton, Reagan, Sammy Davis Jr., Ray Charles and dozens more. Morgan Freeman. It goes on and on. But he also talks about his origin stories.

So how did he, for instance, match a one million dollar party thrown by Puff Daddy with four hundred dollars in L.A.? How did he go about doing that? How did he build up his fan base? What was it like to bomb in the beginning? That's beyond being BLM, even though I said it that way.

The connections initially, how did he connect with Kanye? How did he connect with Jay-Z, Pharrell, etc.? And we get into a lot of nitty gritty.

We talk about hard times.

We talk about what he learned from his grandmother, the skills he developed as a kid, what he uses as far as parenting style with his own kids.

We go really deep and all over the place. I was so excited and nervous at the same time in this interview.

It was one of those times.

And for those of you who've done interviews, you'll know the feeling where the stuff that's coming out is so good, you compulsively check the audio equipment to make sure that you're getting it.

So I hope to provide some bonus material on top of this. And we've had that before, for instance, where Arnold Schwarzenegger has answered some of your questions after the interview.

And to get any of that, you will need to sign up for the newsletter. So just go to four hour work week dot com forward slash Friday. That is four hour work week dot com, all spelled out for Science Friday. And then I'll get you the five bullet Fridays, which is just a short bullet list of all the cool things that I've managed to find in a given week and send those out on Fridays. So sign up for that and you might get some goodies related to this episode.

So check out Jamie on Twitter at I am Jamie Fox and for all of the notes, all of the links, the resources and so on from this episode, as always, you can find it at four hour work week dot com forward slash podcast with all the other episodes.

And that all having been said, holy shit, put on your seat belt, have a cup of coffee and please enjoy the incredible Jamie Fox.

Jamie, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, buddy. I am so excited to be here. I am admiring your set up here. This is right.

This is where the magic happens. To be honest with you, a lot of magic happens here for the people that are listening. We are actually in my studio, my home studio now, you know, studios, we're talking about Tech World Studios because of the tech world.

A lot of them display dissipated in closed doors because if you think about when LMI Fayolle came around, they didn't need studios. They did all of the music on a laptop right. Flying from here to Germany or whatever like that, and just dumped it on to and just burst up to see KDDI or to iTunes. So studios were almost becoming obsolete. But there's something very interesting about this studio. First, just for people that are listening, this studio and I'll describe it, it's you know, it's sort of plush carpets is great.

We can sit next to a grand piano.

We had a grand piano, which a lot of places.

So we keep a grand piano around just to make sure that we don't lose, you know, we'll get to Turkey, but what's interesting about it is it's actually electric, but it's an electric grand piano.

So we still have the wood to give you that warm sound, which, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense because as music starts to progress, because of the way we record now, sometimes you lose a little bit of the heart of it.

So I think within the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, it'll be, you know, this type of music, the real sound will, you know, remain.

That makes sense.

Now, the studio, when I first got the house, looked like old porn set.

It had a hair like an old basement carpet in a couch and like a Metallica Metallica poster. And I was like, what would I do with this? Because I needed a place to to work.

And the music was interesting. Now I got a guy to change the whole place over. And as you can see, we'll take pictures and show it for you for you guys to listen to. But they did a very good job in it. But if you look over here, this is where we do the recording. There's a there's a booth which is normal, but also the recording on both sides were able to do animation, were able to do if we want to do ADR for movies, what is ADR?

ADR is like when you like when we're doing a movie, but we're recording the movie outside. There's a lot of noise. I didn't pick up audio, so we do pick up audio so and so.

And most any actor or actress would tell you ADR is the worst thing in the world to do.

So to be able to have here, have it here, I could do my ADR here, I could do my animation here and things like that.

And so just now, the the studio itself, the actual brains of the studio, it's an old hard drive.

And the reason I kept that old hard drive, I used to have a small studio in a smaller house. But when I had that small studio, I wasn't in music. I built a studio in my smaller house because I wanted to get the music. But I was from comedy and from acting and things like that.

But what I would do is I would throw parties and I would invite musical people over at the party like. But when they would come over, like if I had a puff or or snoop or back at that time, John B or Brian McKnight, I would say, hey, man, you know, I'm trying to get the music.

Would you leave me some music in my studio so that people leave me like sixteen bars, 24 bars, because they would they would record something while you're in the studio, they would record we have the party going, I say is going to back, you know, why we're drinking and whatever like that and go and say, hey man, just leave me a little something because I was trying to get into to music.

And then I met this kid named Brian Prescott basketball. We play basketball and all this kind of stuff, pickup basketball games. And he said, hey, man, watch over the music. I mean, I'm trying to get into that shit, man. I just, you know, know how to get into. And then one day he I throw this big party and it was the party was was crazy because as I digress a bit, I would follow Puffy Combs around back in the day when it was just like Puff and Jaylo.

And in back at that time, no one could get into his parties. But the reason he would let me in, because I would carry a camera with me everywhere I go. But it was back in the day day like, you know, the big cannon campus where he would let you in because you carried a. Yeah, because at that time I wasn't Jamie Fox.

I was just Jennifer.

And so I couldn't get into all the parties because Puff was so big. He come to L.A., we couldn't even get our own clubs. Right.

But I, I took a town car everywhere he went, jumped out of the Towncar when they said yo puff kind of record. Now, at that point you didn't know you at all or you know me.

He knew me, the kid I was on in living color, whatever like that.

But it wasn't elevated. Right. And plus he was having parties that were like huge, like nobody's getting in. And so they was he saw me with the cameras, like, yo, let him through. And it was back in the day was like the big cannon camera with the light. And I had to change the battery. Went like, how today you just got you. You're on your phone in your pocket. You know, I had I had production, but I will follow him around.

And then one day we had this this party in Philly that I recorded for him and he said, yo, yo, money, you know much. This party is what it costs. A million dollars at this point. I said you paid a million dollars for a party. He's like, Yeah, that's how I told Paul. If I tell him, I said, I'll throw you a party at my house in L.A., which is way smaller than this situation.

But I'll spend maybe four hundred dollars and it will rival this party, not in the scale of it, but in the type of people that are there.

And he was he was a little upset. You know, Puffy's you know, he always likes to win competitive guys, competitive guys. You know, you want to fuck my playboy. You don't understand the essence of this party. I was like, oh, I get it. And he actually came to L.A. a few weeks later and it was a Saturday.

He said, you know, Playboy make this should happen. So he called me like nine in the morning. Right, for that night. In the morning.

He just said for the Saturday. For the day, I said, no problem.

So I go into my cell phone call. I have a I have a list of people that since I first came to L.A.. The way I got into knowing everybody, I was the first I was the first social media guy without social media, I would go to a stand up comedy routine at a club if they like the routine.

I had cue cards back in the day and would have people sign cue cards, sign the name. Did you like the said, give me your pager? No, I will text you and let you know where I would be your time.

Yeah, they were like index cards, index cards.

So Box and I had these really slimy stuff was I was there picking back up. I just have to. We took a fly break. Yes, it was.

I just thought I have to admire this because the studio is or would you say maybe like 30, 30 by 15 feet on the floor and then another 15 feet tall and you said I'm going to stopping at this fly.

Yeah, I saw the fly almost in my man. This is a lot of space. And it took you about seven seconds to just fly down and kill it. I was very I got to get shit done in here. Don't have time.

So the cue cards.

So so I will get cue cards and you like I said, I would send it, you know, I had a list of about 800 people has 600 women because women at that time, just like around 1991, women at a time love to go to comedy clubs.

So all the pretty girls because pretty girls like to laugh, you know, about eight, nine girls together and Jamie so crazy or whatever.

And so I had 800 Sigma's just 200 guys because they wanted to be where the girls were. So I would take that list and also say, OK, now I'm having a party here, here, here, whatever, whatever, if you want to come by.

So that seemless, along with the other people that I met, as I as I started to grow in the business, I text and said, I'm throwing a party for puff.

And this one puff had a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. We ain't going nowhere was out. And it was it was poppin. I mean, even L.A. was like, man, we want to fuck with this New York City.

So the song is so hot.

So I text. I said, listen, I'm a puff is coming and the people that I text will only call people like no guys are to be. Hey, you know, girls are pretty not slutty, but not not too tight. Right. You know, I mean they like it was just it was just really it was, it was, it was um. And so I hit him at 12:00 noon. I said, know where you went?

We're at a fever pitch.

It's gone off over here in my little house. And when he gets there, his mind is blown. And, you know, he shows up with the entourage.

You know, he he was like Gatsby and he walked and he said, oh, that's the girl from Nashville and that's the girl on this.

And I said, yeah, if we we all live out here, you know? So all the people you see in Hollywood, I know my friend.

And so he's like, oh, shit. So the party is incredible.

We're playing his music to my little sound speakers. Everybody's really toasting him. And I said, Puff, the people that are here are different in I.

What the fuck? It's another fly, almost austerity. Goodnight. Two, four, two, two, two.

So, so, so, so he's he's a admiring that.

It's crazy. And in everybody's in tune with him and I explain to him, I said them, explain to you who you are. I said, these are the people who not only live in L.A., but I think I've found the right set of people who appreciate the art as well, because what you do musically and what you're doing on the artistic side is blowing our minds as well. And I said, therefore, look at the table. I only spent four hundred dollars on the table.

This Kentucky Fried Chicken. I just put it in a nice bowl. There's cola. I just put them in pitchers. I said, so no more than 400000 people here. I said, because here's the thing. A fitted baseball cap, New York fit is fifty eight dollars. Maybe retail. I said, but put on your hat on your head is priceless. We just want to be around this fly shit. Right?

So we part in Pauw is party and there's a dude standing next like on the wall no one's talking to.

We got a little green jump jacket on. Guess who it was.

Jay-Z. Nobody knew he was Jay-Z. I said, yeah, I do, Michel. It has one room. Puff has the other one.

Then I go to my garage to grab some of the drinks and I see this tall dude in this little do in there, like the little guy goes, yabbie, it's like this all the time. I say, Yeah, well you mean, you know the girls and karaoke. Yeah. I mean who are you over the Neptunes. My name is Farrell. I said yeah I'm going to of you. Yeah man I like your shit. So that's how long ago.

This was amazing. So here's how I make the music play though. So as Pop is there, I get people to leave me different bits of music or whatever because I'm trying to get into the music thing. So I turn that into a show in a sense to where I would just have different people. I would toast and try to, you know, get my music going. So one day my boy Brian brings in this kid. He has a backpack on his jaws, a little bastard.

His name is Kanye West. And I say, Yo, yo, who's who's that this year?

I said, new kid, Kanye West coming on set. Really what he do? So he rap. I said, well, shit, he got to perform this shit because everybody comes to this to my house.

I got to perform. So I said, yo man, they say you to shit. And he was really quiet, you know, I said, let me hear you read. You need your beats or whatever is El Nino beat freestyle. But I mean chopped everybody's head just amazed.

I said, dude, I don't know where you come from, but you are going to be one of the biggest stars ever. And he said, I actually have a song for you. I said, Why me?

Song like what you made? He said, I got the song. He says, I want to record.

I said, Will you happen to be in luck? Because I got a studio in the back. So we go in the back and my studio at that time I called it a push. It was a lot smaller than this.

It was really like it was like a it's like a Learjet and it's compact.

It was compact. The sound was toasty. I had engineers from all over the city, DALADIER And so they were real artists. Come, they don't think that, oh, that's just comedian fucking around some real shit.

So we go in and Kanye, you know, quiet, but but at the same time, he knew what he wanted.

He says, OK, the song goes like this. He says he wants a Marvin Gaye, some Luther Vandross. A little as I got it, I started going. She say she wants a mother. They get. And he said, What the fuck are you doing? I said, What's the young man you're not about RB Samhan Bema Foxo.

I got to give him shit, you know, I got to put shit on it. And he goes really politely. He hits the button.

He says, don't do that a bit. You don't know what you tell my brother.

Then I had a song go, you got to sing it. So in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, I'm singing it. The song is wack. It's not going to make it because I'm thinking old school RB. But he was teaching me the simplicity of hip hop, which I didn't know what, you know, cool guy, great rapper. I don't think it's going to happen for him. So I go off and do a bad movie.

When I come back, my boy says, remember that song he said was wack?

I say, yes, no one in the country, young Kanye and Twista, Kanye, his first record. And it was actually Twisties record. I said, Oh, shit. So I'm at a club. He said, You don't believe me. It's I'm we're Miami. They played it. Everybody rented the dance floor. I grabbed the mike, said, that's me. That's that's that's my song. I'm I'm on it, you know, and sort of music.

That's how I got into the music. Now, the reason the story is significant is because the same brains that we use, that same hard drive that we use, I brought it to this studio. Oh, no. So that hard drive is magic. Of course.

We also did just to give you a history on the music, we found that song, Slow Jams. It went number one. And then as we started getting into music, there was a song that Brian brought in and he would play this. Brian called me, like you said, you want to be in the music business is like, you know, two or three in the. One, he called me, says, you want to be in the music business a year, he said in Week USA, I said, well said, I got the song you got here.

So I drove all the way from my house in the valley to this to this, to this, to this little studio. He said, So you ready, motherfucker? A U.N. and obviously everything three times. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Yeah. Yeah, man, I played a shit. So he plays it and the song was Blame It on the goose. Got feel loose. Blame it on. I started.

I said, listen, first of all, please tell me that's my song.

He said, yeah, it's your song but you got to record it right now because a lot of people are listening to this song and they don't know if it's a hit or not, he said. But I know it's a hit. We did blame it on the alcohol that night. I sung it exactly like the record, which goes way in contrast to my RB roots because it was out of tune and everything like that. But we wanted to sing it exactly like the demo so we wouldn't lose the essence of it.

I don't want to be like, blame it on the alcohol, you know, some corny shit.

So we did that and then we went from every the way we broke that record is that we went from every club. We went to the strip clubs first, went to a strip club, strip club. We will. We will. We did an East Coast run. So we were going to break the record in the East Coast. So we went to the strip, went to New York. Oh, my man Pécas took us around and I will go into the club and use my comedic, you know, vernacular to get the song off.

I said, Fellas, you ever been at the club? You meet a girl you've been drinking and you think she looked like Halle Berry. You get her back home, she looks like Haley. Scary. You know what you got to do?

Blame it on the girls. Guys feel loose. Blame it on at stop the record, ladies. You ever meet a guy, you get back to the house with him and you've been drinking too much and you say, I usually don't do this, but you do it anyway. You got to blame it on I. So we took that and we went all the way down from New York, all the way down to Miami. This is like 2008.

And then the song took off and so long story longer blaming on alcohol was done here. Slow down was done here. So this studio has that that essence to it that you just you don't throw that away in just a building itself. Natasha Bedingfield has been here and she's Kitley role has been here. She's cut. The game has been here. He's cut right here on this floor. And I'm sure for you guys listening, I'm pointing to the floor, to the carpet.

A young man by the name of it sharing slipped on this carpet for like six weeks, trying to get his music career going. He came from over from London. He heard about a live show that I do in L.A. So really want to do your life show. It's possible, you know, because I have some music that I love and hit his kid, which is really I'm like, you do my life.

And it's all it's mostly black, you know, I'm saying but it's really like music. People like really hardcore music people. They're very finicky. You know, people that have played for Stevie Wonder. People will come there, too. I mean, I have Miranda Lambert one night I had Stevie Wonder on stage. I have Babyface. I said, so this is the real shit you're talking about.

You know, you come here. I don't care about the London accent. You got to really come with it. So I think it'll be OK. That's all right. So taking off my life night, 800 people there, people playing platform, sweating and just getting it, you know, seeing people singing, you know, there were tear American. I love, you know, and these people don't have necessarily made it. So all of a sudden nature and gets up with a ukulele, walks out onto the stage and a brother was next to me, was like, yo face, who the fuck is is the real man with the red hair and sit in the fucking ukulele.

I said, man in the name of this sharing. Let's see what he does. Within twelve minutes he got a standing ovation.

Wow. From that crowd and I said, bro, you are on your way. So this studio has, like I said, a lot of history and it has that magic to it as well. The mojo. Yeah.

Now you you mentioned getting into music, but it seems like from what I've read of you, that music in some ways came first. Music did music, did my when I was a kid, my grandmother made sure that took piano lessons. And, you know, that's tough for a little boy in Texas, you know, playing for Elise and Chopin and Mozart.

And we're not talking about Houston or. No, we're talking Terrell, Texas. And I love my city. My city was dope because it was only 12000 people. So it was like literally like 12 or 15 families. So we all knew each other.

But, you know, for a little boy playing at that time, you know, the kids didn't understand, yo, man, why are you doing it?

My my grandma want me to do this, you know? And so I would sometimes I would be belligerent, be like, why you want me to do it? She says, the reason I want you to learn classical piano is because I want you to be able to go across the tracks and play your music for people listening across the tracks. On the other side of the tracks for Southern City was the tracks in a southern city separates the city. One side is black.

The side is white, so in our city, the south side, the south side of town was where all the black folk live on the north side of town were sort of white folks live. So she says, I want you to be able to go on the white side of town and play cat classical music. So she taught me how to play classical piano. A lady by the name of Lanita has taught me how to play classical piano, and I literally would go on the other side of the tracks and, you know, and start playing for like wine and cheese parties and things like that.

But my grandmother took it a step further, too, because she was able to see the future. Here's a lady with an 8th grade education. She had her own business for 30 years. She had her own nursing school business. She says, When I say across the tracks, I don't just mean Interisland.

Those people over there, I mean the metaphoric back across the track. I mean everywhere in the world. She's a music connects you to the to to the whole world. So in doing that, I would connect with people on the other side of the tracks who, you know, in a southern city and tell, you know, we will live we will live behind the curve when it came to race relations.

Let's just say it that way without you know, I don't want to demonize my mom, my hometown. But there was there was that who's a little black kid. And my grandmother would be like, don't you play, do your thing? And when I would play, you know, a lot of it broke up, broke, you know, broke up. I remember even like being armed with just my music and sort of that racial setting. It sounds sometimes like there was a time when there was a Christmas party with these paid gigs like me.

I get like ten, fifteen dollars, you know, and at that time was Lamba and I played for the church. So playing for the church, I would make like 75 dollars a week. So if you that oh that's like three hundred a month. You know, real money. That's real money. At 13, 14, my grandmother would take the money and put it, you know, give me this money so you know what money you pay.

No rent. You're going to give me this money. So but I remember at that time being armed with just my music and there was a Christmas party that I was supposed to play for myself and my best friend, who was 17. I was 16 at the time.

And so here is a little bit of the the racial misunderstandings, shall we say. I went to play for the guys at Christmas time. Maybe it's like December 17th and we show up. It's two little black kids on the white side of town. And when he opens his door and he sees these two little black kids, he says, what's going on here?

I said, Well, I'm I'm here to play for your Christmas white shirt and wire to you here. At the same time, I said, well, I don't have a license. You know, he drove me. Is there a problem? He has a problem. I can't have two niggers in my house at the same time.

And I was like, oh, well, you know, I've been sort of used to the racial misunderstandings. And I said, well, is there any way he could wait outside to wait?

And he can't wait on the street starts at six thirty. Now you got to make your mind up. So I said I told my boy, I said, let's just come get me at eight thirty, which was pretty late, you know, for kids at that time, you know? So I go in, this is where is your tuxedo? I said we didn't come and have a tuxedo. So we go into this room, which looks like a bedroom, and I'm looking like, what the fuck does he have?

Clothes hanging up in his bedroom, but it was a walk in closet. You no shit like that. How we make a split level condo out of this shit.

So he gives me a Brooks Brothers jacket that had the patches on the elbows.

I'm like, oh, shit, hifalutin. So now I'm really playing, you know. Yeah. But as I'm playing, they were doing the grown ups there were doing a racially misunderstanding jokes. I'll say it like that. And my grandmother taught me something at that time. She said, when you're in a setting like that, there's a word I don't want you to remember. It's called furniture.

I said was that she said, you're part of the furniture, so you don't comment on what's being said. You play. That's what you therefore you let these people enjoy there.

And the lady of the house felt bad. She said, I just want to apologize to you for what they're saying. I said, no problem. She said, Can you sing something for us? And I was like, sure, I could sing something else. And this was a song, that song Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.

Jack Frost nipping at your nose. You take a being sung by a choir and folks dressed up like Eskimos, everybody.

Anyway, so as I'm singing, I remember watching those white guys, old man, some of them faculty at my school that had just said something. You know, probably not. I don't think it was that they meant harm, but it was that after they'd have to resign today.

Yeah. And they look and they go they they immediately change. Wow. And it's good. You know, any other songs. And I said I did about maybe like a six song set and I saw what my grandmother talked about. That music cracked him in half. They saw a different me. And then afterwards he gave me 100 bucks and I'm like, she called me nigger every day I got a hundred dollars.

I'm rich.

And what was interesting was I went to give him the jacket back. He's like, no, I can't wear the jacket. So it was still a little bit of residue left over.

But I saw what the music did and I remember him my my boy show back up. I said, listen, I was cool gig. We got paid us, but I got to get out of here. I said, because I'm too smart for this, I need to go elsewhere. And I did I changed my major. Well, I changed the colors that I was going to go to, I was going to go to another college in Texas and study music.

Instead, I came to California in San Diego to study music at International University. And what was interesting about that was, is that being in Texas was black, white to Mexicans. When I got to International University, it was 81 different countries represented at that school, all connected by music and other things, music and sports. Uh. In the music, the music arena at that time was high in strict child prodigies from Japan, child prodigies from China.

I had a Russian music teacher and I had a Yugoslavian music theory teacher. So it was it was really across the tracks.

But because of that, because of Estelle Talley and Mark Talley, you know, picking me up every weekend to go play music, oh, man is set me on, like I said, a crazy, wonderful journey. And so the music was first, you know, and my college was interesting. I didn't know anything about Jewish Palestinian.

I had no idea I was at the student center. And it was this argument going, yeah.

So why would I want to talk about my brother, my brother, my friend. You're talking about the Gaza Strip. I said, fuck that. And I said, no, the Jewish occupation, the this, the that.

And I had a I got a quick I got a quick history lesson on on that I got a quick history lesson on people from Argentina, or I would see a person who looked black and I'd be like, hey, what's up brother.

I am not sure. Where are you from. Paris. I would like fuck they got black me.

So that music gave me not only an opportunity to share but opportunity to be educated by other people because we studied Texas history.

In a study in Texas history is interesting, I'll give you study Texas history if it didn't happen in Texas. It didn't happen, so when you look at it like like this, just a sidebar, but when you think about politics and what people know and don't know in politics and what they know about across the sea or what they know about even on the next block or what they know about what's different in Texas from New York, the reason that politics is so interesting is because the people don't necessarily have educations of other people, which is why I think that once we start opening up a little more and traveling a little more, because what is it, less than how many percent less?

Well, less than five percent of Americans have passports and things, a small number. So so anyway, that music, like I said, took me.

Took me everywhere. What are there your your grandmother's seems like a very wise woman, and I've heard you describe her and I might be I'm sure I'm paraphrasing this, but that she she was the bow or had the or the arrow, and she pointed you in different directions.

I'm wondering what other like you are the furniture. I mean, when to speak, when not to speak. What other lessons did you learn from your grandmother?

My grandmother taught me confidence as well. My grandma was a very confident person and very smart. Just how would you say just naturally intelligent she was a Taurus is a natural, is like it wasn't something that was super educated or anything like that.

I'll give you I'll give you a I'll give you a hint of my grandmother. I'm 10 years old. Maybe I think I'm in the fifth grade 76. President Carter, the preacher started preaching about homosexuality.

I don't know what it is, you know, ten or eight where.

So he's saying God made Adam and Eve, God didn't make Adam and Steve.

So people like, you know, southern Texan, he man, my grandmother stood up and said, you stop that. In the whole church, that was, let me tell you, stopped it. Now her words, what she said next was very interesting. Let me tell you something. I've had this nursery school for 30 years, and I want to let all y'all know that God makes this these two. And the whole place went what she said, these little boys that I've watched since they could walk.

They play bad, they play by different music, and you start that because you're making it hard for them. To navigate. Sits down, he goes to another subject. Eventually he leaves the church, but I found that very interesting at the time, I didn't know what that meant until I got to be about eight years ago, you know, what was you talking about?

She says, yes. She says, you know, I've had this nursery school. I see the difference in the kids. And so therefore, I would have these kids come to me after they graduated from high school, going to college or tried to have a family, although they had they were living with this. So she was a type of woman who had natural intelligence. I said, well, granny, well, what does it say about religion?

Doesn't it say that it's that it's wrong? You know, being a, you know, kid from Texas is a natural question. She says, you know, when I think about it, she said, you have to open up the umbrella of religion as what you mean. She said, if you only open up the umbrella half way, only a few people can stand under. She said, you have to open the umbrella all the way through so God's children can stand on it because no one here did not get made by anybody else or anything else but God.

So that was my grandmother, you know, seems very up with the move in church.

And it's a very bold move, very, very, very bold.

But my grandmother raised those people in church. See, I was adopted, you know, a seven months. So she was much older. So all the kids that were there were there. And it was wasn't, like I said, was only a few families that lived in terror. So all of the kids that grew up, all of the grown ups that were there, she she was the matriarch she met because during during the year it was it was it was a it was a school, you know, I'm saying.

But then during the summer you drop your kids off at my grandmother's house and just let them keep. So she was very powerful in that sense. And then when I did finally make it, it was wonderful to tell my grandmother, come live with me. So my grandma was little money. So we go to clubs.

You know, my grandma was like she had to be 83.

She would go to clubs and hang out. You know, she's in L.A. This is L.A. I had a little apartment, split-Level condo. Remember when I was hyp the split-Level condo? So I had a loft. Oh, yeah.

Ricardo he's only 19 and all Italian, but I had a loft and we were living in that loft and we eventually rented a house and me and my grandma and I didn't know I was a mama's boy.

Like we go to parties, come back, we have a party to crib and one of my home is coming up, the Foxo.

So old lady out here in the front room, I said, yes, my grandma was there a year because he had to use a bottle of champagne.

Pop, what are we doing? We getting it a you know, so she was she was amazing, man.

So, you know, my grandmother, you know, we party hang, have a good time. And she was 83 years old. And the big thing was, is that Granny, you know, it's Christmas time.

Why don't we do something we've never done, you know, yourself making a little money when we go to Hawaii for Christmas because I got some friends from Hawaii.

Well, what?

Yeah, well, let's get it going. Get us off the plane. Right. So we fly to Hawaii one year, and it was amazing to be able to show my grandmother another side of the world. It even made the papers in Terrell, Texas. Is Talley on her way to Hawaii? You know, and I remember, you know, this is a fun just a fun time. I remember we're having a good time. We're going to be away.

And she had a boyfriend at the same time was 83, too. And he was on you know, he's on the landside.

And so so it's like December 2013, we we called her boyfriend just so they could talk. So she's on the phone.

Oh. Yeah, having a good time. Oh, yeah, yeah, weather's nice and sunny.

Oh, that's good. I got my own seasoning, so I'm really nice. Well, I tell you what, look, I'm a girl, but let me tell you something. Don't let me come back there and catch you with no young girls. You understand? Because I don't play that.

And let me catch you with a young girl. You hear me? So she hangs up, you know, it's like three or four families. They were having, like, little Christmas party. We all go, Granny, what would you say to young girls?

We you tell me, you know, 60, 65. I don't want to miss sister. She says, shit, I'm eighty three. You know, I can handle 65 year old woman all of my shit. So she was just a.

Great person, tough girl. I remember there were some situations where I did make it and some people in my family felt like I should give them all of my money. This lady walks in with my partner and she comes into my rich cousin and he recognize because I you know, I had I only seen him maybe once or twice growing up. So anyway, it gets around to where she says, I need 10000 dollars for a kidney and whose kidney?

Well, I need kidney surgery or something like that. So if you give me the cash, I could take it and get the. I said, well, why don't you? If it's a situation of medical, I know some doctors, maybe they can help you. I would prefer the 10000 dollars.

That's why you are here. You know, in combat. I was like, so that became a problem for her as she called me one day and left on the answering machine. Young fella, the last time you see the answering machine. So I'm checking my answer machine and she leaves a scathing message. Well, you know what? I didn't get the money from you, and that's fine because you're not part of this family anyway. She was adopted.

Nobody wanted you anyway. So this lady saying to me, brutal, I like what the hell.

So I let my grandmother here let me run that. But we played it was that.

No, and she called and I remember listening and I'm grown, you know, I'm I'm twenty two.

So I'm grown and I hear how she stuck up for me. She's let me explain some Tebow and I could hear I got a ball and he said, Almanzo, I said, and everybody wanted him. I wanted him and everybody, you know, I said, and he may not be blood, but he's AFAM. And it just it was his incredible growth. My grandmother was absolutely amazing.

I think you need people like that and we talk about that. So that's what that's my reference to, to raising kids. And I got my own kids now is that when you raise your kids, you are the bow and arrow. You're the bow, they're the arrow. And you just try to aim them in the best direction that you can. And hopefully your aim isn't to off. And that's what she did for me. And then, you know, she watched my whole career all the way up until getting nominated for an Oscar where all of the things that she taught me came into play when we did Ray Charles, that was an opportunity to play the piano, to be funny, to do an impersonation and all these things, what my grandmother championed.

So when we when we embarked upon that film, I was like, oh, man. Granny was right. This is taking me on the other side of the tracks, and when we got in, even when I got a chance to meet Ray Charles, which, you know, that's my grandmother there, you know, and she didn't get a chance to meet him because at the time she was you know, she couldn't move bedridden a little bit, but.

Being around older people, you know, I understood that muscle, too, because I was always the young kid with the old parents. So meeting Ray Charles was like seeing my grandfather was seeing one of my uncles.

And when I met Ray and we were trying to do Ray Charles movie and Taylor Hackford, who was a director, and he said, you know, I've been wanting to do this movie for 25 years. I'm glad you came along because it's the right time.

And I remember meeting Ray Charles, walking down his studio, you know, clean, you know, look like like you can see, you know. And I said, Mr. Charles, you know, I'm trying to do the best I can to, you know, to do to do your movie, your biopic. And you know what it's like. If you could play the blues band shit, you could do anything, man. I said what you mean.

He said, Ed, can you play the blues? That's what I'm asking. I said, I guess so.

They come on and we go and we sit down. And all of the hard work that my grandmother put in all the days my grandfather drove me to piano lessons.

Here I am sitting with a legend. And we were like.

And I always like playing the blues with Ray Charles, and as we're playing, I'm like, I'm on cloud nine.

Then he moved into some intricate stuff like Thelonious Monk, but I'm a little bit about that. But. And I was like, oh, shit, I got to catch up.

And I hit a wrong note. And he stopped because his ears are very sensitive, you know, now, why the hell would you do that? I was a way hit a note like this. Wrong note, man. Shit.

I said, well, I'm sorry, Mr. Charles. I just said, let me tell you something. The notes are right underneath your fingers. Maybe you just got to take the time out to play the right notes. That's life.

So that was a less. That the notes are right underneath your fingers, so metaphorically. So now you got to cross the tracks, there's someone like Estelle Talley teaches you, then you got Ray Charles explaining.

Now that you're across the tracks, what notes are you going to play? And so now we go on and we we we we do that movie. Which we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know that it was going to be like that. It wasn't a studio film. It was independent and. You know, doing the doing the process of the movie was interested of my, you know, background, being from Teryl, knowing how to mimic, but I needed to know how to do rached do Ray Charles like the young Ray Charles.

So I got in touch with a Quincy Jones. And for all the young ones out there listening, make sure you Google Quincy Jones and Ray Charles. And the reason why you should do that is because they were the building blocks of our music today, which started in Seattle, Washington, which was interested in Seattle at that time, was was a big hub for jazz music, jazz musicians. And that's where Ray Charles migrated to running into a young Quincy Jones.

Ray Charles actually taught Quincy Jones everything he knows about music. Who was Quincy Jones for the young ones listening. Quincy Jones was the one who did.

I mean, he played he was a band director for Frank Sinatra. All of those guys, the Rat Pack, all of those guys. He was the bandleader. If you when I met Quincy Jones, he talks about that. Yeah, man. Shit, man. Music man. These young cats don't know music anymore, man. Shit. They were playing the cucu if they would. Man Shit, man. When I played Baby Frankie baby, I said, Mr.

Jones, it was Frankie man shit. Frank Sinatra man said I was young man. The band was we were playing in Monaco man. We didn't even have time to rehearse baby. We're just there playing, waiting on fucking Frank the come in. So what do you mean.

He says we had to play this show in Monaco. Frank had never met me, knew that I was this young kid who was great with the music. I become the bandleader. We don't get a chance to rehearse Monaco. Where is billionaires and millionaires in the audience waiting on this incredible show. And he says, we'll just vamp and man shit. And Frank doesn't even come out on the stage. It comes to the audience, man, shit talking and shit.

I'm like, man, I'm nervous as hell. And then Frank got up.

He said his son. The bail was tight and Frank Sinatra knighted him like gave him a ring that was like, you know, pretty significant, if you know what I mean. And if you guys Google Frank Sinatra, you understand what I mean about the La Cosa Nostra. And so. Here I am now talking to Quincy Jones and he's telling me about Ray Charles. He says, Young man Ray taught me everything, man. Shit, man, he taught me how to dress.

We were wearing suit suits, zoot suits and shit. And he had nice suits, tailor made. And I said, why did he have my suit? Shit, man. He was always around. Women, men and women would tell them men of zoot suits ugly because he couldn't see. So the women would tell him how to dress. And I said, Well, Mr. Jones, I'm trying to figure out how to do Ray Charles, but I need the young Ray Charles.

Right. And he says, well, man, shit, let me look and he gives me a cassette tape to you, young ones out there, a cassette tape back in the day was a way for us to I'm just going to to share music. And I said, OK, I got the cassette tape. I had to go rent a truck from rent from a Hertz rental car because there was no cassette players in the cars. So I popped the cassette tape in and on the tape was, hi, this is Daniel Schorr from the Dinah Shore Show.

We have two very wonderful musicians here today and Mr. Kenny Rogers and Mr. Ray Charles. And you hear the young Ray. You know what? And I'm just so happy to be here. So happy to that, you know, my music. I mean, this is great. And it was the young Ray like, you know, because when I was talking to the older Ray, I don't want to grab those bad old habits. I want to play.

So I hear Ray talk in young on tape, and then all of a sudden he's in charge of the of the interview.

And as you know, he was just doing his thing. And then all of a sudden she says, talk about the drugs. Right. And then he started to stutter. Well, you know. So I use that as DNA to play the iconic character Ray Charles, that when he's talking about his music, he's fully in control when he's confronted with real life things. Why are you doing drugs? Why don't you take care of your family? Why you cheated on your wife?

He would stutter. And I say this long story to say this. After the success of Ray Charles, after being nominated for an Oscar, my grandmother got a chance to witness all of that. She got a chance to see. The bearing of the fruits of her labor for her young kid coming from that racially misunderstood town, which I love and wouldn't change anything in the world when it comes to Terrell, Texas, her saying get across the tracks.

We've now gone across the tracks. We've gone all over the world. And here we are.

And think about think about what's that? What's the odds of a kid who lives in a town population twelve thousand two hundred and forty people? From Terho to go all the way to Los Angeles, California. Meat, puff meat, all these different people, and they actually have an opportunity to win an Oscar and your grandmother gets a chance to see that.

Now, October 23, 2004, she passed away, which, if you know, the actual awards was 2005 in February. But she got a chance to hang in there. And, you know, if I feel it, you know, so it's you know, my grandmother was just like, you know, the blueprint. How do you think of teaching confidence with your own kids? Because you're clearly very confident. My grandmother was very bold, very strong woman.

How do you try to teach that to your kids? What would you do what your kids is like when my daughter is there is the phrase that when you see Analise, my daughter, my oldest daughter, Corinne, I would always ask them what's on the other side of fear.

And they'd be like, huh? So what's on the other side of it?

Meaning like, if I stood in the middle of this floor right now and just yelled, Oh, what's on the other side of it?

Or if I stood in the middle of the floor and what was on the other side of meaning? Like, either you do or you don't. But there's no penalty. There's no reward. It's just you just be yourself.

So I taught them what's on the other side of fear. Nothing. People are nervous for no reason because there's nothing no one's going to come out and slap you, beat you up, and then you're just nervous. So why even have that? And so that's a building block that they can use, not just about the entertainment business, because that's the other thing.

You don't have to be an entertainer, but whatever you go into, whether you be a lawyer or school teacher or tech guy or whatever or girl, whatever it is, there's nothing on the other side of what's on the other side of you.

Nothing. I like it. So it was like, so why are you what when people say, Oh, I'm so nervous, what are you nervous about? Reminds me of this quote that I sort of recite to myself and I'm going to paraphrase it because I have a written down, but it's from Mark Twain and says I'm an old man who's known a great many troubles, most of which never happened.

Yeah, exactly, because all of it is in our head when we talk about fear or lack of being aggressive or this is in your head. So not everybody is going to be super aggressive. But the one thing that you can deal with is a person's fears. So if you start early, if they are a shy person, they just won't be as shy if you keep instilling those things. So the mimicry, the impersonation, how early did that start?

Because I read and and maybe you can tell me if this is off or not, because you never know with the Internet that your 2nd grade teacher used to reward the class.

If they behave by letting you tell jokes. Yeah, they will.

They will let me tell a joke because I will get in trouble. Misery's but I think it was my third grade teacher, Miss Reeves, because I would like to talk, but I was very smart. My grandmother had a school.

I lived in a school.

So I already knew that the the from first to eighth grade, I already knew all of the lesson plan. So, you know, a kid like me sitting there with nothing to do, let me get in trouble.

So she would let me do stand up comedy on Fridays for the kids. And all I would do is my grandmother would watch Johnny Carson in the only room they had the television was my room. So I had to watch Johnny Carson, too, as a kid.

So nine years old, seven, eight, nine years old.

I would just take the jokes that were being told by David Brenner and Steve Allen and a young David Letterman, who else would be on there?

Franklin Ajai, you guys, when you when you hear hearing this, you go Google these guys, a young Jay Leno. These are like sort of like, you know, Richard Pryor. So I would take those jokes and tell them in school because those kids would please tell me you used Richard Pryor on Fridays, like on time.

So right around primetime, you couldn't you can he couldn't really say anything on primetime. He was clean, but like a rich little and Google rich little because Rich Little was the first person that I saw do impersonations.

So there was a there this was this had to be this had to be like 76, 1976.

So like fifth grade for me, the joke was.

Jimmy Carter, which was the president at the time, singing, You Light Up My Life, and at that time his brother was getting caught drunk all the time like Billy. So it was a Jimmy Carter dance.

So many nights, me, my brother Billy, would sit by the window waiting for somebody to bring some peanuts and beer. And so that was my first attempt at an impersonation.

And then it went on from there to do Richard Nixon. I am not a crook.

So, you know, who else would I do? Reagan like him later, but he's a Reagan came later.

But Reagan came like in the 80s when I was actually like 21 and I was the first black guy doing the Reagan impersonation, probably the only one.

So I would be on stage doing my impersonations and going to Ronald Reagan people, you know, I ain't know.

Well, well, as a matter of fact, I will. Oh, no. There you go again.

And so that that being being young and in that teacher, Miss Rasam, is Miss Douthat and all those teachers allowed Miss Cole, allow me to be myself. Oh, you know, help me hone in on what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life, like like literally my friends from Tarago.

Like, how the fuck did you do that? This is a shit you used to do.

You turn to the country and it was literally the same shit.

I'll be like, wow, millions of people are watching this and it's the same the same thing. And then, you know, as people came came up, you know, the impersonation, you know, the Cosby is back in to do. The Cosby impersonation is back. You don't know how I'm going to do it, but there's definitely a Cosby joke somewhere.

I don't know where, but I used to do it because of the people in the jalloh putting in and filth and the plan afan, which Eddie Murphy did. But people didn't know, like Cosby's real speaking voice is not like that was the speaking was like his speaking voice is different because I remember I got in trouble with Mr. Cosby because he felt that the movie Booty Call was not cool.

And he said some things in the press about us. And I was like a young comedian like that. I mean, I'm just trying to work, you know, but but his speaking voice was on the phone. Well, the thing is that when you do something like booty call, what is a booty call? See, why are you calling the, you know, whatever.

But it was so it wasn't that hard. And then you find out that that was a stick. Yeah.

Because it had child people and far. But, you know, so I know that that will.

That will come up. I'll find a joke for for Cosby that, of course, is going to be a little people will be like, oh, but it won't be funny shit. And now who's now Doc Rivers from the Clippers? You know, we're going to try you know, it's not Blake's fault. You know, next year we we got to do better, you know?

So I'm working on, like, the new impersonations now. So that's in the way you do. An impersonation is usually about it's musical like, say, Kermit the Frog. Right. So Kermit the Frog is here. So it's sort of like all you do you hear.

Okay. You know, is fine.

Uh, uh, so, uh, so the actual voice tone is in the key of G for Kermit the Frog and Curly.

Very first, you're here with the Sesame Street. So that and then once you get the voice tone, it's how you make is how you manipulate your your your mouth to get the sound.

Because, you know, it's, uh. So this is sort of constricting and then. And then and then it's and then it's asking the character to come sit with you.

Kermit the Frog. You're here with the three little pigs.

So, you know, but the key is, is and at the same time, Kermit the Frog who.

Well, sounds like that Sammy Davis Jr. a little bit because, you know, man so now Kermit the Frog is is one way.

But if you just twist your voice or twist your mouth to the right and grab some swag.

Now you're Sammy Davis Jr. because, man, you know, it's the same voice, you know.

So that's that's sort of like the mechanical way of of getting to the improv.

So you would start with not the visual, because obviously those people who are listening can't see this, but the mannerisms are also very much on.

Mannerisms are important because like, oh, like I do a LeBron James impersonation, which is really not a a a voice. It's more of his mannerisms, the jaw.

You know, it's to look as though, you know, just go, well, you know, the game of basketball, you know, we just try to, you know, you know, it's that, you know, what's right is right after it's right after playing.

You know, when he comes out after the court, they catch him. We still time, you know, you know, the game of basketball.

We just try to, you know, do the best, you know. So it's that the mannerisms.

So people will appreciate the mannerisms, physicality, the physicality of someone like LeBron, you know, different, you know, like you said, different different personalities bring bring about different things.

When you look back on what what Ray said to you, if you can play the blues, you can do anything.

If you had to translate that for your own kids, let's just say if you can do X fill in the blank, you can do anything.

What would you put in that blank? I would say this. It's it's a couple of things. When you have kids who grow up around Hollywood, if you can stay. Motivated, and if you can not do some things, not be jaded. Not be entitled, not be spoiled, not do drugs, not get into all the bad stuff because it's you know, our kids live in an elevated space.

So what I try to do and Ricardo sees is Ricardo sees us all the time. So it is just we don't play around when it comes to discipline as well.

Like when the kids are here and all of our friends, the size of the house means nothing to if you don't do the right thing. You're going to get a major trouble and you won't get in Texas trouble, you know, and like how my grandmother discipline. So it's a it's a it's a it's a different thing when it comes to kids that are.

Live in a privileged situation. Luckily, my daughters are very, very special.

My oldest daughter, my oldest, never even asked me for money, never asked for a new car, never asked for a plane to ride coach.

I mean, you know, so I think she really, really has.

A great head on her shoulders. I remember I got this Rolls-Royce and I went to go pick my daughter up in the Rolls-Royce thing, and that's going to be, you know, I'll pick her up in the Rolls-Royce, dropped the top drive.

It would have that so. Right. And to pick her up at school. She won't get in the car as a baby, would you?

Don't look at the top comes up. She says that I'm not getting a car.

Calls him. I said, could you come pick me up? So what are you doing? I'm not getting you you goofy. You make mean. You make me look stupid in front of my friends. I say, oh, you know, she's really. And that's something she has on. My youngest daughter is a little different. She wants to ride in the rain in a Rolls-Royce all the time.

Let's take this car. We ride at Sunset Boulevard.

She playing Rihanna, you know, I'm saying with her shades on. So she's a little different in that sense. And I remember telling her, I said, well, least we can't ride around in L.A., in the limo, in a Rolls-Royce at the top down.

You know, we're on our way to the Soho House and it's sort of finicky of that. So I got to at least put the top up.

She's like, why? I said just I said, let me ride until I get to Soho House and then I'll put the top up as we get there. OK, so we ride up in the Soho House, we're in the Valley and all of these, you know, celebs and people coming out and she yells at Jamie Fox and the house.

You don't know. So I'm trying to pull the top down and all of a sudden I look at this motherfucker being arrogant and shit.

He's so godi motherfucker and he's got this kid announcing him.

So so, you know, it's a lot of things you could tell your kids, man, and then you just have to hope for the best.

And be what. What is your birth name, Eric Marlon Bishop. And how did Eric Marlon Bishop become Jamie Fox man?

I was there, Marlon Bishop. Graduated high school, 86. I get out to California and I start doing, you know, I'm in college and doing the music, but I will go up on these open mic nights for comedy. So I go I do really well. Do I get like a standing ovation? And then I came to L.A., got a standing ovation. And then when I came back every week, I wouldn't get called up. I was like, now what?

Why can't what's going on?

But what I noticed then is how does the open mic work as it is?

Would you do if you put your name on a list, put your name on the list and they pick from the list and they say, OK, these people are going up. So I went home, had a great set then for the next three or four weeks, I didn't they never called my name. I said, Yo man. Yeah, yeah, you weren't on the list. You were on the list. But we got other people. But I found out that the comedians were actually running the list.

So the comedians, they have been here for a while. I was like, we don't want him on here because he's showing us up.

So I was like, fuck, so. I ended up going to this evening into improv, the improv like in Santa Monica. And so I had never been there, so I wouldn't notice that a hundred guys would show up, five girls would show up.

The five girls would always get on on the show because they needed to break up the monotony. So I said, hmm, I got some sorrowed down on the list.

All of these unisex names, Stacy Green, Tracy Brown, Jamie Fox. And now the guy chooses from the list he says is Jamie Fox, is she here?

She'll be first as a nominee as me. Oh, OK. All right. Well, you're going to you're the fresh meat. So was it. They were shooting evening at the Improv, this old old comedy show back in the day. Say you'll be the guy that will just throw up to see if you get a laugh or two.

You know, it's going to be a tough crowd, fresh meat, fresh meat as a coup.

So I go up in between two of the guys, get a standing ovation. People like who's the kid you see on the show is always fresh means. And so then they started yelling, my name.

You're Jamie. Yo, Jamie, hey, Jamie. But I'm not used to it, so now I think I'm arrogant. This motherfucker thinks he's the she's not even listening to us.

So I took that name in a stuck. And then I started building everything off of it back in the day, people used to wear jackets and put names on the jacket. So I had Sly as a dot dot dot com into the foxhole. FoxxHole, you know, things like that. Margaretville something. Yeah, sure thing.

OK, we are back after a little food break. Yeah.

And, uh, we talked about some of your comedy starting third grade. Maybe earlier we talked about your grandmother and what are they talk about a little bit more is fear.

So you mentioned on the other side of fear, by the time you got to doing the open mics, getting up on stage, were you nervous?

Were you afraid or are you over it because you you because first I looked at it first like I went to open mic night and saw the guy, like many dudes.

Terrible. And so when you go on stage and your whole life is not, I want to be a comedian. I want to stage, like, yo, I'm just. Fuck around. So if I hear cool, if I miss, I wasn't try to be there anyway, you know, I wanted to do more music, but but when I went on stage, it was just like it was it was just natural, was, you know, I belong here.

So I think that's the thing, too. When it comes to entertainment, there's a certain like, oh, I belong here. This is what I'm supposed to do, how successful I will be or won't be. That's something out of my hands. But I do know that this is where I belong and that's with anything anybody like when you can when you can sort of listen to that voice in your head or what's in your heart, and you get a chance to do something that you really feel like you're supposed to do that alleviates a lot of the fear.

Now, if it was surgeon or a lawyer or something, you know, you know, if something that I'm not, you know, versed in or something like that, maybe there will be more fear.

But with this, you don't have or I don't have those types of fears and that as I've gotten older in the business, I sort of simplify things like now I just execute. I have to ask people like Ricardo, Justin, Justin, what should I execute?

So the fear of a celebrity or an artist now is how do I get my art off in a world where it's the the social media driven sort of ridicule and criticism, criticism, like I always say, like this, like a person like Prince or person like Michael Jackson could have never survived in today's world because in the in the day of the Internet and where everybody has a voice, most of the voices are hateful voices or not understanding.

Like like if you saw Prince with a guitar and a bandana and the way he dressed, you know, people would meme the shit out of it, you know?

So now it's it's not a fear, but it's just a question. And I have to always ask them, like, yo, is this the cool thing to do or not the cool shit to do? And so that's what I learned is when is just executing something, when it's either executing a song or executing a joke or executing things within within entertainment, it's cool.

But then you have to wonder, like, how do you get it off? Like how do you like even now when you talk about the Bill Cosby joke back in the day, we just tell a joke. Now you got to OK, I got to tell the joke in a way that is still funny is still keeps the bite on it. But, you know, so those are the different like for me as an entertainer, where there's nothing fear is just like, you know, questions that makes it make sense.

Now, this makes sense.

The considerations when you when you have you bombed on stage before.

Oh yeah. OK, what's what's two things. What do you use when you are bombing. What is your internal dialogue or response.

And then secondly, the dialogue is both you staying, you bomb, I bomb.

And it went a lot. I only bombed like twice. Do you remember your first year? Yeah, I did this show for this guy named Latimore.

Old blues singer. I'm twenty one. What was his name. Latimore Latimore.

Sounds like Voldemort's. Yeah, a lot of Latimore.

So this guy saw me at another club, said, hey man, you know Lattimore's performing around the corner. Well you're going to open whatever. That's how much you pay. Is it. Fifty dollars. I mean fifty bucks. I need it. So this is like eighty nine ninety. So I get there and I don't know who Lattimore is. I just know it's a lot of older people like I mean like oh my. Oh what a people.

These are people. So I'll go up and the setting was different. It was like the chairs and stuff away and it was like a book banquet sitting in is in the middle of the hood, you know, Crenshaw and like the tables are like from here to where like twenty feet away. Thirty feet away from me. So I don't had it and I.

Oh you didn't have that.

And I hadn't been doing stand up comedy that long. I'd only been doing it like a year. So I had if I'm funny I got an hour, if I'm not funny is about ten minutes worth of shit because I would just take a joke and just keep spinning and spinning it.

So my first joke, they didn't get seconds out, they didn't get us a shit. I'm doing all the jokes.

So I said, well, let me do this before I do anything. Let me just talk about people in the audience. So I looked and I saw this guy with this sort of suit on with a butterfly collar like, oh, shit, I'm gonna talk about him with the butterfly before I could say that I looked around.

Everybody has a butterfly color. This is what they really want to look like. And so I just said, hey, man, you know, I don't know what I shall want. And. Pretty soon, Lattimore is going to come up. You guys ready for Lattimore and I? So do not. I'm going to take a break so I get on stage and to do that was washing the dishes, takes his apron off it goes.

I got it as my high off here. And he started doing these old stock jokes kills. So I said, OK, now I know what it is. You've got to have jokes that are appropriate for your audience. So I learned how to tell jokes for everybody because the first my jokes was geared towards women, it was singing. And so what I started doing from that from that day on, I will go to like Des Moines, Iowa. Davenport, Iowa.

Boise, Idaho was all white. Gunnison, Colorado, all white. And I will go do like 40 minutes an all black material. To see what they understood, what they didn't understand.

So if I go to these all white places and if they understood the 15 minutes I logged their 15 minutes, I can go to any place where there's just all white and and you would determine if they understood it by the laughs you if you would determine if they understood it.

But I would ask you, I know who this is. And so I would tell the joke in 15 minutes, they understood that I can go to any place in the world. It's all white and they get it. Then I go to my chocolate city, Chicago, D.C., Florida, and do all of my political highbrow stuff and see what the see with the black folks.

I would find out my dark. Now, they understood. 15 minutes now got 15 to 30 minutes to 45 minutes to wherever I go, no matter what age they'll understand, no matter what gender, no matter what race, they'll understand this 45 minutes. So I had to learn how to use the formula in order for you to be funny. And then once you got your comedy license, once you've been seen by enough people.

In the highest way, like in the like if you look at a. Like, if you look at the arc of a Kevin Hart, like Kevin Hart takes, that arc takes the same form and I'm not sure how he put it in his in his in his mind, but he's doing the same thing to where he's going to all of these places all over the world implementing his comedy. And if they get it, he's he's gathering all that so that now when people see Kevin Hart, no matter where in the world they're going to laugh, you know, so it's that the you know, becoming a great comedian is also having that formula going on here, because if you if you paint yourself into a corner like you're only the black comedian or you're only the Hispanic community or whatever it is, then it's hard for you to become universal.

I mean, Eddie was Eddie Murphy was great. He had an opportunity to Saturday Night Live to get it to everybody, but it's definitely a formula to not bomb it. So what would you say to yourself? So that's the first bomb you mentioned to.

Yeah. Was the second. Second.

And if it's two, if it's hard to recall that the the follow up question is going to be what is the postgame analysis when you step off the stage after bombing? So the second time.

Well, you got to when I bomb the second time was way later in my career when I'm working out jokes. But I don't like to work out jokes until people are working out. I like to actually do a show, come and do the show. Right.

So when I think it was early, you don't tell people you're working? No, no. I think I think that's cheating. And I think you get bad habits. So I do a show in Irvine, California, for a show I kill. It was just really fun. I'm like, oh, man, everything works.

Second show Bond because I didn't take time to dig out the jokes in it. So but when you bomb, you go like, OK, I let's go, let's check it out. So I got a team of my guys, I say let's go. OK, that didn't work. No, you got to put this in front of that. You can put that behind us because that's going to take this off. People didn't know what that was, so maybe we don't say that.

So, you know, you have to you when you take the bomb, when we take the L, it's not like you're not funny.

What's the L like? You take the loss. Oh, when you take the loss, it's not like you like funny.

It's just like, OK, you just didn't put the shit together. So that's the other thing too.

When you do become funny, it's going to be harder now to make people laugh because you set the bar so high water. Yeah. So so what is the hardest part for Chris Rock was after he had done something great in standup because now you've got to top that. The hardest part for Eddie Murphy, because Eddie wants to come out to stand up is how do I top that in your head? The hardest part is coming for Kevin Hart in the fact that you say you smashed him.

Now you got to you got to, you know, say you've got to know how to you got to know how to refresh.

Because when you do something like like I would look at my stuff and go, I got to quit doing that, because that shtick that I'm doing, people are catching on in L.A., OK, I'm going on every scene. That's it. So that that's the other day.

You're got to have great material and you got to have you got to know you got to know how to move because like, right now is the perfect time for Eddie Murphy to come and understand it because it's been so long. It's nostalgic about 30 years ago. So now you can catch a new young you can still excite the older, you know, sense of being a standup comedian is tough.

And you've seen a lot of funny guys not be funny anymore. Why? Because you can't top what you did. You look at a Jim Carrey go like, OK, man, where you at? Were you at, you know, saying, you know, don't give up the funny or you look at Crysta. I always look at Chris Tucker and be like, motherfucker, were you. Don't, don't don't leave us. Because being a stand up comedian is an interesting thing.

Most stand up comedians want to look good.

In what way, we just want to look and think about this when Eddie Murphy started doing standup. He was funny, but then he started doing you wear the leather shoes and it was a fly set in the ring that they don't want to look good.

Joe Episcopo started working out. But the muscles, you know, say so as a stand up comedy, we got to be careful not to look too good because people struggle for, you know, you ain't cute. Know, we just want to let you know. But when we started, you know, we started getting into our shit.

That's when we look because I did that like like I got to my thing was after in living color, the show called A Little Color, and it did I I felt like I had made it. So I wasn't necessarily on a good looking ship, but I was on I've made a jokes. I went on stage and was doing rich jokes.

Just got that Range Rover. Anybody else. It's crazy out here.

You know, they're so finicky, right. Because they look at me like fucking you talk about and then, you know, square footage of the house man when they get a certain square feet, man, that shit is crazy and maintaining, you know, motherfuckers like motherfucking you know, get off the guy and say, I lost it.

Right. I lost it and I walked off stage and all of a sudden I walk onstage. So give it up for Jamie Foxx and I'm thinking, I'm going crazy.

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm standing outside the club and I hear the crowd going crazy, I'm like, what the fuck are they doing? I guess when I stage. What the fuck are they leaving it? And I open the door and I was a kid, skinny little tank top I barely fit. His name is Chris Tucker. He was smart. He was. No one has been that funny within 15 minutes. I've never seen, I've never seen, and I watch them all.

I've never seen a stand up where people were laughing so hard.

Like I said, he's going to kill somebody. I just like when he says last night, how would I kill Israeli troops if I don't have a fucking heart attack?

And I sat down and I went, I can't do that. I lost it. So I left, went to another club that night, but I wasn't, you know. So finally I went over to Okinawa where the troops were and started doing stand up over there for the troops to sort of get back with my rocky moment, like, you know, I start running up the steps chasing chickens and shit.

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.

Trying to get back and forth. Stand up comedian. That's the one thing you can never let go. You can never stop being excuse me, a certain goofiness to you. And so and like you talk about fear when you talk about bombing it's oh it's different when you, when you, when you've done for a long time, you know, and when you do bomb you just got to get right back up and you've got technology. OK, I stopped me because they're going to let you know it's like today's world.

You can't do nothing in today's world without somebody letting you know. Oh, nigga, you fucked that up, right? Yeah.

Yeah. What are the sources or where do most of your best bits come from when you look back at the stuff that just killed, is it my shower, the thing that bugs you three times.

So you write it down. I mean, how do you develop your material observation?

And like, you know, I do jokes with them, you know, it's just sort of like observation. On. You know, early on, it was the black and white thing, you know, black folks do it this way, white folks do, which was the way we were doing comedy. And in the late 80s and 90s, all the average white man's heart has it. No, it has to do with the heart.

The average white man's heart beats like this or the average black man's heart beats like this.

You know, lady, that's why you have a choice was rather make love to somebody like this.

Would you rather make love something like this?

I mean, that was the jokes. You know, at the time this was observational and then it was personal.

Like, you do your observation first and then it was personal.

My grandmother, who was you know, we lived together, you know, and when she first heard, like on television what age was being old, she didn't know what it exactly meant. She just knew it was bad. But she thought, this is she's always on me anyway, that I'm will catch AIDS.

But it was for the wrong reasons. Like she would say, boy, you know, it's 6:00 in the morning, you're going to wake up. She had half a day to go. I said, Granny, what you mean? Is it safe seat? I'm not sleeping. Anybody sleep that long? Got to have AIDS.

I said, that's a great I don't think they said no. I saw it on TV. You sleep it alone. You got a cigarette?

I don't think that's exactly what I like.

I would use her towels like, you know, you know, you know, old Southern women had them. There was a towel use and it was a nice house. I use a nice time. Well, I know you use my towels so you don't put the AIDS on the towels. I use their bodies. Have anybody use the towel like they got to have AIDS. I said, I don't think that's how you know.

So it was an additional she was actually saying, yeah. So when I did that joke on stage, people was just, you know, would die. So it's observational then it's personal. And then some of the comedians are great politically. I'm not necessarily a political guy. My thing was the impersonation of the politician like Bill Clinton, you know. I did not have sex with anyone, you know, it was, you know, things like that, but, oh, it's so many different ways and so many different guys out there that you that that you look at and go, oh, like when I will look at a young Chris, right.

The way he was a technician, just me or you look at Jay Leno or you look at even Arsenio Hall when he would work out or you see Eddie working on a joke.

You know, it's watch of George Lopez who knows how to tap into the base and just really bring you into his world and stuff. So listen, some some guy that Sarah Silverman.

Just I mean, a technician, Amy Schumer, watching her on just a Saturday Night Live, when she's, you know, working her shit as a young Whoopi Goldberg at the Met, is so many people that you can watch and see how to how to, you know, tap into your own skill set, you know, but I try to look at all of them and try to just, you know, not steal from it, but just get inspired by it all.

Who are some of the most underrated comedians who come to mind?

Are people who you'd think haven't had their due, haven't been.

Oh, I wouldn't say underrated, but I think that would just that was just like warriors. They never got that shine. There was a guy named T.K. Kirkland who was a warrior, but he never got to shine. And T.K. had a colourful past, you know, and he'll let you know. He said, you know, he was he was a crazy motherfucker. But T.K. had jokes like and why does Kermit the Frog always say, hi ho, how is he a pimp?

And why and why do fat people wear leather pants?

Do they think that shit is cute? And why do people in wheelchairs today, motherfucking shoes, do they think they don't trip?

Oh, man. It was just he was just amazing. And his delivery, you know, he's a he says because I'm t to the motherfucking K, that's the type of motherfucker I don't play me play lotto. You got a better chance. And he, he, he played, he, he made, he made, he made himself a character on stage that was just you know, you guys are too young to know this joke, but bugle boy jeans.

Yeah. Bugle Boy Jeans used to have a commercial where a girl would pull up in a car, says, excuse me, are those bugle boy suits.

You say this to a guy like he's walking down the street with his jeans. He says, Excuse me, are those bugle boy jeans you're wearing? White? Yes, they are. And so you get in the car. T.J. had a joke, man. It was so funny. He said, Man, man, let that motherfucker be a motherfucking black girl in the motherfucking car is me. Are those people. What is your word? Yecch. Get in a car, mother.

I mean, people would just go they do has so many like levels and you just you know, he's he's an underground guy. Who else was a lie? I mean, a lot of people earthquake, amazing earthquake is amazing. What's my other dude's name? Tony Roberts. Amazing. Tony Robbins. I've never laughed.

So he says he said, oh, man, I had to dig out some of his jokes. But he talks about his very physical, but he talks about being on a plane and the plane is going down and he says he said he was on a plane and he thought he was going down. So he says, I wanted to fuck everybody before, you know, I want to fuck before. He says while the plane going down, he's hugging everybody.

You know, he fucked, he fucked, he fucked night. And he was looking at everybody in the plane leveled off.

Oh, I'm sorry. My bad.

It's just hilarious.

Smith And there's a there's so many man, so many not a lot of new comedians now that are actually as funny. Right. That are actually dangerous. Now, we don't have dangerous comedians. We only the dangerous comedian that we have right now is Amy Schumer. She's dangerous. In what way? Like like she she'll say it like it'll be hot button. You I me.

Have you have you ever heard I saw this guy on a actually I've heard of him through a guy named Evan Goldberg who's Seth Rogen who's writing and and so Girod.

Exactly. That was good.

Yeah. So Jerrod Carmichael. Oh yeah. His special. Oh my God. I would never make a rape joke. This is more of a rape question and it's like, oh my God, he's dangerous. That's just dangerous. Well, he's dead.

And it's not a lot of that anymore. It's not a lot of dangerous comedians. And I think that's what we sort of go like, you know, where's that danger?

Like when you when you when you see Amy Schumer, you see like I saw her in a room talking about catching a dick in front of Robert De Niro, like with the American of Film Awards, whatever, like that. And she's just I mean. Hakodate, which is what Sarah Silverman started out as, you know, so but Amy looks like she's rounded the corner and is now, you know, really making it, you know, they're going to do it for herself.

If you look back at in Living Color and I watched the show and it just if in retrospect, it seems like such a such magical combination of people. So how did that group get assembled? And I mean, what made that team so special? Because, I mean, you look at the list, right? I mean, you've got Chris Rock, you've got Jim Carrey, you've got the wings, you've got it. Just good. Jennifer Lopez, you got to go down the line.

It's just it's an all star roster. At that time. Keenan Ivory wins was huge.

He put it all together and he was able to grab all of these incredibly talented people and make them get along and figure out how to squeeze all of this talent into 22 minutes of programming, because it was only it was 30 minute shows. It was 22 minutes.

But he was very disciplined in how we make jokes. You were not allowed to come in and be half assed. He pull you to the side and say, as a black comedian, you cannot be half assed, you're either great or you don't exist. So and he says don't take the racial part of it any kind of way. That's just the way it is. Because he wrote for Eddie Murphy, he was around the greats. He says, I'm writing the greatest all the time.

So that's what we're going to do. So when you see Damon Wayans come in and I just got hired like they had already been doing the show for like a year or two years.

So when I saw Damon walking and Jim walking, it was like it was like fucking Jurassic Park fucking it was like fucking T-Rex and fucking, you know.

And the way I got on the show was was crazy, too, because it went from the audition process. It was 100 comedians down to 50, down to 25, down to ten, down to five. I was part of the five, but I was losing.

I wasn't doing well within the improv of it because I just wasn't catching Catcher in the right shit, and then Kenan says something incredible. He said, Well, I did this, but I want to see all on stage doing standup because I want to have stand up comedians. Oh, shit. That's my shit. That's my shit. And the other four people didn't do standup. It was only one of the girl. The distend of God bless if it wasn't with the other three, didn't do standup, so.

Oh, man. So that night everybody's going to the Laugh Factory, which was just starting because at that time the Comedy Store was dominating laugh at it was just and they begged, can we please have the audition in the Laugh Act?

So I show up late on purpose because I wanted to be last smart. So I show up late. And tomorrow, Robert, who was the producer.

Now what are you doing? You're late. Oh my God. Why aren't you here? I was supposed to go. I looked early specifiers. Jamie. Oh my God. You're going to kill me.

I said, oh damn well. Can I can I just go? Yes, you have to because we've already started. Get in here, you whatever. So go ahead.

And now this is interesting for me because I was in white world, I was like on the mainstream. I did all my jokes in the hood at that time.

You know, I'm saying I was the hood guy, so I was like, oh, shit, you know, uptown, you know, I'm saying it's like everything's clean and shit, you know.

I know weed in the air.

And then nobody snuck no drinks in and shit. And it's an audition thing. So I'm watching the guys and, you know, God bless them. They just had never done stand up before. So I had my cassette tape, but I knew what I was coming up to. I'm coming up to heavy D in effect when more bounce to the house. So I get to do my tape. He said, what's this? That's my tape, you know, going to music, you know, up there.

They didn't go on with music. They just want to buy. Handclap has an arm and I got a I got to come in with heavy D in effect with more bounce to the pumps. I need the crowd going. It's okay. Sure.

So he's standing there with tape. And then Sean Williams gave me a great tip. He walked up to, Yo, Jamie, just go up and do your act, man. Just stop worrying about don't worry about the character. This is your at your mall and mall. Come here. Tell Jamie. Just do. Yes. Oh really. Do do my do my act like I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Like you doing it.

I sell straight. Cool. So I go up. They don't play the music I'm waiting on. How are you. Oh you got my music to do.

So I said well I supposed to have some music and I said if this shit goes wrong you actually see me working across the street at the gas station.

And I went into a character man. I was in there with Kenan and all of them, you know, just so I did this little character and I went into my act.

And I got a standing ovation in that. And I remember seeing Jim Carrey and. Kena Playgirls on the field, I thought, Oh, man, is great, and that's how I got on the show during the show I did this character called Wanda. Yeah. Where I said all the good looking ladies clap your hands.

And I said, Now, all the ugly ladies, let me see you make some noise as quiet as I ain't out of business and all the ugly days, I don't pay for it all.

He ain't talking about me. So we did this character. Keenan was like, I want you to do that character on the show, because I think that's where you you you really flourish. And when we did that, when I did that character, that's when everything sort of changed because I was trying to find my bearings on the show because we got on the show. But we were there for a trial basis. But when I did that character, it was like it was like it was like playing football.

And I was like the punt returner. And I was a rookie. And I ran it all the way back the first day. So nobody really knew who I was, but they knew that this character was was was slim. And so they sort of gave me like my stripes because these guys were juggernauts. I watched, I watched Keenan, I saw Keenan, these jokes. And funny is the rights that the writers wrote. He says, get on your feet, everybody get up.

Let's do this. So he was like, there's never a joke. That's not funny. You just got to work and find it. So he taught us the formula, finding the jokes, and he was right every single time. And so, like I said, to be there watching Jim Carrey. Like create pet detective on set, he's writing Pet Detective as well, said, you know, Hey man, just saw, you know, working on some stuff, you know, just got some stuff I'm working on.

So what does that mean? Is it a little thing called pet detective? I said don't sound funny.

And was he developing for the show that much later was on? I got to make one phone number.

All right. So we're back. We took a little took a little breather, but we catch us up.

What we're just talking about, we talk about how nowadays is that you don't get a chance to control your own narrative like we were talking about is there's two different people. Some people think that the tech world and the and social media and things on the Internet is taking us to a great place. And then there's people who think that it's a horrible place.

I had I spoke with a young lady who had been burned bad, bad by the press back to where she lost her job. And what was interesting about her job was that what they were scolding her about was. Like me, knowing her, I was like, you're not like that at all. I can't do everybody think so. And they took something like they went through emails and through a personal emails and also what it was. But it was just like, you're not like that at all.

So when I was on the phone talking with her, she was like, they're saying, listen, I don't worry about it. You're cool. You're not like that. But I had and I'm bowling on my own. I don't even need to read it. What could they possibly say? And when I looked, it was a national story.

I went, what the fuck? She lost her job. Yeah. And so, like, even like you do something where you think that it's. Either you're making fun or you're having fun. Yeah, but they'll take whatever it is that you say. And make it what they wanted to say, yeah, or crafted were like, if you do a joke is not about doing a joke anymore. Jamie Foxx slams Caitlyn Jenner. Jamie Fox trounces like, no, I'm a comedian.

We do. But everything is something that they control. And it is tough because. When I say Justin Bieber, what do you think was the first thing comes to mind? Be honest hair that I'm jealous of. Yeah, but what do you think, boys? Something about a kid who can't get it together. When I say Chris Brown. What do you think? It's something negative when I say Jennifer Aniston. What do you think?

What do you think of the cover of Rolling Stone photograph like Brad Pitt is the cover of Rolling Stone magazine black or white, naked, laying on a bed?

But that's what the average person would think of, not what they do.

Right. But the headline read the subliminal image at the checkout counter. Yes, it's the headline. If I say if I say Jennifer Aniston, you automatically think because nowadays they control we don't control our own narrative to where it's like they talked about this thing with Quentin Tarantino, which I thought was sad, because usually when you see a story about Black Lives Matter or anything black, it's usually the same black folks with the CUFI who's trying to be heard.

And they're absolutely right. There absolutely is so much wrong going in black world. There's black on black crime. Then there's the the divide that is because of social media is that is going on between the police officers and black folk. Police officers are, on the whole a great folk, I know him, I should I know a gang of police officers, but the one or two that have been caught on social media makes it look. Paint the picture.

That it's all of now, granted, we've known for a long time that. Blacks and police officers have always had a divide. We've got music, we've done movies about it, we've done books about it is just is where it is now. My take on it is because I call it residue. It's slave residue, meaning slavery. For 300 years, you saw a person of color a certain way. For 300 years, you've always saw him as a slave or the criminal or something that you didn't value.

So therefore, coming out of that, of course, is going to be a divide when it comes to police and when it comes to blacks and when it comes, that's always been that way. So take that off the table. Right. But in today's world of how do we bridge that gap? I've gone to Quantico and Virginia saw what it was a police officer sees. I've talked to police officers. How can we bridge the gap?

I've suggested that you go get a white police officer who you think might not like black folk, you know, then get that person to go into the hood and throw a picnic for a kid is eight, 19 years old, who's African-American so that he can see another another side, another side of the police officer. Because right now, social media or media period, the stories that are the most salacious, whether it's the black person, the the black cop being the black guy being killed by a cop, it's hard to erase those images.

I'm a black man when I see that. I have to react to that because I'm like, wow, you know, that troubles me. But then I have to sit down and think, OK, let me not think of the worst thing to say, but let me think because I know how media tries to make things or heighten it. Right. How do I bring people together in spite of the headline? Because what people don't understand is that when you keep showing the images of the black guy being killed by the cop, that does something to you that's like whatever you believe in.

If if it was a Jewish person, if it was a gay person, you cannot sit and not be bothered by that. At the same time, that cop, when he sees the other side of it, when they're saying all you guys and shit, which that's not what's really being said. Most of the time is with the individual cop. Now the cop sees the story in his mind that will fuck with the problem there. So now imagine that cop who's watching the story drive on the street, the young black kid who's watching the store walking on the street.

What happens? Dynamite. Dynamite. Because we can't get it, we can't we can't get anybody responsible on the media side to say, let's stop interviewing people and putting labels on this interview, this man and this woman. But don't say that the Democrat don't say that they're Republican. Don't say that they're cops. Just have them talk. Because when you see when you're watching TV and you see something that you agree with, you agree with them.

Only you can hear the other person as the first thing, too. Like when I look at Quentin Tarantino, to demonize this guy can just because people might be listening to this for years.

Can you catch people up on the confused Quentin Tarantino?

Who is a purist? When it comes to his opinions and his emotions, even if even if you could go, I could go to Quentin Tarantino and say something, I think, you know, as a black person, as long as he's able will stop doing that, stop hanging it just on black, hanging on things that are substance first and then let it be. I mean, so I've heard this guy speak when there's no cameras. I said, well, you know what?

You make a lot of sense. So Quentin Tarantino sees the Black Lives Matter campaign, sees the individual stories, 40 different people of individual stories where a police officer had killed the person who was unarmed.

It touched him. The reason I thought that was impactful because you seldom see the white superstar go and stand. With the black folk. Who just trying to be heard. Even high in black guys don't go stand with the black folks are trying to be heard when it comes to like especially Hollywood, because, you know, people in Hollywood are so scared.

Oh, oh, they won't see my movie. They won't go see my song. If I stand if I stand up for anything of substance, they are so fucking scared.

So when I saw this dude do that, I was like, wow, this great. But then the misinterpretation of his words where he says, I'm standing here with the murdered Quentin Tarantino, speaks that way. He speaks if you read any of his movies are signing this movie. He speaks in those terms. He says, I stand with the murdered. When I see someone being murdered, I call it what it is. It's a murder. That's a murderer that killed is this person.

However, the story got spun was that. Quentin Tarantino is a cop hater. He hates all cops and all cops of murderous. And I was like, oh, here we go again, man. Here's a person who's willing. And I must be willing to put aside his white cushy Hollywood a. he could live in his own his mountain. And never give a shit about anything. He came as a man, I fell some. And now they paint it so bad and now you got you got the New York cop, so we got so far is that now it's a beef?

No, it's that's not what we were trying to do. But you can't do anything right now because the media story, if it's not salacious. We don't want to report it. We need your films. You know, I do. And it's it's I mean, if it bleeds, it leads, right.

So they put the salacious the visually viscerally impactful stuff up front because it gets the clicks or the purchases, the advertising, the the the only, I suppose, flip side to that. And I have a very specific question for you, that from a fan I'd love to ask related to some some of these raised questions. But the good news is, if you can look at it in these terms, is that the necessity for new is so high that if you starve a story of oxygen, it'll often die on its own because they can't regurgitate the same thing if there's no response.

Exactly. And so you can let it kind of die on the vine. But we were talking about this before. I mean, I've had instances and I won't bitch and moan too long because I think the question is more interesting than my bitching.

But I've had instances where these these formerly, I would say, outlets of record, you know, very prestigious outlets, magazines.

I'm not going to mention them by name because I know what you talk about. But I was interviewed and profiled by magazine at one point, very, very highbrow magazine.

There were six or seven misquotes or erroneous facts in the piece. And I corrected those with the fact checker and went to press with no corrections. What do you do in that situation when those things then end up in Wikipedia? So you have to develop a sort of strategy. And I mean, this will get even more interesting once we have, you know, smart stadiums, once we have facial recognition like you see on Facebook, once that's implemented across the board, it will get very interesting.

But I'm going to go down that rabbit hole and instead I'm going to bring up a question that I'd love to get before you go into that.

Yes, here's the problem back in the day. If there was a misquote. And you went to that entity and said, hey, you quoted me, oh, we'll release a statement saying that we misquoted you and it raises the problem with today's world. Once it's out there, you can't get it back. You cannot change. You cannot change. Yeah, because it's going to stay there. When you when I punch up your name, that's the first thing that's going to come up.

Or the second thing is you can't get rid of it. Yeah. And when you talk about the regurgitation or the or the or just letting it die, you could let it die.

But the problem is you have to at least once it starts, give another hopefully that you can give another side of it that people may see a little bit where they don't want to see what's crazy about our society right now. No one wants to see anybody reconcile. No one wants to see anybody come together or say that. Like, when I when I think about Quentin Tarantino, I spoke and said I back you as a friend and he keeps speaking the truth.

And don't worry about the haters, meaning speak the truth from you.

Not whatever the comment was, right, but whatever you're saying in your truth, right, you say that because you ain't out there, you could be promoting your movie, you could be trying to make money. You actually trying to see how you could how you could go. I know the way he thinks. I'm a go talk to them if they are wrong and what they're saying, I'm going to tell them. But if they all resist, I'll be the one that can go to the cops and say to and now look, look at how it is, it's so good, Esquith.

Oh, no. I mean, it's I think you're right. I think that people want gladiatorial games and we don't have gladiatorial games. So these are the front page. Oh that's really nice.

But but speaking of conflict resolution, so this is this is a question from a fan, T.J. My wife is pregnant. We're moving to a very non diverse neighborhood. We are kind of worried on how it will go. She is black and I'm white. What is some advice he can give to a young couple raising a child of color in today's world?

I'll say this. I say to I'll say this about America. Let's use America as an example to me, America is the most incredible civilization that has ever been created. Hundreds of years from now, people will look on this, look at this place and marvel there's the bitch and complain I'll wear everybody bitches complains about every single thing. But the one thing about America that is incredible is the evolution of freedom. The change when I talk about slavery that happened, it was 300 years of it.

Look at the evolution. We come out of it. We have a black president, people. More welcoming now. Oh, we used to live in a world not too long ago where it's frowned upon, it was tough. It was just what I would say to people like that, just live your life like I live my life in places where at times it was definitely racial misunderstanding. But I would talk to the person. I would make sure that person understood who I was as a person.

I'm not going to compromise who I am as far as a black man, but I'm also going to give you another another version of it, not the version that you necessarily see on television, the version that you see on the Internet.

I'm going to give you me. And most of the time we are alike in so many different and so many instances. So when he's saying moving to that non diverse place, it's different, man.

Look at it. Look, I hate to say this.

This is a kid's problem, but when you talk about the kids, the kids today I'm at the gym last night, 24 hour fitness. The kid is playing future white kid. Where you ask that when I was a kid, when I first moved into my neighborhood years ago and I felt like I made a home in the white neighborhood, now I'm here.

Oh, so I've made it.

And I hear NWA blasted. Look at those. These kids were 16 years old. So times are changing, man.

And you have to start giving people the benefit of the doubt that they'll get it right.

And for all those people that were here back in the old days and that are now 50 and 60 and 70 years old, that's dying out. The way of thinking is dying out.

You may be looking in a situation where you may have the first female president. It's the evolution of the evolution of freedom. Think about how we treated women at one point. No voice, no rights, no nothing. I've heard people say I'd rather have a black person tell me something to do than a woman any day. But now it's. Is that so?

We are. On the right path, men love who you want to love, be where you want to be because we are evolving. Look, look, look at the steps that the that gay rights took in the past few years meant that there was this huge when you were you talking about people in the Bible Belt and you know how they felt. So if. If those things are now. Like my daughter taught me, like when she was 13, she's 21 now, she was 13 and that was this this was nine years ago and it was talking about gay rights and things like that.

And in and I asked her friend, I said, what do you think about it? That we don't think about it. I said, that's that's you guys. That's a good answer. She says, You guys, that's old people.

She said, That's why we turn off from religion sometimes. That's why we turned off from all of these different things, because old people argue about where you from, what you do, what you look like. We don't give a shit.

And so thank God for the youth. Thank God for that couple, because what they're doing is they're showing a new world. And she said, Dad, if someone was doing something somewhere that was straight, gay, black, white or brown somewhere else, does it affect you at all?

Does your air change? Does anything around you change because the people who live in the way they want to live, as long as they're not breaking the laws? You know what? You make great points. She went on my radio show and talked about it. So, oh, we are in a new day. What we got to do, though, is we got to stop. I said like I was telling Justin, I said we got to make shirts and say, let's put let's put media out of business.

We got to quit allowing them to control the narrative. Those people, like with Quentin Tarantino or the Black Lives Matter or people that speak up on something that is broken or that is wrong. You don't give them a chance by painting them in a in a bad situation.

Are you going to do another comedy tour? Yes, another comedy tour. I'm going to start it organically, like maybe 100 people, 200 people started organically and just sort of grow it. I got some great jokes. And that's the thing. Like when you when you when you're a comedian, it's like you have to pray that the jokes are open up.

So I got some great, like jokes that people will get and understand. And then just the stuff that's been going on with me, you know, you know, getting older, you know, not realizing you to Oggi, you know, saying like, you know, the young like the young hip hop guy. What's up, Oji? And it's right. You know, I mean, just just it's just some funny stuff. It's some funny stuff.

And that's what any comedian would tell you, that it's hard to be funny when there's nothing funny happening. But there's been so much funny shit happening for, like, my mom, who, you know, adopted who who gave me up for adoption in seven months. And she comes back to live with me and she's living with me. She walks down the first day she's here. She walks down the steps and says, I want to Fantham.

I'm like, bitch of the opera. What are you talking about? She's talking about a phantom, a Rolls-Royce.

Right. And it was just funny to just certain things that. The fact that everybody lives in my house, the fact that my mom, my dad lives here, my two sisters, my dad still dates, you know, and my mom is going on his side of the house when she when he has a date, you know, just assessing, like just being in a way that, you know, hey, I didn't know you had company, Joe.

I mean, just and that a ton they've turned in the kids. So, you know my dad to come to my room. Could you tell her not to come on my side of the house when I got a date and I'm like now parents. So, you know, it's funny. Things are happening. Lots of organic material. Yes. It was organic then. So we got for.

When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why on the bigger picture?

Because I witnessed this in 2008. To see President Obama. Become president to me. 2008, I'm not talking about after he became president, because everyone will have the views on that, I know what it meant to me to see him stand up there, put his hand on the Bible and say, you know, become the president of the United States. That is success in so many different ways.

And it also it jars you. For every person who says, oh, man, just because I'm black, I'm. Maybe you can't use that all the time because this man now shows you. And what ever side you in the park is not a political thing to see that. And the reason that it means so much to me to see an African-American man like do that, like in literally when when when when he was this was interesting is how we connected when he was 30 points down for the nomination, 30 points down.

No one knew who he was. I get a call from Oprah Winfrey. Hi, Jamie Fox. It's Oprah. Hi, Jamie. I'm like, what's going on? There's this guy named Senator Obama. I think he's going to be the next president.

Then I got a call from Norman Lear. Jamie, it's Norman Lear. The Senate is on fire. So who is Senator Obama?

But he's 30 points down, so no one knows the reason they're calling me because we have a radio show that was reaching everybody, especially the huge urban market.

So I go on my show and I say, I'm voting for this guy name Senator Obama because he's black.

And I go to commercial. When I go to commercial, my phone lines light up with all black people saying that we will not vote for this guy just because he's black. Don't treat us that way.

So we ended up educating everybody about him, he's the nomination and he goes on and he wins. And to me, it was all odds against him. And I thought that that that type of success, regardless of where you come from, like I said, whatever side you stand on, to me, that was something monumental. When we talk about where this country has come from, when you talk about the greatness of America evolving and evolving to that type of freedom and him taking advantage of being in America and becoming a president, to me, that's just success that that he redefined what it is.

What historical figure do you must identify with?

Who do identify with historically when it comes to entertainment? Sammy Davis Jr. is a person and I look at all the time who I go on the Internet and watch him play the drums or watch him seeing I watch him dance or watch him do jokes or watch him do a movie or watch him spin guns. To me, he was just the ultimate in a. He was a full stack entertainer, as one engineer said. That's what's really called you know, you kind of you had all the tools in the toolkit.

Oh, man, that's great.

And then there's this other side of me, too.

So like the sports side, like I was the Magic Johnson, like, you know, the person who was who loved being competitive but also want to get everybody else involved. And, you know, the way he played basketball when it comes to social consciousness may interject for a second. Yeah. So this might seem like a funny question, but do you feel like you identify more with Magic Johnson than Kareem Abdul Jabbar?

Yeah, the reason I feel more than Kareem Abdul Jabbar is because Magic smiled and it was fun.

He was happy, you know, not to say to Kareem Kareem was more serious, got very serious, never met him.

He's completely serious. I'm more fun.

Do this, have a good time. And you know, when it comes to social consciousness and social issues, that's where I draw from a lot of different people.

I think going I think watching Martin Luther King and going to Atlanta and seeing what he did and how he did when he did it, when I look at. The bravery of him. It's beyond because I look at social issues today how we're so afraid to step out on anything like, oh, oh my, my, my car's in my mouth and my money.

And not to say that I've thought this way all my life, like literally like it just happened not too long ago where I was like, we got to we've got to step up more, more socially. We've got to be on social calm, even if even if some of the people say, oh, fuck it, I'm to go to your movie. OK, fine. You were going to go anyway, but we had to step up a little bit more social socializing when I went to see where Martin Luther King came from, what he did and how his house was.

He actually came from middle class, big, nice house. But it's right across the street from poor, from poverty. And it's sort of taught him how to deal with other cultures, taught him how to deal with other financial groups. He says, I don't want to see people hurt. And he says, I want everybody, you know. So I think like that I've always thought like, oh, even when we talked about earlier, the Jews and the Palestinians in the in the student center, you know, the rest of the story was I have a friend of both of them and we all became friends because I call myself spackle, which is the stuff that goes in between the cracks.

Yeah, I'm spackle.

I get along with all religions, get along with all people and try to bring them all together. And so that was the so when I think about it socially, it is the Martin Luther King thing, because I think sometimes we overlook that the world is big enough for all of us to live on. It's big enough for all of us to to to get along.

And sometimes I question why is it so tough to get along, you know, which is what Martin Luther King causes. I just don't I don't get it. And I and I won't stand by. So a little.

And like I said, I've only thought about like that, you know, here in the past few years after watching Harry Belafonte go on stage before I was supposed to get a lifetime achievement award. And he goes on and says something so prolific, he says they were talking about violence and he said the violence that's happening in America is mostly black violence. And you black entertainers sit here mute. And we laid all of this groundwork down for you guys.

And you guys are disrespected and not picking up. So, you know, that's the one reason I said I think more socially that I mentioned Kernersville Jabbar, because I saw just by chance a fantastic documentary called Minority of One.

Yeah. And it's so good. And it detailed in particular, I'm not I'm not at all well versed with basketball.

So it was also a glimpse into that world for me. But his relationship with Magic Johnson is just fascinating. Do you have any particular favorite documentaries or movies that you just feel are must watch? As for human beings?

And it's a big question. That's that's why I think documentaries. On cultures are important if you get a chance to see it in any documentary about Jews, what they went through. Watch it to any documentary documentary about Palestinians and what they've gone to, what blacks, what they've done to white women and what they've gone to watch it. The reason that I say it is because. If we're talking about the human aspect of it. Like, I didn't get it until I watched it was actually the pianist.

Yeah, and I just want to shit. I know it was like that, you know, I didn't know that. And so, you know, and then when I listen to some of my friends who, like, you know, live in the Middle East and they're going through those houses. Shit, I didn't know it was like that. So I think any time you get a watch, get a chance to watch people and where they come from, our culture and what they went through, or you could even look at it, why it's breaking away from that.

I mean, the 13 colonies breaking away from England, you go, oh, shit, I don't know, you wouldn't do that.

So it's like when you do that, you come away with a sense of, OK, I get you now. Right. Helps build your compassion. Yeah.

It helps build your compassion because you you only live in your own world, you know, saying and unless you get a chance to see what it is, a lot of times your views will be will be narrow. And just watching documents, memories like that to open up your views are just amazing when you look at when you look at the story of of, like I said, the story of slavery. There was a book that I just showed these young guys called Without Sanctuary, Without Sanctuary, where it's a book where a guy, a photographer went around in the South during the times of slavery and documented lynchings and he would document the lynching.

And take and make postcards, because at that time, see, we go youth, but at that time it was commonplace.

Yeah, it was a party so people will get their food is we got a picnic from there. We get the food, drinks or whatever, then go down and watch the lynching. And so there was a postcard saying, here's the lynching of nigger Charlie. I hope you like it. Hope everything. Well, so that was something that was mind blowing because it was commonplace, you know. So when you get it, like I said, when you get a chance to see cultures and history, you understand what's going on today.

And this is the last little factoid you get a chance to pull up to. Harrison at the Harrison Act was an act about taking drugs off the street and making them illegal, because at a time in our culture, we were able to, you know, use whatever drugs it was out there was available. But the government sort of didn't know how to get it off the street. So they ran a story. Black man gets high on cocaine and fights cops.

And he was like, so we got to get rid of drugs, people like, fuck that, get rid of drugs, get bigger guns, give cops more jurisdiction. Finally, they run a story, a black man gets high on cocaine, rapes and kills a Caucasian woman. That's when the Harrison act, because what we don't want that, but because of that Harrison act with the jurisdiction of a cop. That plays into a little bit of what we're dealing with today, because it was sort of set that way at a time where it was commonplace to see slaves, it was commonplace to see blacks as second or third class citizens.

So and it's not to incite anything. It's not to make you feel anything angry. It's just a it's just a peering into someone's genesis to see where we are today so that you can understand to or try to have the compassion for all of all of us who live here in this country, because, like I said, it's it's the best in the world and beyond.

I remember friend mentioned to me I was watching planet Earth and he said there's a companion of some type which I really want to see called I think it's humans of Earth. And it actually profiles different civilizations, different cultures around the world and shows you have humans have adapted, you know, Mongolians using Falcons for hunting and all of this and whatnot. But the yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that, you know, if a culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors, you have to, in a way, be taken on that sensory experience to develop the compassion.

You don't get it through text alone necessarily.

If you could have a billboard anywhere, what would it say?

Uh. It will constantly change. It would be those new sneaky answer. I like it. The bill was in Fallout Dog.

Have a great time. Go to church, love somebody, teach somebody. Get angry a little bit. It would just change, you know, because, you know, these guys know me, I'm all about having it. And at the end of the last one, we have as much fun as you can because in a blink of an eye. I'll be gone 100 years compared to infinity is nothing. I'll talk to my sister all the time. Why she bled to me.

What's wrong? You better you better start having fun.

We're going to be gone in a minute. You don't look back so much. Shit. I should have been laughing and now I'm dead.

So, yeah, my Bilboa would change because I think we all change.

So you said get angry a little bit. And I remember I was given this advice by a guy named Po Bronson, a writer, many, many years ago, asked him at an event. I was sitting in the crowd and I said, what do you do when you get writer's block? And he said, I write about what makes me angry. And if you if you were teaching a ninth grade class, you mixed race, mixed gender, what would you what would you teach that class about?

Like, what would what would you teach?

What do you think the most important things, skills or otherwise, that you could teach ninth graders might be?

Well, like I said, it would have to be different. Tiered. Yeah. If it's a ninth grader of today. I would teach him as much as you can interact with actual humans, you know, the toughest thing in the world is like looking at my daughter and we're in Paris and the young generation thumbs. Yeah, they're on there. They're on their. They're on their cell phones, so I said as much as you can interact with people because people.

It's the best interaction because there's all types and there's discretion when it comes to people like there's no discretion when it comes to thumbs and what you can say on the Internet. And that's why you get dragged down by it, because it doesn't take anything. If they're if it's an anonymous person and they say you're ugly and you're this and you're that and you just there's no discretion in. So they can sort of get the venom off, I said when you're.

If if we're in a surrounding and I may feel something about something, but I want to say because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings, I don't want to have to hurt my feelings. So that's the one thing interact with people. The second thing is. Interact with people from all over the world because you become narrow when you're just all about my block and just being about your blog. In today's world is going to hurt us because people don't understand global we don't understand global market, we don't understand global things.

How does something in the Middle East affect me in North Dakota because of the way we're set up like this? So it's like you have to get the education out bypass?

Well, no, I wouldn't get the education of people all the way in the last last couple of things be history, no history, no why we're why we're here, why this special when it comes to ta ta rules and legislation and things.

They know why. Oh, why we vote, why we don't vote. If you think about it, this wonderful country runs on just like a human brain. We only use a little bit of it when it comes to the voting market.

You've got to vote, get out there and be active in a lot of times we just hey man, whoever's president is the president and whoever this is. So, so there. And then on the last part that our teachers. Less two things hustle, teach, teacher hustle, you hustle, muscle is a hustle, muscle is the most important thing when you hustle and then you go get it. A lot of times that alleviates your problems when you don't hustle or you leave it to chance when you leave things to chance and you didn't give it all that day.

Now you start to argue a wonder about paying bills.

Fuck, I've got to get that done. All my relationships, I did it. But if you hustle for one, it's going to take up a lot more of your time so you don't have time to concentrate on just the worrying, the worrying.

If I put the work in, I got my check, I put it in. Your checking doesn't have to be monetary. It could be anything. It could be. I put the work in at the charity and this happened because of the chair. But whatever it is, put that hard work in. You could see things coming to fruition in that takes not 70 percent of your work in a way, because you did give it your all and then the last part of it is reflect, sit still for a minute, because when you wake up one morning when I got a cigarette, that will strain you as well.

So you got to be able to decompress. You just got to be able to chill, whatever it is that you chill if it's your home is your friends. What do I take time out to be like? You know what? I I think if if. If it's out of my hands, it's out of my hands, I'll get a better crack at it tomorrow. Colin Powell says something incredible. He said, I always feel like in the morning I got a brand new chair and I'm paraphrasing in the morning.

He said, I love getting in to the morning because it's a new opportunity. But really take the time for yourself, you know, relax, chill, whatever it is you believe in.

It is God, Buddha, Allah, Hindu, all of them, whatever it is to get you on on on that, OK? You know, I did what I supposed to do. Let me relax now and then tomorrow, the next day I get another no matter what is.

What is the first 60 minutes of your day look like or what give morning routines that are important to your routines.

I wake up, I, I text the people that I didn't love. When you say. I just sent them encouraging, like, you know, there's a few, you know. People are just, you know, really mean a lot to me, want to let them know I'm thinking about them all night and then, uh, it varies.

Sometimes I'd be like, OK, I'll put some work in, so I'll put in eight days. So maybe these two days I could to get a little attitude just on the physical part. I get my I get my 50 pull ups, the 100 sit ups, you know, maybe 100, maybe 100 crunches. And it's easy. I used to not be able to do it. My boy Tyran, how many sets for the 50 pull for the 50 do 15 first 15 pull ups.

This is what I do, 15 pullups, 50 push ups, 200 sit ups. Then I go back and I do 15 different grip. Yeah. So that'll get me to 30, another 50 pushups. That gives me 100 push ups. I'm done with the push ups and then I do ten and ten back to the to the first grip and you don't have to do it every single day. You could do it every other day. And then what you notice is the pull up bar.

And Tiran kept telling me this, well I got a home guitar and he played Cain in mini society. And he I wonder, wondering how is he always in shape?

He says, man, I'm trying to tell you to pull up bars every day so so that, you know, and then just you don't make the calls. And what I need to get done and make sure I'm, you know, in the right, you know, position and you drink coffee. The kid. I don't drink coffee. I don't drink coffee. Is have you have you stopped? You stopped. I had to stop having stimulants. That's the same as you and me earlier in my career.

I was I was all about the stimulus.

So at a certain point I had to ixnay on that.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, yeah. I've been I've been cutting that out as well. It's not good for me. People are like, aren't you worried about depressants, alcohol. Like, no, no, no, no stimulants. That's what I mean. Yeah.

Because what I tell people time to drink coffee after a while you keep you keep hitting that same muscle, you know, in your brain to where you I know people right now who could drink four cups of coffee and go to sleep.

Yeah. I used to be that person. Yeah. And so is like in one of my boys loves what is the Red Bull. Red Bull. And he won't understand why some days he'll just be like this. Yeah. So I had to stop and it was tough because I had to have coffee every day and I drank like double espressos, you know, I was like I had to have the up. Yeah. But now I know how to go get it inside of my you know, I know how to go get inside.

Last last question here is, I mean, ask what advice you would give to yourself. Three different ages, 20, 30 and 40. So what advice would you give to your 20 year old self?

Man put the Carnamah said stop playing around. Important advice. Twenty man put that on, buddy. Not the fishnet one easy but the real.

Well, OK. Uh, anything else for twenty or should we move to thirty.

Twenty twenties. I have my daughter, 26. So the advice I would give me was like. Calm down. You know, it was like calm down and just, you know. Make sure you're paying attention. To your daughter and to the daughter's mom, 20s was tough because I just got to L.A., I was just, you know, man, the whole world was opening up. So I'm like, man, I'm you know, I'm trying to do all of it.

And I was like, calm down. And luckily, it was 26. So moving into 30, I was on my way to coming. If that makes it does make sense. So then you hit 30, 30. What advice would you give your 30 year old self?

It's going to go fast. In what way? It's going to go fast. The time is going to go fast. So just make sure that you. You start now planning. For your future and not only is going to go fast, but. Don't spend all your money. Don't buy the the the jackets, 12000 hours, you know, relax, you know, just just to relax because it is good and 40 is going to come so fast.

And you don't think that it is what is going to come so fast.

And would you say that because you would want your 30 year old self to pay attention to the present moment or do long term thinking long term, when you're 30, you've got a kid and you're in my business and in any business, all businesses are going to especially when when you when when you make. My business is about me, though, so I have to be careful in my decisions socially and in planning for the future. It's not going to be.

I remember. I do my television show and it went five years and fast, and I would tell the people on my television show it's going to go fast, man, and if you finish it, 35, but you live to 70. You know, so you have to really think about the future, the long game, yeah. And then 40 before zero.

Wow. Forty there, they're going to be tough decisions that you have to make when it comes to business, because in your 40, when you're 40, in my business, the window was closing on certain things. So you have to be able to open those windows to other things. In some of the people that you've gone to to battle with till you're 40 may not be the ones that you will battle and do business with towards 50 and take a little bit of your personal feelings out of it, because I'm very personal, meaning like I would stay with someone even if I feel that they're not up to par business wise.

But, you know, we have history. Take a little bit of the personal out of it. Still remain friends if you came with that person, because now it's really pending like 50 about to be here, you know, saying so it's like, you know, and I would tell my 40 year old self, grow up in your mind, but not in your body necessarily, meaning stay young in your body, but certain parts of your life, you have to grow up and be be grown about things because now you've got another kid.

Your other child is, you know, 20. She's 21 now, which is just, you know, this past year or so. But she was, you know. 13, 14, when I was 40, but now you got to start living, you could always live your life 100 percent for you, but now that you have your kids in a certain age, it's got to be. 30 to 40 percent you. To seven percent, what you're going to leave for them and how you're going to leave them, because like I said, it's is fly and that's it.

Jamie, so much fun. I really appreciate taking the time. And where can people find what you're up to find you online learn from yet?

I am Jamie FACT's. I'm a periscope. Am I right? Am I saying this right? You know, I got these young kids telling me and then I'm Jamie Fox and Twitter also. I'm Jamie Fox. That's what I'm doing better on Twitter. I'm trying to do better.

And Twitter.

And the old fella on the latest album, the latest album is called Hollywood Story of a Dozen Roses. This I don't care how you get it, you can download it, bootleg it, steal it from a friend. I don't care. I just want you to I just want you to hear the music. The song is out right now as I'm supposed to be in love by now.

I'm supposed to be in love by now. It's been so long for me, I don't know how. Been drowning in the sea of broken bones. But I'm supposed to be in love. I've been chasing my dream, now I'm chasing you, running half on my legs, feel weak out and played every part. I don't play the fool but the movie, I believe I'm supposed to be an Lobello. Well, girl, you stole my heart take about.

In love, but not so much, you get that in love, but now that it's a song my daughter made me.

She sort of made me do she's like, listen, start with the club stuff, start with it as my oldest daughter is like 40, so start with the club joints, stop you trying to be too young, like even she'd even like I had on some shoes one day that she thought was just I had too young of a shoe.

She's like, Dad, what is that on your feet as I wish you didn't stab DFS.

You know, it's not that I had a zipper on a buckle in my name and grade and she's like, stop it. And she said, Dad, you have all feet as it was in me. You have all felt like you have your feet for marching like a civil rights, a civil right.

So she said, do a song that we know that is from you in in its shoes. And I'm supposed to be in love by now. And so, so that and jumping out of the window. Uh. And we just shot the in by now video with George Lopez is the priest, I guess, stood up at the altar. George Lopez is the priest, Nicole Scherzinger, and we all know her from the Pussycat Dolls, but also her solo career and everything.

She plays my love interest, which is great because she's a good friend. And so we were able to, like, really get into some like, you know, they don't do old school videos anymore. Like this actually has a bit of a story. My main tank is in it and in all of my friends, my daughter's in it, my little daughter is in it, and my mom and dad is in it.

And, you know, so it's it's kind of cool. I was jamming to babies and love. Yeah. That's the type of music I chose to perform when I'm headed somewhere to. Right.

Sit down, do some creative work in my Babila solid answer. I think Justin Bieber will do that song for us and we were lucky enough to get it. But a baby in love kidding is on there. So, you know, got some good stuff going.

And then later on, sleepless nights will be out at some point and then we'll start work on the Mike Tyson bio and and that's it. And then the stand up comedy is coming because like I said, I got a lot of stuff that, you know, I got to get off, get off my chest. I can't. That's it.

Since you brought up Mike. Well, what would Mike say if he were here right now?

Well. I'm going to say it like this, because now that I'm about to do the movie, to do the Mike Tyson impersonation. Would be a little disservice. What I would say is, is that I met Mike when I was 21 years old. I went on stage and I was doing my joke and I was getting my Mike Tyson joke and I went into it and no one laughed because Mike was in on a guy who was in the audience with Mike.

I said, Yo, Mike is in here, motherfucker. I was like, Oh, man. The black girls in the front was like, What are you going to do, Jaime? Are you going to tell your jokes you're scared of Mike Tyson is what Mike Tyson will not get people out for nothing. I did.

And then the guy yells out, Mike said, do the joke and that shit better be funny. And I was like, oh, shit. So I do. The joke is a standing ovation. I come off stage and Mike goes, There he is. I want to talk to you. So funny. Come, come hang out with me. You're funny, motherfucker. Come on, get in the car with me and we take off. And I started hanging out with Mike Tyson at 21 years old.

It was the most incredible thing in the world. Mike was bigger than Michael Jackson at that time. He was just he was the biggest person, biggest star in the world. Mike would be in a club. See you girls say hi. How are you? Like BMW, like, huh? Do you like being, like, hot? Yeah. He would go open up the BMW dealership. They he'll buy a car for a girl. That's how dope you are.

And then all his boys will go to all the different cities and pick up the cars that he bought for girls. They y'all come on, get the keys back. You know, he's playing. So it was great to see.

It was great to see him during that time and it was tough to see him when he went to what he went through. And then when we finally decided to do this movie, this is the Mike Tyson I think people really be able to grasp is that when we show Mike Tyson older and I call Mike and I said, Mike, how are you? I'm afraid this to allow my brother I'm happy. How are you?

So I'm good, man, you know. So what's going on with that? I'm just happy. I'm happy because I don't have any money anymore. So I'm happy. So I was I mean, you know, it's just for all the vultures that were around me the whole time, it was always after my money. So I don't have any money. So nobody wants anything from me. So I'm just so happy. And if you notice his speaking voice, like what I told you with Bill Cosby, it's completely different from when he's on stage, when he's getting ready to fight.

So he was like I was just so happy. And I could tell I said, Mike, that's the person we need to tell. That's the story. We always see the person who rises to the mountaintop, but we don't see the other side of the mountain and all the jagged edges and all the things and and you're about to slip off of that mountain. So Terry Winter, who wrote, you know, Wolf of Wall Street, Boardwalk Empire and Martin Scorsese, who's going to direct it, who hasn't directed a film about boxing since Raging Bull.

So fingers crossed, if it all goes together, we'll be able to see Mike Tyson in a different way and we'll be able to transform to where I want to be. So good that is Mike Tyson that I look so much like a man when I walk into his house, his kids would acknowledge me as a father, and then I want to be able to sit back and reflect. And here's what I'm trying to do with the career. Is establish characters in living color.

It was Wanda Hay for Rialto Rocawear. It was really beaming any given Sunday. My name is Willie with the beam. I keep the ladies scream, then it's raised.

No, it's Bundeena Brown from Ali. Muhammad Ali is a prophet. How are you going to be gutshot? Georgia come out to garage. Could be Dumitru. So Bungeni Brown and then is where I got a woman way over town is good to me and it's Ray Charles and then it's a jungle, you know, they know him very well. Jungle.

So the jungle experience, you know, working with Quentin Tarantino, which was mind blowing, to be able to go in and read for that. And I didn't know about that part. I thought Will Smith is going to do it on the wall, Will Smith and Quittner to create Crowe. It didn't work out that way. I meet with Quentin Tarantino. I told him I understand the script. And I said not only that, I have my own horse.

And so I ended up ride my own horse in in Django. And I knew that that was going to be another character that is going to change the game. And so they'll look at that. So they'll say Django. And then hopefully if everything goes right, Mike Tyson will sit with those characters so that you'll be able to, after a while, looking at a career where. You transforms into a character. People know it. And were moved by it in and hopefully if it all works out, it'll it'll be a great it'll be a great opportunity to look back and see like wow and look at the things you were able to do in America.

What's an incredible cannon already? And my brother gave me Mike Tyson's autobiography, Christmas last year. And I sat down. I read it because when I was a kid, I would watch on the grainy VHS Mike Tyson's greatest hits over and over and over.

And you'd see his reception in Japan. He was the biggest star on the planet.

But you read the autobiography in their layers upon layers a lot. And a guy who just wanted to be in love just wanted to this is you know, it was more simple than we thought it would.

Yeah. And I can't wait to see it. I hope it comes together. I hope so. Jamie, you're the consummate performer and entertainer, so please keep creating I mean, this has been such such a gift.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, buddy. And for everybody listening, you can find all the show notes, links to everything at four hour work, week dot com forward slash podcast, search my name and Jaimie's and probably pop right up. And as always, thank you so much for listening. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five Bullett Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me?

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