Once school let out every year, my siblings and I would get packed into a station wagon to drive to South Carolina to see my grandparents for summer vacation. If school let out on Friday, we were probably in the station wagon no later than Sunday morning, and we would make stops along the way.
I went to a wedding in St. Maarten, and we took a boat ride over to Anguilla for a day. We went to a beach that had the whitest sand I had ever seen before in my life. I was in the water up to the middle of my chest and could still see my feet. It was the clearest water.
'All Def' is unlike any other comedy show or set because 'All Def' goes back to the essence of how urban comedy started. We give it a 'stoop appeal.' A stoop appeal is important for us because it's where pretty much all black comics started doing their standup: cracking jokes on the stoop, in the hood.
You can live with diabetes. It's not the worst thing to have, but you have to manage yourself and have some self control.
Sometimes I might get in the door a little quicker than somebody else because of my last name. But if I'm not prepared, I'm not afforded the luxury of, 'Oh, he's a little green.' It's, 'He's not talented,' where the next guy can have a bad day.
I love to eat. I'm a foodie, and when I'm on vacation, I want to be a foodie with their culture, with their foods.
Never steal jokes.
My father drove a truck, and my mother was a school teacher. They wanted their children to go the traditional route: get good grades, go to college, get a job.
When you're doing standup, it's just you. It's your written jokes. You perform it however your personality is.
My pops, the whole time while I was growing up, was conscious of what we ate. He made sure we exercised and had time outside. He knew having a healthy lifestyle meant exercise.
There's nothing like the freedom of being in a roomful of strangers and trying to make them laugh... You either sink or swim. It's like verbal boxing.
I can make anything in the room funny in a few seconds.
Trouble was almost inevitable. I grew up with so many at-risk kids. Kids had things go wrong.
It's part of the gift and the curse of coming behind my brother. I'm not afforded the luxury of just taking a set casual, taking the night off. Because if I bomb, it's, 'Oh, he's not funny - he's just doing it because of his brother.'
My brother nurtured the love of stand-up comedy in a skinny little black kid named Tony.
I hate when rappers do interviews. They say stuff like, 'If I wasn't doing this, I'd be dead or in jail.' Like, damn, those are the only two options? What about managing Kinkos?
You know why kids don't eat fruits? Because fruits don't have any mascots. Every sugary cereal has a bear or a rabbit going , 'Kid! Eat it! Eat it, eat it, eat it!' You're a kid, you're like, 'I got to get that cereal.'
New York is home. It's so unique that there is no other place like it.
I never knew I was poor until I got older because we just had so much fun. I thought everyone had grilled cheese night and that everyone had Cup-O-Noodles for dinner on Fridays.
I was depressed for a long time.
