August 17, 2014, should have been an ordinary day for me. I’d slept in a little, drank some coffee, and, to my surprise, found a voice mail waiting for me. I know getting a voice mail shouldn’t be a surprise, but I had AT&T back then. Almost everywhere I went in Los Angeles, my service was complete dog shit. I hope John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T (as of this writing), is reading this. Your cell service sucks a dead dog’s dick on a dusty driveway. I have dreams of murdering my phone almost daily. Back in 2014, most people who came over to my place would get surprise voice mails popping up on their phones because most people who came over had either Sprint or Verizon Wireless. I had a few poor friends who had T-Mobile, and their phones would just automatically shut off. We’re no longer friends (they were really poor!). For a short while, when I lived in a guest house in Redondo Beach, having AT&T was like having a satellite phone at the White House. No dropped calls. So why didn’t my phone ring on this morning? To this day there’s no good explanation. It was just meant to be. At the time I didn’t realize it, but getting the voice mail was better than getting the phone call. The voice mail was proof. It was the culmination of my life’s work. All my childhood fantasies (okay, not all, but a lot) came true that day.
I pressed play. “’Sup, Tom! This is Big Daddy Kane…”
For a lot of us who grew up in suburban America in the 1980s and ’90s, hip-hop was an obsession. It exploded rapidly in popularity, and with good reason. It was cool, and we weren’t. When you’re a young man, you take your cues from the men around you. They help shape who you become, but have you been to the suburbs? Bland. That’s basically the definition of the ’burbs. It’s slower and safer and there’s not a lot of flavor. You learn how to act, dress, and talk from the guys that surround you. The guys that surrounded me taught me I’m supposed to part my hair with a comb, wear khakis, and always reply with “I am well,” when someone asks me how I’m doing. So, when I heard hip-hop for the first time, I thought, This is the SHIT! It was like a portal into a world my friends and I didn’t know existed. It was exciting and flashy and dangerous and really just cool as fuck! These are the guys you wanted to be like, dress like, talk like.
This is around the time when I started playing sports as a kid. Football and basketball were my two favorites. Now that I had acquired these passions, I felt like I was set. I imagined I was so unique. And, of course, I was. A young white kid who listens to hip-hop all day and then gets really into pro football and basketball. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
It’s no secret that if you’re really into those particular sports and that music, you are being heavily influenced by Black guys. I thought it was great. Hell, I wanted to be Black. If you’re thinking, Oh, really? You want to be racially profiled and discriminated against and have to work twice as hard for half the recognition, or you just want the good stuff that you see glamorized on television?
No, of course I don’t want the terrible parts. I just want the cool, glamorized stuff. I want the cool haircuts like high-top fades and dreads. I want the gold chains and the forty-four-inch vertical and the dance moves. How many cool AF dance moves can this group of people come up with? That’s the stuff I want. I know how that sounds, but it’s the truth.
Today’s socially aware, hyperwoke crowd surely wants to lecture me and maybe you about it. “You’re appropriating Black culture,” read one tweet to Kim Kardashian. Uh, that’s one way of putting it! Am I right? Anyone? Kim has a big ass and fucks Black dudes. I don’t know that it’s fair to say that she’s appropriating Black culture. Maybe you can say she fetishizes it? Look, she definitely likes Black guys, and they seem to really like her too. It’s almost too perfect how they found each other. It seems like her ass has a lot to do with it, but that invites another stereotype: Black guys love big asses. Am I saying that Black dudes love big asses and Kim grew one in the hope of luring them into her large, Armenian turd churner? Maybe? By the way, I also love big asses. Does that make me not white?
But America as a whole, particularly White America, we are guilty of said charge. We take and take and exploit and profit from the works of others. It’s nothing new. We “found” this land that other people lived on and took that shit too.
White people—we’re just a good time!
It’s hard to argue that there’s “appreciation” and then there’s taking what isn’t yours without so much as a “please” or “thank you.” Q-Tip of the mighty Tribe Called Quest lectured Iggy Azalea about it. Jesse Williams at the BET awards said we “gentrify” Black genius. That’s so on point it should be on a monument. And nothing about it is recent. White people stole the blues, rock ’n’ roll, and tried our best to take hip-hop. It sounds like a hack premise to a joke you’ve already heard, but does that make it any less true? Some people are tired of it and don’t want to hear it, but that’s just more reason to get into it. Let’s just be real here: Black people and Black culture are dope. Call it what you want, I think Diddy calls it Black excellence. Sounds right to me.
I began my own love affair with Black American culture when I was really young. At eight years old I was hanging out with my next-door neighbor, Dan Cote. Dan had exceptional musical taste even as a child (he would later go on to work in a record store and even manage musicians). He made me watch The Breakfast Club (the movie) and told me to pay attention to Judd Nelson’s “performance.” What nine-year-old talks like that? We also used to watch the Spice channel, waiting for those few happy moments it wasn’t scrambled and we’d masturbate next to each other in sleeping bags thinking the other didn’t know what was going on. But back to his taste.
Dan was a year older than me. Here’s a nine-year-old that would play the Smiths, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and at the time a good bit of hair metal too. Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, all the big rock bands of the eighties. It was fine, but it didn’t move me. There’s music you don’t mind hearing and then there’s music that grabs you by your balls or your heart or both! Don’t get me wrong, I liked some of the popular rock stuff. You could pour some sugar on me and welcome me to your jungle and I’d happily enter, sandman with you. Some of it was cool and I dug those tracks.
But when I heard the Fat Boys, it was over. Just to be clear, this is way before I was fat. I saw those dudes and I wished I were fat. Black, of course. But these dudes even made being fat seem cool. The white rockers I didn’t really get. I didn’t get big hair, sleeveless leather vests with hoop earrings, and shouting that sounded like screeching. But funky bass lines with Kangols, talking shit, and eating food? That seemed right where I wanted to be. The Fat Boys were three young Black dudes from Brooklyn who entertained the hell out of my young, impressionable mind. They could beatbox, which might as well be magic, especially to a kid, any kid. It doesn’t seem like the sounds they’re generating are possible. You’re hearing drums, record scratches, and electronic distortion, and it’s just this dude doing it with his mouth!
I’d eventually get into Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie, and Rahzel as well, but the Fat Boys were my first loves. On top of being super talented, the Fat Boys were also funny. They even did a goofy, screwball comedy called Disorderlies that when I was a kid I thought was Citizen Kane. I thought every kid must have loved these dudes. I wanted to hang out with them and be one of them.
I was completely in love with hip-hop, but I have to admit that I didn’t grasp all the slang. So what did I do? Well, I went to the library, of course. I mean, if you were curious about a subject or topic that you didn’t fully comprehend, wouldn’t you go to the library too? Luckily for me, the library had a book about hip-hop that, in retrospect, appeared to be written by and for a profoundly stupid person or maybe just a child. What I remember is that it seemed like it was written by someone not at all steeped in real hip-hop culture. Looking back, it must have been written by a white person. But I didn’t know any better: All I saw was that Run-DMC was on the cover and the book had a large glossary of slang words and their definitions—exactly what I needed. With my new hip-hop guide I would be fully informed and know exactly how to kick it with the fellas on the corner. And by fellas I mean other students going to Sacred Heart Elementary, and by the corner I mean waiting for the school bus.
The passive knowledge I got from reading this book sent me on my way to being an expert, but it wasn’t enough. I mean, I did learn to greet people by saying “Yo” and depart by saying “Peace,” but I wanted more. I needed to show people, especially my family, that hip-hop and I were one. Fortunately for me, evidence of what I’m about to tell you no longer exists, but if I were on the witness stand in a court of law I would swear that this is the truth. I used the slang that I learned in the book to write my own rhymes. I’m cringing so hard as I type this that I think I might pass out. It’s completely embarrassing, and yet I have to confess it. I not only wrote rhymes in a journal, I performed them for anyone who would listen. I was looking to teach those who hadn’t heard yet that this rap thing was pretty neato! I hadn’t learned to memorize my rhymes, so like a real savant I’d ask the person, “Would you like to hear some rap?” And then they would probably go, “Uh, okay.”
Great.
Let me just get my journal out and spit some bars for you.
My name is Tom and I’m so def
When I write rhymes I use my left
I’m not trippin’ cause I’m fresh
All you bustas gonna see what’s next.
So you can see I was a natural MC. I basically tried to shoehorn all the slang I read in the book into every line, and then I would not know how to use some of it, so I would just drop it in wherever in the hope that using so many slang terms would mask that I didn’t really know what I was saying, and people would think, Wow, this kid really knows how to rap! For the better part of a year I subjected people to my sick rhymes. I thought I was pretty clever and talented at it, so I was sure they did too.
But nobody ever said that to me. My dad would stare, stone-faced, waiting for it to make sense to him—kind of like one of those paintings at the mall where you zone out looking at one image and then another image pops out at you. My mother’s English wasn’t the best to begin with, and here I was saying “word” but not using its common definition. Instead, I was saying “word” the way my favorite rappers were using it, as a term of acknowledgment or confirmation. So when my mom would say, “Tommy, dinner is ready.” I would reply, “Word.”
To a foreigner who is trying to master our language, this defies logic, and I found myself repeatedly making my mother’s head explode with confusion.
“What word?”
“What?”
“Did I use the wrong word?”
“No… just. I was saying ‘word,’ you know, ’cause that’s what some people… in the hood.”
“Are you on drugs?!”
I truly didn’t understand anyone, especially a white person, who didn’t love Black entertainment as much as I did. Why didn’t my father click with N.W.A or EPMD? He was a finance guy. Was Strictly Business over his head? Didn’t he also hate when he said to “suck the mutha fucka and she bitin’ it”? (RIP, Eazy-E.)
My favorite white guy who surely didn’t get it was my fifth-grade math teacher, Mr. Knurr. He was bald but still rocked the horseshoe and of course, as a math guy, what hair he had was long. His breath was so pungent I can still smell it today. He was a white, white guy. Super white. So it must have come as some surprise the year I wore my Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet t-shirt to school. I wore the shirt every week. I still have it. I can still see Mr. Knurr’s confused face, slowly mouthing the words “Fear… of… a… Black… Planet,” then asking me what it meant.
“Public Enemy” was my response. He’d act like that was sufficient, even though I clearly didn’t understand what the shirt meant. I just knew that I listened to Public Enemy without fully grasping their message—and I loved it. It must have seemed to him that I was surrendering to Chuck D’s message, that I was embracing an undeniable truth: Black people would soon take over and white people were living in fear of it, but I don’t think he thought that deeply. You know, math guy.
My love of hip-hop and sports took over my perception of everything in the nineties. I thought Georgetown was an all-Black university. If you’re nodding at that, I salute you. Back then the Hoyas were a staple on TV because of their basketball team. I was only aware of John Thompson, Mourning, AI, and so on. I never knew it was a predominantly white, well-to-do university in the very white Georgetown neighborhood only a few minutes’ drive from some of the poorest Black neighborhoods in America.
I can’t talk about this topic without mentioning my biggest influence, the mayor of Black entertainment, Deion Sanders. I’m a die-hard FSU football fan. I have trouble remembering the exact moment it happened, but I recall being mesmerized by Sanders—watching in awe as he flew by the opposing team, high-stepping and then dancing after scoring. And then after the game he’s wearing forty gold chains and driving off in a convertible. Let me remind you that he was in college at the time! How could a young man not want to be that? As far as I was concerned, when I was nine years old, I felt like white dudes were really dropping the ball on showing their youth how to have fun. These Black guys all looked like they were having fun. BYU football didn’t look fun. FSU, that looked fun.
Comedy was the same. Black comedy was sort of exotic in my childhood. It was exciting to drop in on something that wasn’t made for me but affected me in such a way that I felt incredibly connected to the performers and the audiences. The topics, the comics, and the audiences almost never had a white person in them, but I wanted to be there. I was laughing so goddamn hard when I watched these shows on TV, I felt like they were calling me. My early influences in comedy are exclusively Black. Bill Cosby (his comedy), Eddie Murphy, Robin Harris, and Martin Lawrence. Thanks to Russell Simmons and HBO I got to sneak into the basement on Saturdays and watch Def Jam, which would expose me to some of the greatest and worst acts ever. I never knew a stool could be used that way!
But the guy who really made me fall in love with comedy was Chris Rock. Every comic has had their moments when they felt like they were funnier than those around them. They usually first happen in school or when hanging out with friends. You think, I’m different. I have this ability that’s tweaked more than everyone else. For me, I realized I was funny by middle school. I had gone to so many schools because we were always moving, and all these different kids thought I was really funny, so I knew I must be. Seeing Chris Rock make people laugh for a living, the way he captivated an audience, made me realize comedy was a viable career option. That became my dream.
I held on to that dream throughout school, and soon after graduating college, I found myself in Los Angeles taking improv classes at the Groundlings. Two of my fellow classmates, Sam Tripoli and Nic Wegener—both extremely funny guys who were both stand-ups—pulled me aside and told me I had to try stand-up. Though I hadn’t planned on doing it, something in me loved that it was suggested. It was a way to perform without getting the permission you needed, like with acting. I followed those two around for weeks like a lost dog before finally getting the balls to do it. That first time was all I needed. I was hooked. Most comics who stick to doing it have a similar experience. You’re either addicted for life or it isn’t for you. My first two years, my act was essentially a bad Chris Rock impression. It was so bad. I would pace, crouch, and even gesture with my free hand exactly the way he did. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until a couple told me I was “oddly urban” onstage. It was their not-so-coded way of saying, “You sound like you’re trying to be Black.”
But even though Black comedians influenced my career path, throughout it all, my greatest passion remains the music. The music has and will forever be my lifeline. From Diana Ross and the Supremes to the Juice Crew, SWV to Beyoncé, Bill Withers to Gang Starr, I am and forever will be a someone whose heartbeat is the great music of Black America. It’s what I drive to, dance to, chill to, and bang to (not my wife; she prefers French Cafe radio for intimate times, but back in the day I’d drop some D in you to Brian McKnight, En Vogue, you name it).
I believe we all control our own destiny, and if you put something out in the universe with love and good intentions, some version of what you’re looking for will come to you. And for me it kinda did. Eight years after I started doing stand-up I saw Big Daddy Kane getting out of a limousine on Sunset Boulevard and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t wrap my head around what my eyes were seeing.
Big Fuckin’ Daddy Kane is… here?!
I was so goddamn excited that I yelled, “’Sup, Kane!” to get his attention. I should be clear that I did it impulsively and in my best “Black voice.” That is to say, the way I’ve heard countless Black football players yell in my years around the sport. I should also point out—I do that voice very well. Kane snapped his head around, looking for who had called out to him, and so naturally I hid behind a wall. I felt extremely stupid for having done it in real life. Moments later, I looked around and he was gone. Years after that I began telling that story onstage, and eventually I did it in my first one-hour special, Completely Normal.
Which leads me back to that surprise voice mail I got from Big Daddy Kane. Did you think I was going to leave you hanging about that? The fact that BDK saw my special where I talked about him and ended up calling me made me feel like I had won an award or championship. Not like an award at school. I mean like an Oscar or a Super Bowl. I felt like a goddamn winner, like I had arrived. It was as if he was saying to me, “I see you. We all see you.” I not only got a message from Kane telling me he saw my bit talking about him and that it made him laugh, but to keep going and push further. It was the kind of encouragement you want to hear from someone you look up to. Later that day I met him at my friend Russell Peters’s house. We even came up with a shirt with both of our images on it and marketed it together. It was a dream come true. But what I really took from the whole encounter was put yourself out there. If you love barbecue, tell the world. If you love tennis, tell the world. If you love dressing up like a dog and having a dildo that’s made to look like a tail inserted into you rectally, tell the world. The world hears you. You’ll see.
Overjoyed to meet Big Daddy Kane.