I was the weird kid.

And then I wanted to sell drugs.

People would fight me

and they would joke with me because they were like,

"Why aren't you being yourself?"

More than anything?

It's like that Kendrick Lamar line.

It's like, "You ain't gotta lie to kick it, my nigga."

Like niggas will like you more if you are that corny dude

and you are solid and authentic and yourself

than if you're trying to be another nigga.

Period

I think it's hard for Black men especially

to talk about depression

because we have so many cool words available

to us to undermine how we really feel.

(audience laughs)

Like a couple of years ago I was having some

suicidal thoughts and depression.

So I checked myself into a psych unit.

And I know you guys are looking at me like Jordan,

but you're so handsome and well put together.

But you know what they say?

Black don't crack, only psychologically.

I got out of the psych unit

and a friend of mine was like, "Are you okay, man?

Is everything all right?"

But I had so many cool words available to me.

I was like, "Yeah, I was just tripping."

But I wasn't just tripping.

I had a severe mental breakdown.

If anything, I might've been bugging,

but I wasn't tripping.

Rich, Black, poor, whatever,

authenticity I think it was important to Black people

because self preservation and self care is very important

to our identity.

If we don't have that, we don't have anything.

- I think for so long when it comes

to authenticity in the Black community,

authenticity is coded language for,

"Have you suffered enough?"

- In this country, being Black,

we really care about our identity

because that's something that they've been trying

to strip away for so long.

- There's a huge social and cultural maze

that Black people have had to be in

that are unlike any other ethnic group in the country.

And we're still grappling with that too.

- A lot of our stuff comes from what we've been through,

what we think about what we've been through,

how we feel about what we are going through.

And then what are we gonna go through next

and how do we change it?

- As Black people,

I think we haven't had the luxury of being inauthentic.

We were naked when we were sold.

When I was a kid, I'd just sit in my room

and read encyclopedias,

which is not a kid you want to talk to, you know?

I read a lot of history books, you know,

just sitting in my room, read like, world history,

American history, Southern history.

'Cause I grew up in Louisiana, I just wanted to know.

And one of the things I read

that's always tripped me out, right?

Is that like after the Civil War,

they let the slaves go,

but the slaves still lived in the South.

So you probably ran into your ex-slave like all the time.

(audience laughs) Which has gotta be

the most awkward ex run-in in history.

Just like, "Oh my God, there he is.

Don't look, don't look.

Don't look. Don't look.

Don't look. Don't look. Don't look.

Hey! (audience laughs)

How are you doing?

Are you mad?"

Like, what else?

In a weird way, you know, plantation owners were such pimps

that 300 years later,

we're all trying to decide if we're the real version

of the thing they invented.

- The people that have questioned

my Blackness the most have been Black people.

And I think we sort of internalize a lot

of the messages we get.

So I think it was the same thing

back then is where we internalized like,

this is what Black people do.

If you are Black, you do this.

And if you don't do this, then you're not Black

and why would we support you?

- This is the worst.

When they started targeting DARE commercials

specifically at Black people.

Perhaps this predominantly white audience

also remembers that. (audience laughs)

They do the same thing with all of our commercials.

Y'all know it. You know, they add hip hop.

That's always our commercial.

It's the same commercial y'all get,

but then there's a mother (beep) break dancing.

Like, "Crack? Hell nah, dog, not no more."

(audience laughs)

And it's so condescending and it's,

I hate it because here's why,

because it presumes that all Black people are the same,

that we're just this homogenous group

that's easily enticed by hip hop and we're not.

We're as diverse and complicated as any of you.

Look, one of my favorite things to do in the world,

absolute favorite things to do in the world,

I like to get myself a medium cup of frozen yogurt, right?

Medium. I'm not greedy.

A medium cup of frozen yogurt and I like to sit at home

and I watch YouTube videos of people getting engaged.

(audience cheers) Thank you.

That's my shit.

I do it for hours.

Hours of just eating yogurt

and having a nice cry and enjoying love happening.

And afterwards, I'll like look myself in the mirror

and I'd be like, "Yo son, you're a real ass nigga."

And that's,

that's not in those commercials.

Wipe your tears, dog. We good.

We got a big day ahead of us.

- What I find interesting is I see so many memes about

your Black is beautiful or everybody's Black is different

or, you know, embrace diversity

and all kinds of wonderful shit.

But then when it comes to it,

only certain type of Black is accepted.

- Some people may consider me not to be authentic.

My parents have been married for 40 years.

My grandparents were married for 65.

Me and my brother, same parents.

My brother goes to Yale. I went to NYU.

Like, I never got raped.

I never did drugs. Well, weed doesn't really count.

But you know, like, I've never really had like

super hard obstacles.

Of course I was teased. I was overweight as a kid.

I was bullied. I didn't have a lot of friends.

But does that really compare to someone else who's like

I don't know my parents and I grew up in a dumpster.

Like, are they more authentically Black than I am?

- To me that's what frustrates me at times

because I've been told

that I wasn't the right type of Black

or somebody tries to call me

African-American, I'll correct them.

I'll tell them I'm Trinidadian American.

I've had people ask me,

"Oh, so you have a problem being Black?"

No, it's just that my father is a 5'6 Indian man.

There's no problem.

It's just that I came from his nut sack.

That's what it is.

- The neighborhood I grew up in was like predominantly Black

but they hated Africans.

Like I wasn't a kid that just figured out how to be cool.

I just, I would like study my peers,

and I think that's why I became a comedian.

I'm Rwandan.

I moved here in the late eighties

with my family but my mom moved here

and she was like already in her late twenties,

early thirties, you know what I mean?

Like she's been through a lot.

Racism, xenophobia.

She was pregnant with my siblings when we came

but she's endured all of that with just so much

strength and grace.

But she raised me in the West

and weekly I'll call her and I'm like,

"Mom, I wake up sick and he's (indistinct)

and I can't do work, ah."

It's gross, you know? How dare I.

But she's so supportive.

You know, she's a great mom, a devoted Catholic.

She's always like, "Oh no, have you prayed?"

And I'm always like, "I'm agnostic, so, maybe."

(audience laughs)

So (beep) hates that joke.

But you know, who does love it?

God.

And I know that 'cause I'm not dead yet.

- I didn't feel with people, no matter the color,

how I felt when I was alone.

My family pulled together money to send me

to a Montessori school for elementary.

I went to a Catholic junior high

and high school and I went to a private college.

So I've been surrounded by white people my whole life

when I was educated

and surrounded by Black people when I went home

or in my neighborhood or wherever.

So I've bridged this gap before.

Ever since I was a kid and my voice changed

I've been told by people all over the country,

people of different ethnicities, backgrounds,

I've been told by people

that I have an incredibly white voice.

That's what they say.

And people try to act like they can't hear it.

But if I called and then showed up, you'd be surprised.

(audience laughs)

Even my laugh is like ha ha ha.

Like every time I laugh, someone somewhere gets audited.

- You know, there's this whole thing of,

"You don't sound Black. You sound white."

White sounding, whatever.

A lot of those comics get that whereas I don't,

'cause I'm like, I'm from England,

this is how we (beep) talk.

Take it or leave it, you know?

'Cause I'm like, we're all Black.

We're all from the same place.

We've all had similar experiences.

Some of us are gonna sound differently.

Some of us have gone to different schools.

Some of us have been brought up in different places.

I don't understand why there's this whole thing,

"You don't sound like us, so you ain't one of us."

- People might perceive

somebody's Blackness as not authentic versus someone else's.

But I think that's a mistake

and I think it's a reduction of what it means to be Black.

And also it insults the intelligence of Black audiences.

The idea that, you know,

Blackness is monolithic and looks a certain way.

That's not true.

But Blackness is Blackness and I love that

we're in a space where you have variances.

- My parents are not very into feminism.

They're very Christian, very conservative.

Yes. Black people can be ignorant too.

My dad, especially, he's like, "Ah,

you women with your yelling

and your reading and your voting," you know?

And it's like, I get it.

But you know, feminism, it's not an option.

It's vital if we want our society to improve in any regard,

not just for women, like regardless of gender at all.

Yeah. Like I, for real.

I shouldn't have to look in the mirror

and hate myself because of the patriarchy

and the male gaze you know?

I should be able to look in the mirror,

look at myself right in the eyes