I Love How The Comedy Community Looks After Each Other

Last week, there's a comedian, Capone. I've known this guy for, God, 15 years. We went on tour together in 2011 and 2012 with the Shaq Comedy All-Star Tour. Now, I remember in 2011, the Shaq tour was me, D. Ray Davis, Corey Holcomb, Michael Blackson, and Capone. Hell of a lineup. The show was fire every night. And so you kind of follow these guys from afar, and Capone's always been cool, always been a good dude. But I noticed he hasn't been active on social media. And I go, something's up with this dude. Because he's always promoting his shows, telling people where to go and go see him and stuff. And then, all of a sudden, he pops up. Something's wrong with his heart. He had surgery, like open-heart surgery. And he's recovering now, but he's off the road. And I saw somebody started to go fund me and everything. Now, I DM'd him. I don't have his current cell number. It's been years since I've talked to him, even though you follow each other on social media. So if anybody knows Capone, get a hold of him, tell him, check his DMs on Instagram. I'll keep my message between me and him. That's what I love about our community, man, is we might talk ----. You might hear about the beefs. But when, quote, unquote, the ---- hits the fan, if you're good to people in this business, and you do right by them, they're there. I've seen so many benefit shows. I saw a big one with DL and Cedric. It was a benefit for Sinbad. I saw other comics posted with Capone. And they shared a GoFundMe. So if anybody knows Capone, you're watching the podcast, just reach out to him. Tell him to check his DMs for me. I left him a message. I wanted to get a hold of him and see what I can do to help in any way possible, because he was always a good dude. But it's wild to me that I got off the road for that. And then Capone made one of his videos, he made a comment saying, they told me to slow down, but I got to pay my bills. Bill's got to be paid. I understand it. And I will say, it's important as a stand-up, when you see something happen to Capone, and you talk about Robin Harris, and me listening to my body, man, you reflect on your career and everything. It's wild that once you start selling tickets and you make it, those stories are great. It's always good to stay in nice hotels and have nice things and everything. But in the beginning, I still think, if I'm being honest, the best time I ever had as a stand-up was when I first started. The open mics, the hanging out with guys that you did not know were going to end up being moguls, Kevin Hart, Nick Cannon. I'll just say to all the young comics out there, enjoy the ride. Don't worry about the money. I had an instance where I was talking to one of my openers, and we was talking about comedians, and in particular, some of the younger comedians, and how some of them get really over-concerned with what other people are making, or they're not being treated right, and things like that. I'm always like, even when I was coming up, I never, ever worried about what anybody else had. Ever. I was always like, all right, I gotta figure out how to get mine. I would get frustrated, and I still get frustrated when it comes to not having a Netflix special. Back in the day, it was not having a Comedy Central special, or an HBO special. That would get frustrating, but I never blamed the comics, or I never got mad at the comics that they picked, or got jealous, like, why'd they pick him and not me? I'm funnier than him, or I'm funnier than her. That was never my attitude. It was like, all right, well, who's in charge? How do we get me in front of the person that's making these decisions? That's why I like where we're at in stand-up right now, because we don't, there's no gatekeepers anymore. We got it. That's why we help each other out in this business. When I canceled my European run, first person I reached out to was Mojo Brooks. He had messaged me saying, hey, we were at the same venue the same night. In London, we were at the Leicester Square Theater. He had the 7 o'clock show. I had a 9.30 show. His show sold out. My show was the, I'm sorry, the 10th and 11th. We were there the 10th and 11th of July. My show was basically sold out. I had like 20 tickets left, and the 11th was on the way to selling out. But I called him, I'm sorry, I messaged him, and I said, yo, we were supposed to link up. I was going to go to his show. He was coming to mine. We were going to do some crowd work together. We was going to collab on some stuff. I was excited. First thing I did was call, message him and say, hey, I'm not doing London. He saw, well, I'm sorry. He saw the post where I said I had to shut it down. He goes, damn, bro, take care of yourself. I messaged him. I said, yo, call your people. Get that 9.30 time slot. You're already sold out. You're already going to be there. Get those two extra shows in. Make that extra money. Get that extra stage time. Hopefully, you'll get a viral clip off that. So he took the 9.30 slot that I had. Both shows sold out. So now Mojo, on that Friday and Saturday, instead of two shows, he's got four shows. Now he's doubled his money on those two nights. Not because of me, because of what he's doing in his career. But I wanted him to take those shows and I wanted them to sell out. Mojo's a cool dude. He's killing it right now. And I was like, that's just what we do.