America…Do not touch my TV, my DVD, my stereo, my dual-deck VCR. Do not touch my old school, my new school, my slow jams, my party jams, my happy rap, and you better not touch…My James Brown.
They say if you don’t have your health you ain’t got nothing, but the truth is you ain’t got nothing if you don’t have no one to worry about your health.
If you mess something up, remember who got you there. Don’t be pointing fingers, even if finger-pointing is called for. Only one you got to blame is your own self.
It was rough being dark. I got heat from my own people more than anyone else. I remember going to my mom and saying, ‘Why am I so black?’ And she said, ‘Because I’m black. You just gotta always work harder than the average bear.’
I’ve always been a reserved cat. When I play sports, there’s people used to get mad at me because I didn’t hang out and things like that. I’ve never been that kind of person. Nothing has changed in that regard. I’ve never been posse, and all that. I’m a quiet storm.
Every time you see a black romance it’s over-the-top. There always has to be extreme hostility between the sexes. He has to cheat. She has to show him how independently strong she is, not just as a woman but as a black woman.
I have Glocks, .45s, Berettas, Remingtons. I like the marksmanship and the discipline that it takes to be a gun owner. I like the machinery. Being able to take it out and clean it is even more fascinating than having the gun.
When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je’Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.
I want to speak directly to the audience, to say, ‘I’m like you – I’m frustrated, I’m not an expert, I don’t have a manual on parenting, I make mistakes, I’m selfish too.’
I can act. I’ve been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don’t nobody owe you nothing. You’ve go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don’t go from M to Z.