- you know what? that looks like fire! - comedy without black people would be like the nba without black players. (kevin screaming) - your biggest, biggest superstars in comedy have been black. (eddie yelling) - just genius and hilarious. - yeah, i said it. (audience cheering) - the chappelle show redefined sketch comedy. - i m rick james, bitch. (audience laughing) - in living color set up a platform for black comedians blowing up. - i don t think so. homie don t play that. (audience laughing) - arsenio hall was, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. it was groundbreaking. - [audience] woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. - you had a black man willing to fight the power. - nice being out of jail. (audience laughing) - laughter is healing, laughter purifies the air. actually i don t like to talk about the races, because i m white. - and we, as black people, have been doing it forever. - i am, this is a freckle. (audience laughing) - all black comedians discuss race. - it s harder being gay than i
you can do what you wanna do in living color - in the case of in living color. i did pitch it to robert townsend. he didn t wanna do it. so we brought keenan into fox, and we pitched a very bare bones idea, just a black sketch comedy show. we gave him a pilot. - [both] welcome to the homeboy shopping network. - everything past the idea is keenan s thing. - sometimes those little fellas don t like to come out. - well hell, can you blame em? i wish i could move back. (audience laughing) - it was an immediate hit out of the box, huge. you know, the younger audience ate it up. they were able to sort of merge the suburban white crowd with the black crowd and they all just started watching that show religiously. - yeah, keenan ivory wayans and he had his family. we had never seen that before. he had all the wayanses, you had the fly girls and they would come out and it was so much hip hop and it was dancing. you had to be in front of the tv because you never know what sketch was gonna
so we brought keenan into fox, and we pitched a very bare bones idea, just a black sketch comedy show. we gave him a pilot. - [both] welcome to the homeboy shopping network. - everything past the idea is keenan s thing. - sometimes those little fellas don t like to come out. - well hell, can you blame em? i wish i could move back. (audience laughing) - it was an immediate hit out of the box, huge. you know, the younger audience ate it up. they were able to sort of merge the suburban white crowd with the black crowd and they all just started watching that show religiously. - yeah, keenan ivory wayans and he had his family. we had never seen that before. he had all the wayanses, you had the fly girls and they would come out and it was so much hip hop and it was dancing. you had to be in front of the tv because you never know what sketch was gonna come out. - now i d like to talk about a film i ve been anxiously awaiting to see, great balls of fire. (audience laughing) - in living col
- everything past the idea is keenan s thing. - sometimes those little fellas don t like to come out. - well hell, can you blame em? i wish i could move back. (audience laughing) - it was an immediate hit out of the box, huge. you know, the younger audience ate it up. they were able to sort of merge the suburban white crowd with the black crowd and they all just started watching that show religiously. - yeah, keenan ivory wayans and he had his family. we had never seen that before. he had all the wayanses, you had the fly girls and they would come out and it was so much hip hop and it was dancing. you had to be in front of the tv because you never know what sketch was gonna come out. - now i d like to talk about a film i ve been anxiously awaiting to see, great balls of fire. (audience laughing) - in living color was so breakthrough, so innovative, so many great characters and the tone of the writing was from a perspective we had not seen before. - when his mama gave birth to him,