Name: Donnell Rawlings Talks to Theo Von About Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, and Being Undeniable
Uploaded: 2018-11-30T22:57:39.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Donnell Rawlings Talks to Theo Von About Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, and Being Undeniable' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-11-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Donnell Rawlings Talks to Theo Von About Bill Burr, Kevin Hart, and Being Undeniable' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-11-30. Transcript available.

I'm a strong believer in like, there are no- here's the thing, you have two
excuses.
Yeah.
You have a good excuse and a bad excuse, and at the end of the day there's
still excuses.
As a comic, you know what I'm saying, you could have a show like at night, say
you got
a show at 12 o'clock, you just found out like one of your aunts or your uncles
or whatever
just passed away.
Right.
You got a good excuse not to go to that show.
You know what, I'm not feeling right, that's my excuse, it's still an excuse.
And you got a bad excuse not to go to a show, you know what I'm saying.
Oh man, I got a cold or something, something stupid, you know what I'm saying.
But at the end of the day, it's still excuses.
So as much as, not just black people, just for anybody, stop making excuses.
It's so easy to make excuses.
What you going to do?
What you going to do?
And that goes, I relate that to comedy, you see, you've been in the game for a
long time.
You see motherfuckers trying to get stage time and stuff and they'll say, oh
yeah, but they
don't really like me in that club, they don't really mess with women.
And then you ask that same comedy, where do you perform?
I perform at this one club, it's an old mic, and you say, how did you do?
Oh, my set was okay.
No, motherfucker, that ain't enough.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
And I tell this to all young comedians, any doors you want open, it's going to
come through
the microphone.
When you ripping, when you're not just 50-50, I'm talking about when you're
demolishing everywhere,
you can't be denied.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Don't make excuses.
Make yourself undeniable.
You know what I mean?
Okay, I don't do five spots a week, I do two, but when you do those two spots,
kill them.
Yeah.
And those two spots will turn into three spots and five spots.
I even use myself as an example with me in the comedy scene in California.
I came up as a New York comedy.
When I first came in, people knew me from the Chappelle show.
Right.
A lot of people didn't know me as a stand-up, and a lot of clubs didn't know.
Oh, he's a funny dude on TV, but whatever.
And I used to drive down Sunset, Hollywood, and I used to see the names up
there on the marquee.
Yeah.
Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.
And I'm looking at those names, and I'm not disrespecting them.
I'm like this.
I'm on that level.
Right.
I should be there.
I'm not.
I'm not making excuses.
I'm not going to say, "Fuck that.
I don't want to go through the work to get there."
And gradually, I told myself, I want to be, when I'm in town, I want to be on
every marquee.
That's a test of who's popping in the city.
Yeah.
And it might not mean a lot to a lot of people, but for me, when I can drive
down Sunset,
and I see I'm on the marquee at the store, go to the Laugh Factory, I see I'm
on the marquee at the Laugh Factory.
Go to the Improv, I see I'm at the marquee at the Improv.
Go to Ha Ha's, which is a club a lot of people don't fuck with, but it's a
great place.
Yeah.
It's a great place to work.
When you see that, you feel accomplished, and you say to yourself, "I didn't
make excuses,
and I did with it a couple of times."
Like, "Oh, they don't want to let me on, and they let that motherfucker on."
Right.
You just take your lumps, come back the next day, and you build your shit.
Yeah.
And the reason why I'm saying this, in life period, literally, there's no more
excuses.
That's true.
Either you're going to do it or you're not going to do it.
Yeah.
And you look around, we got too many examples.
I feel we got examples of people that we don't necessarily agree with, say,
from stand-up.
But you got now, we're in an age where you could make yourself the shit on your
phone.
Yeah.
In front of your computer.
It's not the time when I came up with three or four networks.
Right.
You're your own network.
So you definitely, you got people that, 6ix9ine's a perfect example.
Yeah.
I'm going to fuck with him.
The industry wasn't trying to fuck with him.
He said, "I'm going to fuck with myself.
I don't need y'all for anything."
Yeah.
That's a great statement.
I'm going to fuck with myself.
Yeah.
I'm going to fuck with myself, and I can make it happen.
Yeah.
I had a manager before.
I don't have a manager right now, and I had a manager.
And I remember one time, I had this thing I was trying to do when I was
traveling
on the road.
And I was having, and I was like, "I want to shoot it and put it on YouTube."
And he was like, "Well, let's put it together and go out and shop it around."
Right.
So then we did that for like a year, and nobody, you know, it was back and
forth.
But in the meantime, in that year, I didn't, you know, I did it some, but I was
waiting
now more for these networks to decide if I was going to have an opportunity.
Right.
Whereas if I would have just been making it the whole time, it would have been
huge,
and it would have been something at the finish line.
Whereas instead, I let them decide, "Okay, the finish line is now, and we don't
want
it."
You build your own thing.
Yeah.
I'll give you two great examples of that.
Bill Burr, Kevin Hart.
When I was doing, when we were doing Chappelle's show, at the time, Bill Burr
was bubbling.
Bill Burr was bubbling.
He wasn't...
Damn, say that 10 times fast, huh?
No, the reason why I'm saying that, because there's no disrespect, he was
bubbling.
Yeah, no, I feel you.
When you saw him in the club, you was like, "You go to see certain clubs, and
you're
like this, this motherfucker's going to blow.
This motherfucker's going to blow."
But he didn't have the TV and all that, but you knew it was coming.
Right.
And we were doing Chappelle's show.
We were making money in Chappelle's show, but not a lot of money, but we needed
a tour.
I came up with the idea of doing an I'm Rich Bitch tour.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
And the Rich Bitch tour, the two draws at the time were me and Charlie.
And I could have ran with that, I could have went with somebody local, but I
said, "Nah,
Bill Burr is an animal.
Let's not just do a show of people coming for the novelty of the show.
Let's give them a show where this show is fire from beginning to end."
And that's what we had on Rich Bitch tour.
I think this is the first time Bill Burr was, we ran this shit for like a year
and a half.
Charlie Murphy with MC.
Wow.
Bill Burr, you know this is funny, Bill Burr was a feature.
Wow.
And I was headlining.
And I'm telling you, you know, you're talking about no excuses.
Imagine going on every night for a year behind Bill Burr.
Fuck that.
There was no day you could take off.
Yeah.
You go out and party, get all fucked up.
You got a hangover.
The next day, guess what's going to happen?
And this happened to me a couple of times.
Like, yeah, he was funny with that white boy.
You know what I'm saying?
And the point I'm making is, he knew his features was going to be because me
and Charlie
was on, "I'm rich with Charlie Murphy."
All that shit.
It was just, it was pandemonium.
But Bill Burr was the one with the comment cards.
You know what I'm saying?
Filling them out.
The emails.
I'm like, "Yo, you worry about that email shit?
Nigga, people going to be coming to see us forever."
He was a dude that was doing the email card and he started building that base.
Yeah.
He started building that base.
And then when you start building that base, people start riding with you and
then you
win, like, Comedian of the Year in the Montreal Comedy Festival, you're going
to build to that
point.
He knew what he wanted early on.
A lot of people don't.
Kevin Hart, as much as people want to talk shit about Kevin Hart, Kevin Hart
was the same
situation.
Kevin Hart was always down with whatever the newest thing was, was MySpace,
Twitter.
Right.
I remember Kevin Hart had 60,000 followers on Twitter.
And he was trying to be like, "Yo, I can get you some followers."
Now that dude's out of, he's just on another level.
He's a rock star.
But he planted that.
And like you were saying about waiting for the networks, they didn't wait.
Those people didn't wait.
So by the time the networks got caught up to them-
They was already speed fast.
They was already speed fast.
They was already ready.
They was already ready.
You know what I'm saying?
And that's what you said is important.
You know what I'm saying?
But like a lot of times in this business, we want to swing for the gate all the
time.
Yeah.
Sometime a base hit is good.
Yeah.
Sometime a bun is good.
But you got to know that.
Yeah.
And that's what separates the different people.
Now you look at Bill Burr.
I look at Bill Burr 13 years ago.
He's the best.
He was opening on our show and now this dude's doing Madison Square Garden.
And here's another thing how stuff's supposed to inspire you.
I see that.
I know how funny he is.
I know how funny he is.
But it gives you a sense of knowing that you're from a place where it could
happen.
Right.
You know what I'm saying?
You look at Bill Burr.
He's like, this dude, we were doing the same club.
It could happen.
Who's going to put the work in?
Right.
You know?
Good evening, good afternoon, and other times.
Thanks for watching that video you just saw.
I mean, it was okay.
But the next video you could watch could be way better.
What if you watch a video right now that changes your life?
Well, you could.
Watch this one.
Or, watch this one.
Watch this one.
Watch this one.
Watch this one.
Ah!