steve harvey - what the entertainment industry needs

photo by steed media service

As told by amir shaw

Comedy has changed a lot since I started. There are a couple of funny comedians coming up today, but many of them are going about it the wrong way. With comedy, you want to make the crowd laugh. They’re confusing this a little bit. Just because you can make a crowd go ‘ewww,’ that is not a laugh. No one wants to hear the nastiest thing that you can work out of your mouth.

You have to be in the business of making people laugh. There are talented comedians, but they [have] their comedy aimed in the wrong direction. They’re focusing their routine on shock and downing someone. Who wants to pay for that? Black people are driven by emotion. When you make them laugh and you write jokes that are 90 percent the truth, they will attach themselves to you.

The music has to get better, too. Luther [Vandross] made love songs. He never said, ‘to hell with the Four Tops,’ or talked down to Marvin Gaye. He didn’t write about that. He wrote about love. When Frankie Beverly and Maze comes to town, the concert always sell out and he’s 60-years-old. People want that ‘Happy Feelings,’ ‘Joy & Pain,’ ‘Southern Girl’ and ‘The Morning After.’

Anybody who’s coming up in hip-hop or comedy should do it the right way. Nobody wants to hear gangsta rap. No one wants hear how you’re going to shoot their son and how you’re going to bury them. We’re tired of that. Being hard is playing out. The thug is getting old because we [have] thugged our way to 80 percent of the prison population. So how long are we going to be thugs before we realize that thuggin’ can’t get you anywhere? Thuggin’ is cool if you’re in the thug business. But if you’re not in the thug business, what are you thuggin’ for? You have to get on board with something that people will identify with and they will pay to see you.

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