Hannibal Buress is a wanted man. The Chicago comic has sold out seats across the country thanks standup and floods your DVR with credits on shows like Broad City, 30 Rock and The Mindy Project. Adult Swim aficionados also recognize him as the sarcastic sidekick to puffy-haired Eric Andre on The Eric Andre Show, which plows through its third season, starting Nov. 6. If that’s not enough, he’s invading venues for his forthcoming Comedy Camisado tour.
All jokes aside, he takes his funny business seriously. Before these Bill Cosby comments hit the Internet, VIBE spoke to Hannibal about his musical tastes, the meaning of “camisado” and his one regret. —Adelle Platon (@adelleplaton)
As a big rap fan, does your musical taste help dictate who gets put on the show?
Hannibal Buress: Not really. It’s a mixture of things. We’re not gonna get somebody on just ’cause I like their music but it’s also an artist that we think would be good or is a fan of the show ’cause some rappers aren’t up for making fun of themselves, doing something goofy or self-deprecating. This season, we got good rappers: [Action] Bronson, Killer Mike, who’s done the show before, Tyler, The Creator. We just want people who want to have fun.
Have you ever been confronted by a rapper, like Odd Future or Riff Raff, about a joke you made about them?
I’ve seen the Odd Future guys out and they know there’s a joke I’ve done about them and they’re cool, man. We’ve performed at the same festivals. But nobody has really confronted me about anything. Most of the jokes I make are lighthearted. Usually, if I’m talking about someone, it’s because I’m a fan or enjoy their music so it’s all in good fun.
Why call your upcoming tour “The Comedy Camisado”?
Camisado means a military attack that happens at night. My shows happen at night so [my jokes are] a sneak attack. I just think it’s a fun word, even if camisado didn’t mean military attack.
Will your routine be about strange things that have happened to you at night?
Yeah, actually. It will be a lot of tales that happened at night, the daytime and maybe in the afternoon, too.
As a seasoned comedy vet, do you gravitate more towards relatable jokes or outlandish stories that have happened to you?
I gravitate towards what I think is funny and interesting so whether that’s a story, something I saw, something somebody said to me, a news story, or a rap lyric, I do stuff that I’m interested in and that’s the main thing. That usually translates and the audience can get into it.
//www.youtube.com/embed/ELtaB2s4fGk
Was there ever a joke you wish you could take back?
There’s one joke that I did on my first record [My Name Is Hannibal] about kicking pigeons and it was a joke about how I wanted to kick a pigeon ’cause they walk around like they’re invincible. But I never kicked a pigeon at all. Because of that joke, people send me e-mails, messages or videos of them kicking pigeons, [like one] dude didn’t kick the shit out of a pigeon but he kicked it a little bit. I was doing it as a joke and I never done it or planned on doing it. It was totally something I was saying in jest. People were just telling me horrible stories about shit they’ve done to pigeons so that’s kind of a bummer. (Flip to 44:41 above to hear the “Pigeons Get Murked” segment)
//www.youtube.com/embed/7qTVLzc38_k
Do you have a love or hate relationship with Twitter?
It’s both mostly because I waste a lot of time on it so I hate that factor. It’s easy to get sucked into somebody’s conversation or looking at some argument on dumb stuff but I also love it because it allows me to talk directly to fans. I’ve done last-minute shows before in Miami, Chicago and San Francisco because of Twitter. I can post, ‘Hey, I’m gonna do a show in four hours’ on there and then, tickets sell out. It’s a good tool but it’s easy to waste time on that. It’s constant.
How much longer do we have to wait for a Hannibal Buress show?
I don’t know. We’ll see. I got something in the works potentially but if it doesn’t work out, life will still be alright too.