Hasan Minhaj Isn’t Having It
The host on facing his own community’s hypocrisy.
by jesse david fox on june 3, comedian Hasan Minhaj released a surprisingly personal and passionate 12-minute monologue called “We Cannot Stay Silent About George Floyd.” In it, he discussed not just the May 25 police killing of Floyd and the protests that erupted in its wake, but also the hypocrisy he saw in his own South Indian and Muslim communities over race. Minhaj managed to be sincere, powerful, enraged—and shockingly funny. The segment has been watched by more than 4 million people on YouTube alone. ridiculous because he has a when I’m tackling a third-rail Pokémon on his table while he’s issue, I will send the script to talking about race relations in what I call my “Jedis.” I’m still the United States. People think young in this game. Certain that if things are sad or tense, people—Neal Brennan, John you cannot make things funny. Mulaney, Jon Stewart, Steve I would argue some of the Bodow—I just ask them, “What funniest things sometimes do I do here?” So much of happen during a very tense or what we do is about timing and sad moment in your life. jurisprudence. Our art form is really an incredibly controlled medium. It may feel like it’s Arkham Asylum and the inmates say whatever they want, but it’s actually a very refined thing. Regarding the looting, I knew we would get into a dicey conversation. We sent that looting chunk to Steve Bodow, who saw that and said, “Here’s a potential [joke] you could do on fake Jordans, because those were definitely fake.”
The New York had put out a video that was the street view of the whole incident, and it’s really powerful because you see Cup Foods [where
Floyd was arrested for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill]. Then we find out that the owner of Cup Foods is Arab-American; his employee called the cops on George Floyd. The camera whips around, and you see one of the three police officers surrounding Officer Derek Chauvin [who was later charged in the killing of Floyd] is Hmong-American.
He’s 34. He’s my age. I was like,
I’m not the best traditional setup-punch guy. My strength is more in doing “comedy runs,” where I build to an idea or a moment and I get really excited and I spell out this world. And there were moments that I found undeniably weird or funny, like Logan Paul talking about race. I know we’re in a very heavy place, but this is fucking
I got to see footage on Twitter of white teenage angst at an all-time high. And I find
words to be very funny: “Caucasians karatekicking cars like their parents just got divorced.” It was just funny sonically.
This is actually something I’ve not told anybody, but sometimes
Comedy gives you the opportunity to have those moments. You can feel your feet going from the shallow end to the deep end, and you can feel your toes leave the floor. I may lose the audience a little, but I’ve just got to be straightforward. And that was in regard to the [Hindi] word which is used to speak down to Black people. It literally means “black” but is used in a very derogatory way to describe people with darker skin. I’m just like, “Look, if you call a dark person in your family
you make fun of them for being what do you think is going to happen when you watch a person with dark skin get killed on-camera? Will you see their full humanity? You probably won’t.” I don’t think that section deserves a joke.
There was a joke that I had, where I was like, “Indians, our community, we have given nothing to the Black community except our hair.” On paper,
I love that joke. I did a show with Tiffany Haddish once, and I brought my wife, Beena, into the greenroom with me. Tiffany comes up to Beena, and she’s like, “You have amazing hair! How much?” But when you talk about the placement and the momentum of the piece, that would have taken it in this other direction. We always talk about the jokes that people do, but there’s something very interesting in the jokes that you decide not to do. That, to me, is one of the beauties of the art form. Oddly, my relationship to jokes is the same relationship that I have with Islam; I have a big problem with zealots and people that take it so literally that they’re obsessed with the form. What I love about the Sufi methodology—I get really weird about this—is that it’s more about the soul, the essence of what you’re saying.
Keith was the first Muslim member of Congress. He is an activist. We have been at the same functions and fund-raisers for the Muslim community, where we are sitting there and praying for justice and peace in Gaza and Syria and Iraq, these places that are war torn. I wanted to tell Keith, “No more prayer. The ball is in your court now. I don’t want to see you at another fund-raiser, where we’re praying for the incarcerated people of America or people that are suffering. Let’s do this. Game seven, you have the ball, let’s go.”
true gift is hooks. Depending on the song, Lanez is either an R&B singer employing rap cadences or a rapper with a keen ear for melody. This sounds like an offbeat matchup until you play their songs back-to-back and hear the common threads.
Tory has chops, but French has connections. On a field where the biggest hit always takes the point, songs like “Stay Schemin” and “Pop That” are going to demolish “Ferris Wheel” and “K Lo K,” even if they’re all good songs. Montana won by a mile.
Lanez playing “Kika” from Tekashi 6ix9ine’s
but refusing to say whose song it is. Montana nonchalantly smoking a hookah. Lanez being a good sport about losing.
specific to its era. This is a riot, since Storch’s flair for quirky synth sounds, handclaps, and Americanized ragas screams 2000s as much as “Back That Azz Up” does 1999. Still, Storch won.
Storch smoking fat blunts the whole hour and lighting them with a portable torch.
Jadakiss laughing in the comments when his Mariah Carey collaboration “U Make Me Wanna” came on.
Storch sneaking Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” into the mix as a reminder that he helped create it. platinum Mariah joints. Ne-Yo edged out the win, although this one is better appreciated as a twoand-a-half-hour aughts-nostalgia playlist.
Johntá sipping wine in a suit and looking peacefully unbothered.
Ne-Yo offering gentlemanly trash talk. The-Dream popping up in the comments asking why he couldn’t have had a battle this civilized. the battle ran about as long as an Iron Mike match, descending into chaos early on as tech issues on Teddy’s end sabotaged the whole first hour. He was trying to perform for his website while streaming the battle on IG Live with staff in tow, while Babyface ran his end alone in headphones. Halfway through, they had to reschedule the already rescheduled battle. The Monday-night rematch went down without many technical difficulties.
Babyface won the first night after remaining a good sport while Teddy’s full band, hype man, staff, and camera crew fumbled around with microphones and speakers. The rematch was Babyface’s, too.
Toni Braxton on the warpath on Twitter. Mariah Carey and Adele getting jokes off in the comments, while Raekwon talked about robbing people to Babyface songs.
Riley’s team trying to sort out mic problems by bringing in even more mics.
Babyface getting a dig in about social distancing while Riley streamed with what looked to be ten heads present but no masks in sight.
almost single-handedly. Jon brought rowdy Atlanta crunk to the masses and produced for everyone from Usher and Ciara to Pitbull and, yes, T-Pain.
Back-to-back bangers and lively banter made this battle less of a war and more of a club night.
Lil Jon reminding T-Pain that “Buy U a Drank” borrowed its hook from “Snap Yo Fingers.”
T-Pain dancing and singing along with live renditions of his hits until Swizz said, “What you think we at, Essence Fest?”
Jon rattling the crowd with anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.
All hell breaking loose when T-Pain played the remix to R. Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt.”
some and letting others ride out on nearby stereos.
Legend charged ahead out of the gate and played a wide-ranging list of hits and deep cuts, but Keys came armed to the teeth with hits and wisely avoided latter-day songs that didn’t chart well. Legend outsang her in the room, but she walked away with more points.
Legend starting with Lauryn Hill’s “Everything Is Everything” and revealing that he’d played piano on the hit before he blew up.
The duo having an impromptu Cîroc toast in the middle of Legend and Rick Ross’s “Magnificent.”
Keys doing the phone call from “You Don’t Know My Name” as Legend re-created the sample using his voice and piano.
Every time Swizz played DMX and Timbo quipped, “You playing your artist.” Trash talk is key.
New York native RZA built his legend on gritty sonics and brash funk and kung fu samples. Premier, a New York hip-hop Hall of Famer by way of Houston, is a turntable wizard who creates new melodic lines out of preexisting records. The duo played cat and mouse across 20 rounds of legendary street rap and then blessed us with a lengthy bonus round full of additional hits.
Preemo was the favorite going in, but RZA showed up with great records by Method Man, GZA, and Raekwon. The winner was anyone who tuned in to hear the story of New York hip-hop song by iconic song. (That said, I’m siding with RZA.)
Decades of hip-hop royalty in the comments. RZA arriving in a sleeveless vest and gloves with
playing in the background. Premier calling the reviled Wu-Tang hit “Gravel Pit” a pop song and following with Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man.”