LOVE IS THE KEY
B’klyn honors Morgan for his good works
Tracy Morgan’s got Brooklyn locked down.
The Bed-Stuy-bred jokester, who’s been making audiences laugh since playing Hustle Man in “Martin,” received the key to the borough Friday in a ceremony at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
“This is for you. This ain’t for me,” he said to a group of friends standing to his side. “I’m in service to you. This is my way to heaven.”
Morgan, who survived a nasty six-vehicle car crash in 2014, didn’t take long to tear up after his introduction from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.
Adams showered Morgan with praise for his work as an entertainer and his civic involvement in his native borough.
The “30 Rock” star dropped in on seventh- and eighth-graders at the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies in Red Hook in April to give out bookbags and talk about the importance of getting a good education. He’s also helped to refurbish Marcy Playground in BedStuy and basketball courts at the Gowanus Houses, where scenes from the first season of his TBS show “The Last O.G.” were filmed.
“He knows how to show love the Brooklyn way,” Adams said. “Not pretentious, not distant, not removed, not uncomfortable being around folks who really made his success. Giving back. When you hang out with him you feel no different than hanging out with someone standing on the corner of Tompkins Avenue.”
Method Man — the Wu Tang Clan rapper born Clifford Smith — who co-stars with Morgan in the show, was also on hand in downtown Brooklyn to introduce his pal.
After the ceremony, he told The News the honor will mean a lot to current sons and daughters of Brooklyn who can look to Morgan’s hardscrabble past as a template for how to do something positive with their own lives.
“If anybody deserves a key to Brooklyn, it should be him,” Method Man said. “You got an ex-knucklehead, ex-drug dealer, ex — just all around not bad guy. But Tracy could have went in so many different directions. Kids see him, they see themselves and see that success hasn’t changed him and know for a fact that they can do the same thing he did. They can identify with him”