Vince Staples Tells Kevin Hart He Was Influenced by His Mother’s ‘Dark’ Sense of Humor: ‘This Lady Evil’
He also shared how he was inspired to pursue comedy and how his family influenced him.
In an extensive interview with Kevin Hart on his Gold Minds podcast, multi-hyphenate Vince Staples spoke about what got him to embrace comedy more and shared a hilarious story about his mother.
At around the 34-minute mark, Hart asked Staples about his dry sense of humor and when he realized he was cut out for comedy as well as music. "It was mostly other people pointing things out from very surface-level interviews," he shared. "‘You’re new in music, who are you? Where did you come from?' And then you realize certain things that get laughs and then, you know, having conversations with fans."
He said that small shows, where he could be performing for as many as 300 fans or as little as 40, helped him realize his comedic potential, too. "Just seeing that people go to you when they’re looking for a sense of happiness or a sense of enjoyment was something that was interesting to me," he continued. "Because I wasn’t necessarily trying to do that. … Later down the line, ‘You should do that, you should do this.’ It would always lean towards comedy.”
His family was an especially big inspiration for his comedy. He said they consisted of "every stereotype you could pick about Black people in the ghetto of California."
"They always been funny, always been goofy, always been clowning each other. My sister’s in her 50s, so when I was a child she was grown as hell and she used to tell me I was adopted," he said. "It was her thing and she used to swear up and down we was adopted, we found you. … My family’s always had a morbid sense of humor based on their experiences, but I think when you grow up in this condensed vacuum… Shit just get funny after a while."
But it's his mother who influenced his sense of humor the most.
"My mom is the worst," he told Hart. "My mom has the darkest sense of humor possible, and she think everything is funny. I didn’t know she was playing until I got grown. But she had certain moments that I remember vividly, like we used to have these Christmas parties. ... My mom used to go to Spencer’s Gifts in the mall and get these fake lottery tickets and give them to my family. She’ll give it to the brokest people in the family."
There was one particular time she did it during a Christmas party with one of Staples' cousins, whom he admitted he was afraid of. "My mom used to smoke cigarettes in the house, so my mom would always sit in the corner because people wouldn’t want her to be smoking cigarettes near their kids,” he said. “She gave [my cousin] the lottery ticket. And obviously it said he won, and he just start crying profusely. Crying hard. He like, ‘I can’t believe this, I can’t believe this mama, we good mama.' His mama get up and start crying.”
Staples said he looked over at his mother, who had her legs crossed as she casually smoked a cigarette, and she calmly observed it all unfold. “My mama going, ‘Baby, read the back,’” he said. “I don’t remember much of what he read, but I remember he was like, ‘Cash at your mama’s house,' and everybody start laughing. My Mom just looking at him dead in his eyes. … In my head I’m like, ‘This lady evil.’ But later down the line, I think I’ve adopted a lot of that.”
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Staples tapped into that sense in his Netflix series, The Vince Staples Show. The critically-acclaimed series was renewed for a second season three months after it debuted on the streaming platform. "There are 365 days in a year, so we’re able to have 365 episodes of this thing because they’re all based on what it’s like to just exist day-to-day,” said Staples via Tudum. "Next for Vince is literally anything because anything could happen at any moment, that’s just how life works.”
Check out the full interview with Hart above.