Taping yourself and making yourself listen to the tape of each performance no matter how bad is really important. There's always a nugget line or a direction pointed out to you in even the worst show.

Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned.

You must not be afraid of small bits of silence. To use it well is the height of confidence and skill for a comedian. It increases the tension in a good way and adds contrast like a curveball complements the fastball of a good pitcher.

I have no desire to be hip to the latest black slang and do the stereotypical black thing. I was a Richard Pryor fan, and I have used profanity in my act. But when it becomes a whole thing that defines blacks, we're limiting ourselves. The enemy is us.

I advise treating the studio audience like a nightclub audience because that's the reason you're doing television - to get them to come see you in a nightclub.

When I've mentioned things that I thought only happened to me, or thoughts that I felt had only had crossed my mind, the audience response indicated that they seemed to have happened to, or been thought of by many people.

Being black and speaking properly are not mutually exclusive. My father was an African, and he spoke beautifully at home. Nelson Mandela speaks beautifully. Should Mandela put his hat on backwards and say, 'Yo, homey, this is Nelson. Yo, Winnie, yo, this is def'?