On a good night, I'm just into the flow and seeing the pictures and words in my mind clearly before I say them. On a bad night, which to be honest are nowhere near as bad as when I was starting out, I just concentrate on performing the routines correctly. I focus on my delivery.

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'?

Being a professional comedian is doing it right and good, when you don't feel like it.

This whole urban rap thing needs to be pulled back some. The ghetto is being glorified, and there's nothing good about the ghetto except getting out of one.

A technique I developed quite naturally to help me make smooth transitions was to use a word or phrase from the next routine in the preceding one.

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.

If I'm crisp and economical in my delivery, have smooth transitions, movement and animation, and flights of fancy, that would get me an A.