Urban Grandstand Digital: Looking back over your career, if given the chance, what's one thing you would change, if anything?
Luenell: Yes! I would say if I had known you should still keep up with your P.E. after high school, I would have stayed more in shape (laughing). That’s something they should tell you. When you stop having to do gym because we made you, you should keep doing it. Still do it! That would probably be the ONLY thing I would change. But there’s a demographic who is glad I didn’t! Everybody don’t want, you know, what we think they want. I’m cool with where I am. I think women have been so inundated with body image propaganda that even the most confident of us find some flaw that we feel insecure about. If we were in another part of the country where they don't buy into that, we probably wouldn’t think twice about it.
Urban Grandstand Digital: Taking that a step further, what would you offer to the next person looking to get immersed in comedy? What would you caution them on?
Luenell: The thing I hate with younger comics is you give advice and they don’t listen. It’s no need to give advice if people don’t listen. Sometimes, people have their own way of doing things. I would say two things: Number one, don’t fool yourself. If you’re not that funny, don’t try to be a comic. Just life if you’re don’t sing that well, stop trying to be a singer. You can’t just be funny to people at the
barbecue and your friends. When it comes to being a professional comedian, you have to go and make strangers laugh on demand, period! It’s non-negotiable. Nobody pays for you to have an off night. You won’t work that way. You have to be consistent. You have to be funny all the damned time. Extremely funny, or it’s just not going to work. The second thing I would say is every time you go to the club, you don’t have to get on stage. Sit and watch the headliners, and see what they do. You can pick up tips. A lot of comics do a show, then run off to another room to do another show. Maybe go out for a week and don’t do any sets. Just watch the headliners. Study them, see what they do, how do they handle the microphone, who looks comfortable and who doesn’t. When I first went to L.A. I went out every night and just watched. I still watch and study. I watched Redd Foxx. I had a show about 2 years ago, and after the show, comics were sitting around chopping it up like we do. This lil’ young good looking brother was on the show with me. We were talking and I said something about Robin Harris, and he said “who is Robin Harris”?
Urban Grandstand Digital: Which is ridiculous to not know who someone like Robin Harris is.
Luenell: I got him kicked off my show. I said don’t call yourself a comic if you don’t know who the greatest comics are, especially the black ones. That’s like saying who is Martin Luther King, I heard of him. What did he do?
Urban Grandstand Digital: But it’s just like music too. How do you know know the Marvin Gayes, or the Aretha Franklins?
Luenell: Even the Sarah Vaughns, and the Ella Fitzgeralds and the Duke Ellingtons. That may not be your genre, but you should certainly know who they are. A lot of these songs out now, the ideas come from sampling old stuff. We’re not even talking about Blurred Lines. I was listening to Curtis Mayfield today, and there’s a song Beyoncé sings that is totally Curtis Mayfield. Now it’s easier for us who grew up with it than it is for people to go back and research it, but if you had older parents who played that music, it’s second nature.
Urban Grandstand Digital: …and let’s face it. If you truly have an affinity for music, then you’ll be researching, and reading liner notes and whatnot.
Luenell: You’d feel awfully stupid if you were sitting next to Quincy Jones in a restaurant and didn’t know who he was. You think, you want to get put on, and he’s made Vibe Magazine, Vibe TV Show and everything like this, and you have an opportunity to be next to somebody who can change your life and you don’t even know who they are because you’re so far up Drake’s ass that you don’t know who somebody great is.
Urban Grandstand Digital: Final comments! Is there anything you really want people to know?