W. Kamau Bell on fighting white supremacy — but keeping it funny

Kamau Bell [00:00:02] Defeating white supremacy was our family hardware store. And so no matter what you do, even if I'm a comedian, eventually I got to take over the hardware store. 

Sophie Bearman [00:00:23] This is Life in Seven Songs. From The San Francisco Standard, I'm Sophie Bearman. This week, I am speaking with standup comedian W. Kamau Bell. For seven seasons, he was the host and executive producer of the five-time Emmy Award-winning CNN docu-series, "United Shades of America," where he traveled to communities all over the U.S. and willingly subjected himself to awkward, sometimes dangerous situations, like the time he attended a Ku Klux Klan cross-burning. He won a Peabody Award for his docu-series, "We Need to Talk About Cosby." He's recorded two comedy specials, written two books. He's also a father, and in all of these roles, he's put tackling and talking about race, politics, and social issues at the forefront. W. Kamau Bell, welcome to the show.

Kamau Bell [00:01:13] Hi, thanks for having me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:01:14] So Kamau, have you been asking the hard questions your entire life?

Kamau Bell [00:01:19] No, I have not been asking the hard questions my entire life, no. Most of the people who knew me, people who weren't close friends of mine — including my dad, who I guess wasn't a close friend of mine — were shocked when I decided to become a stand-up comedian. My best friends weren't because they knew me as funny, but like I was not — I was not the class clown. I was not somebody who was always dominating conversations. So yeah, I think I've been thinking about the hard questions my entire life but not asking them out loud. 

Sophie Bearman [00:01:45] So when did you decide to become a stand-up comedian? Or rather, like, when did you realize that you were funny?

Kamau Bell [00:01:51] It's funny, I only think I have — initially thought I was funny because my mom laughed at me a lot, but I don't know that that's really the qualifications to be a standup comedian. But then, really, it was like I was in college and I was about to drop out, remember this, from the University of Pennsylvania. And so all the pressure was off to try to do well in school because I was like I'm dropping out. I'm not going to be here much longer. I just had to like dot the I's and cross the T's before I dropped out. And I would spend all day hanging out with my friends who were in classes and I would just make them laugh all the time. And one of them was like, come on, you ever thought about being a stand up comedian? And I had thought about it since I was probably ten years old, maybe even seven years old. But when he said it, I was like 'no, I never thought about that.' But it was like, literally the first time I felt like a random, a somewhat random person had said, 'you're funny enough to be a stand-up comedian.' And so, that was the first one I had like independent verification. And I was, that was when I was in, like as I said, I was about to drop out of college, probably 19 or 20. 

Sophie Bearman [00:02:42] Do you remember a joke you told your mom that made her laugh?

Kamau Bell [00:02:45] No, it wasn't really like jokes. It was more like just, my mom always tells a story of like, my dad — this is when I was like three years old, or two years old I guess — and my dad like put his hand out for me to give him five and I stared at the center of his hand and looked and pretended to pick something out of it and walked away looking at it. And my dad thought I was confused. She's like, 'He's making a joke, you know?' So, that's the first time my mom ever realized, 'oh he's trying to be, he's a two-year-old kid who's trying to be funny, you know.' 

Sophie Bearman [00:03:13] Is your mom funny?

Kamau Bell [00:03:15] Yeah, no, everybody would say that when people — when people heard that I was a stand-up comedian, she told her friends, like, 'I don't know where he got it from.' And they're like, 'he got from you, Janet. You're the f — yeah.' So she's like, she's funny, but she's not meaning to be funny. She just is, just the kind of person who makes things very plain, which you could often be funny if you're just making things plain. 

Sophie Bearman [00:03:35] Well, tell me a little bit about her because I know she appears in a number of your songs that you sent over.

Kamau Bell [00:03:41] My mom was born in Indiana in 1937 in Indianapolis. So she's seen a lot. I mean, she was right there growing up in Jim Crow America. She remembers when the schools were integrated. She remembers how she went from, like, being in regular English to remedial English just because she was a Black student in an integrated school. And so, she always sort of had bigger dreams for herself than the world had for her. So she was just like, I always say we used to move a lot because she's a Black lady with opinions. She's always had thoughts and opinions about things. And was not gonna be held back by her circumstances. And so, I used to joke that my mom, sort of everywhere she went for years, ‘this is the first Black woman who's ever turned left on this street.’ Like she just was gonna go where she wanted to go. Early in my standup comedy act, I had a joke about, since my — basically it's a joke about how my mom talked about race and racism all the time. And the joke — that is only aging as each day goes by — that I was 11 years old before I realized that a cracker was also a snack. Uh, now for people who don't know, a cracker is a slur for a white person, usually from the South, but the idea being that, like, my mom was very forward and she was also, like, self-employed, like she did these books of quotations, Black books of quotations in the 80s before there were like Black books of quotations. It just was, like, a household surrounded by books, mostly Black books and Black art and African art. So I grew up in a very sort of intentionally, you know, academically focused — even though it wasn't about your grades — just intellectually focused household. But we laughed a lot. 

Sophie Bearman [00:05:11] And were you mostly raised by your mom?

Kamau Bell [00:05:13] I spent the school year with my mom and then I'd go visit my dad in the summers in Alabama. So nine months with my mom, like three months with dad in Alabama. 

Sophie Bearman [00:05:21] Let's talk about the music. Your first song, Wade in the Water, it's a song that you said she sang to you when you were young.

Kamau Bell [00:05:27] So that's not a song I have anybody's version of it in my head except hers. Like, and she would just sing it to me when I was a little kid. And she's not a great singer. So it's also funny. Like, and she knows that. So she does it in a very deep voice. ‘Wade in the water.’ And so, it was just the thing she used to sing to me all the time. 

Music [00:06:03] [Wade in the Water by Jireh Gospel Choir plays]

Kamau Bell [00:06:03] Yeah, they sing much differently than my mom sang it. With her, it was all baritone. And you know, it's certainly a folk song that I would imagine traces its way back to Black culture. If not, at least Black people sort of said, let's borrow that and make it Black. So, for me, it’s just sort of an example of like, we've been Black in my house my whole life. Like even the song she would sing to me as a little kid were very much about the Black struggle in this country, 'wade in the water because God's gonna trouble the water,' you know. So it's a traditional folk song of the Black American experience, yeah. 

Sophie Bearman [00:06:34] Absolutely. So, tell me a little bit more about what you were like as a kid. You sort of described your childhood moving around, but who were you?

Kamau Bell [00:06:42] I was an only child. If it wasn't for America's sort of like defining people in racial and ethnic categories, so I have to sort of define myself as a Black man, which I accept and deal with and enjoy, but only child would be my main descriptor, because I was like, 'I think that's who I was.' I was a kid who was like by himself a lot, liked being by himself, kept good company, was never bored by myself, was just agnostically curious, just like read the back of a cereal box, pick up a book off my mom's shelf, scan through it. You know, it's why I think I do— 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:11] —diving into the rabbit holes, over and over.

Kamau Bell [00:07:12] Yeah, I'm a big rabbit hole person, which is why I think I'm doing decently well on Celebrity Jeopardy, not because I study, just because I have a — I have a lot of useless facts in my head that are now coming of use. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:21] So that curiosity, it obviously followed you into adulthood. I'm thinking about your show, United Shades, where you're exploring these sometimes dark corners of the country. So where does that curiosity come from?

Kamau Bell [00:07:35] I don't — I mean, I think, you know, there's sort of the debate of like what's nature and what's nurture. And now that I have three kids, your kids show up with something. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:42] For sure. 

Kamau Bell [00:07:43] And, then it's your job to sort of either help them reveal that something or to try to beat it down. Like, and I think for me, I think it's better to help them reveal that thing. So like, I think I only can attribute the ability to be curious to the fact that I was an only child and had a lot of free time. And you know, and then I sort of like, when I made my — like my best friends in high school, one of whom is still my best friend, they weren't like me at all. So it's like, I don't think I was ever like trying to be around people who were just like me. Like, my two best friends in high school were two white Jewish dudes. One who was a guitar player, like introduced me to all sorts of music. Like without him, I wouldn't, like, he sort of built my musical background. He's sort of like, 'here's the things you should know about.' And then my friend Jason was like a pot smoking deadhead and I was not a pot-smoking or a deadhead at that point or even now. So, but we got along. So I think I was always just sort of like open to new ideas and new types of people just cause I was like curious, you know. 

Sophie Bearman [00:08:36] So I want to talk about another song, actually. You chose Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang. But you know, you wrote to me that it marked this sort of seismic cultural shift. And so I'm curious, like, 'what shift was that?' And then, like as part of that question, 'when did you sort of start to be aware of, you know what was going on around you culturally, politically?'

Kamau Bell [00:08:55] So yeah, so Rapper's Delight, what year does that come up? 

Sophie Bearman [00:08:59] '79.

Kamau Bell [00:08:59] So it's funny to think that like, Rapper's Delight comes out in '79 and we're still, like, five years away from rap achieving, like, sort of crossover mainstream success. And when you heard it, you stopped because it didn't sound like the song before it and it didn't sound like song afterwards because there weren't other rap songs getting radio play at that point like that, you know? That's when rap went mainstream for Black folks because it was, like, on the radio. And then it didn't go mainstream for white folks until Run-D.M.C. 

Sophie Bearman [00:09:24] Do you remember the words to this day?

Kamau Bell [00:09:26] Said hip-hop, the hippie to the hippie / the hip, hip-hop and you don't stop the rockin' to the bang-bang boogie, say up jump the boogie / to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat / Say, I am Wonder Mike and I'd like to say hello... 

Sophie Bearman [00:09:38] That's pretty good.

Kamau Bell [00:09:40] ... To the black to the white, the red and the brown, the purple and yellow

Music [00:09:56] [Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang plays]

Kamau Bell [00:09:58] Also, when you could rhyme just sounds, 'bang-bang, boogie' to 'up jump the boogie,' like there's no words. And so I think the other thing is that even though I ended up my musical interest — I mean, I always liked rap — but they ended up being not really rap focused as I got older. But that song is still, like, a seismic shift in the culture. So for me, it's like, I like a lot of rap songs. I could have picked Public Enemy's Fight the Power, cause that's sort of more aligned with what people would think about me. And I do love that song, and I still play that song to this day. Like I don't pull up Rapper's Delight unless I'm playing it for my kids. Like I'm not — but I think if I'm gonna go like songs, that definitely like made me go, 'wait, what now?' Rapper Delight is one of those songs, yeah. 

Sophie Bearman [00:10:37] So you mentioned having good friends in high school. Tell me a little bit more about your teenage years. What were they like?

Kamau Bell [00:10:44] So I had finally got settled down in high school in Chicago, Illinois, on the south side of the University of Chicago Laboratory High School, which is like the — like, the best way to describe that school is that the Obama girls went there when Barack talked at the University Chicago, so it's that school. It's a nerd school. We didn't — we don't even have a football team, at least we didn't when I was there. Like, you know. So it was very, very — basically everybody who graduates from that school wants to have already finished their first year of college. Like, they would have already had the college credits done. I did not take that route. But yeah, so I had a great — I sort of had a good friendships in high school, but not the best high school experience. Like I felt like I sort out of place at the school, but I always resonated with that, uh, when I was a kid, there was these sort of like clay-mation animated Christmas time specials like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. And I think it was Rudolph that had the island of misfit toys, and I always felt like, 'yeah, that's — I would be on the island of misfit toys.' So yeah, I didn't have any girlfriends, I didn't have any interest from any girlfriends. I think I went on one date in high school, and I got so nervous I never talked to her again. Weirdly, I still know her. We're still friendly. And because I was this Black guy hanging out with two white Jewish kids, some of the other Black kids in the school sort of held it against me. Like, I was somehow turning my back on them, even though it was really just like, 'no, I'm just hanging out the people who hang out with me,' you know. So, I would not say I had a great high school experience, but I did meet great — two great friends, one of whom, like I still see Rob every, like, year, two years, three years or so, we'll come across each other. But, like, Jason is still my best friend to this day. So I choose my choices. 

Sophie Bearman [00:12:17] So your next song, it's from Living Colour. Why'd you choose Time's Up?

Kamau Bell [00:12:22] You know, I talked earlier about my friend Rob and introduced me to music and at one point when we went to the record store and he bought the album on CD and cassette like you did back in the day and we went into his car and 'he's like, you need to listen to this' and he just sort of put it in and press play. Time's Up is the very first song on that album. That album is still my favorite album of all time and it's just sort like, it sounded like what I heard in my head. Like it sounded like — like it sounded like cacophonous and Black and — but weird. And dissonant. And so, yeah, so I think that, like, it's, you know, it's it's a Black band filled with, like incredible musicians who play jazz and music from all over the world deciding to play a Bad-Brains-style thrash punk song, so. 

Music [00:13:11] [Time's Up by Living Colour plays]

Kamau Bell [00:13:13] It's — I mean, it's one of those songs, it like the stereotypical 'teenager hates their parents' song. It's a song that like, 'turn that down!' 

Music [00:13:28] [Time's Up by Living Colour plays]

Kamau Bell [00:13:29] And it's about 'time's up,' which is the thing you feel as a teenager. But it's also literally about climate change, which is like the Living Colour side of it. It's a song about how the war — and this is from 1990, and they're talking about climate change, which, you know. It's like incredibly skilled musicians can do, can play very simple chord progressions, but bring a lot to them through their attack. And so, for me, it was a way to sort of, like, express and channel my anger. In a way that felt like it was actually, like, clarifying and, like, like — it's sort of like at the end you felt better about it and not worse. 

Sophie Bearman [00:14:03] And in terms of channeling your anger, what were you angry about?

Kamau Bell [00:14:08] I grew up a thing called Black in America, and you never felt like as a Black person growing up in America that you fit in anywhere, I mean even with Black people, but it just felt like you were all — like, you know, by the time I turned 13, I would be out in the world and I was probably six feet tall. There was just a sense that, like, either people were afraid of me or they were ignoring me, which is so you're like, either like — either people are actively not looking you in the eye or they're staring daggers through you. And so, you're just always aware that like... You're somebody's problem. And, and I was also a very sensitive, like, soft-hearted kid. And so it really bugged me. Like, I'm like, 'I'm not really trying — I'm just trying to walk through the world.' So I remember I got kicked out of a record store one time when I was fifteen, just for being Black in a record store, and I know it was that because my friend, my white friend Rob was in the same exact record store being a teenager, and he did not get kicked out. And so I remember just being like, like, just being frustrated by the fact that I couldn't just be a person walking through the world, that I was always — everywhere I went, I was a Black man in America. And so yeah, but I wasn't like — but the anger of rap music didn't feel, um... didn't feel... it didn't feel accurate to me the way the anger of like Fishbone and Living Colour and even Rollins Band and Raging Against the Machine. I think there was something those things they were mad at, and they were also sort of, there was a sort of a, I don't know the musicality of it I really enjoyed too. 

Sophie Bearman [00:15:31] And you got kicked out of a cafe later with your wife, right?

Kamau Bell [00:15:34] Yes, I did. That one I got asked to leave and I left. The one — when I was a kid, I got kicked out. Like, they literally, the guy grabbed me by my jacket and threw me out with the — yeah, it was the Elmwood Cafe in Berkeley, California when I was on my birthday, 2015, I went to say hello to my wife and our six-week-old baby, our middle kid — who's now our middle kid — and this woman thought that I was bothering my white wife and her white-looking friends and tried to give me the, literally the bum's rush. They thought I was a bum and they were trying to rush me out of the way. Uh, yeah. 

Sophie Bearman [00:16:07] Oh my god. How do you still have, like, empathy after shit like that?

Kamau Bell [00:16:11] I don't give my empathy away, first of all. I don't have — I don't, there's, there — you can lose my empathy. And so I think that's the thing that is very clear. I have empathy for people who vote against their self-interest if I think they don't know they're doing it, even if they are doing things that are damaging to me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:16:28] Yeah.

Kamau Bell [00:16:28] Until I realized.... But I don't have empathy for people who are tricking people into voting against their self-interest. So I had a certain level of empathy for like, when I did the Klan episode of like... 'Oh, somebody has weaponized your economic anger against Black people. Like they've told you that all of the things you can't have in your life is Black people's fault.' Now, that doesn't mean if the Klan shows up on my doorstep, I'm like, 'guys, let's hug it out.' You know what I mean? Like, you know, there's like there's sort of the empathy. But also, like, at some point, it's about like, 'well, yeah, but I'm not going to have that discussion with you unless it's on camera for CNN.'

Sophie Bearman [00:17:03] Dang.

Kamau Bell [00:17:03] I'm not just going to do it at my house — if you show up at my house to burn a cross, we're not going have a discussion about it. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:07] Yeah, yeah, and it's so much less about who you're talking to, actually, than the viewer, whose mind could be changed.

Kamau Bell [00:17:14] Yeah, no — I'm doing, I got people who would obviously be like, 'why didn't you punch' — like Richard Spencer, who was a alt-right guy — 'why didn't punch him in the face?' 'Cause then you wouldn't have heard how silly he was. Like, he was like, he sat there and said a bunch of silly things that later I found out even the people in his political group were like, 'that sounded silly.'

Sophie Bearman [00:17:34] It's time for a quick break. When we come back, Kamau follows through on his 10-year-old dream and becomes a stand-up comedian. Stay with us. So I wanna talk more about your comedy and getting into standup. I guess before we go there though, you chose a song that you like because it's funny. So what song is that?

Kamau Bell [00:18:08] So that's — my mom is a big Ray Charles fan. So we heard a lot of Ray. So I heard a lotta Ray Charles in my house, which is also like, I think Ray Charles is one of those people who weirdly has become underrated, even though at the time he was definitely not underrated when he was in the midst of his career. But like, he was basically like Stevie Wonder before Stevie Wonder. Like, he could sort of do anything and play anything. Not because they're blind, but because they were super talented musicians. So she loved Ray Charles. And I just remember that song, Hit the Road Jack, was like one of his big hits. And I enjoyed it a lot when I was a little kid. And I think part of the reason I enjoyed it cause it was funny. Like it was about somebody getting kicked. It was about a dude getting kicked out of his house. But sort of like having a good time getting kicked out. 

Music [00:18:50] [Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles plays]

Kamau Bell [00:18:59] And just the backup singers. 'Hit the road, Jack. Don't you come back no more, no more. No more, No more.' Even those horn beats are funny. 'I guess if you say so.' BAM! Wait, that's... 'What you say?' Like even that, like it's — it's just, this could be a sad, depressing song. 

Sophie Bearman [00:19:17] Okay, so this song, like, when were you listening to it?

Kamau Bell [00:19:20] That's gotta be the '70s. I was born in '73, so we gotta be like, that song reminds me of being a little kid. My mom had a giant, giant hi-fi stereo, like with the, where we were playing records on it, like the giant, like wood — fake wood paneled stereos. Back when they thought electronic stuff should look like furniture. Back when it was supposed to look like a chest of drawers, you know? Like an armoire. 

Sophie Bearman [00:19:44] Let's talk about comedy when you start getting into it. Did you ever, like, bomb a comedy show early on? How did that go?

Kamau Bell [00:19:50] Oh yeah, of course, yeah. The only comic who I've ever heard say they never bombed is Sinbad. And I kind of believe him, because Sinbad — it just seems like he's so charming. But yeah, I bombed a lot. And actually, I was — I would say that like, it took me three years to get sort of funny-ish, and then it took another sort of three or four years to get consistently funny enough where I was working. And then it took me another three years to get like really funny, where it's like, 'oh no, he's a really funny comedian,' instead of just like, 'he was a nice guy who does comedy.' But then it took me after that first ten years to really sort of like, 'okay, now I really wanna dig deep and figure out who am I and what am I doing and find my voice' and all those things.

Sophie Bearman [00:20:27] Is there a certain show format or moment that comes to mind where you're like, 'okay, this is what I should be doing?'

Kamau Bell [00:20:34] The thing that broke my career is also the thing that sort of helped me find my voice. I was doing standup in clubs, and then me and my friend of mine got a gig playing some military bases in Okinawa. And we did like, I don't know, nine shows in ten nights or eight shows in nine, something where you're like, every night you're in a different military base. And this was like ten years into my career, maybe actually more than ten years in my career. And I basically like... bombed the first night and then every night sort of worked because you had to go up the next night and sort of like every night I'm like rewriting stuff or writing new things or doing crowd work to try to get people to you know — it's sort of like, I had to fill 45 minutes and every night I would just barely get to that 45 minute mark and be like "oh, thank God. Oh, thank —" It was just — and I came back and I was like, 'is this what I do for a living? Am I just a guy who goes on stage and fights for the audience's love?' And I'm like, I don't think I want to be that guy. And that's when I started writing my solo show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve, Ending Racism in About an Hour. I was like, 'this is the comic I want it to be.' And that show, I sort of just took a black box theater in San Francisco, at the Shelton Theater. And basically it was like, 'I'm gonna write what I wanna talk about and you come see it and if you like it, come back again and send your people.' And that's the show where I decided I only wanna talk — not only — but I wanna to talk about racism and race in this country in the way that I wanna about it. And I was gonna give myself the permission to, like, tell longer stories on stage and to use PowerPoint slides and things. So it's like, I'm not doing it in a format that currently exists in a comedy club. 

Sophie Bearman [00:21:59] Speaking of comedy shows, your next song comes up a lot in your work. You chose Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

Kamau Bell [00:22:04] It has often become a reference in stand-up comedy when I'm trying to reference Blackness. I'm like, if I'm out, like if I try to explain to the audience how Black something was, I will go, 'swing low, sweet chariot.' Like it is just like a, it is a, it is a Vitamin B12 shot of Black church. Every Black church worth its salt is singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Like nobody's skipping, that's like, I don't know if that's the greatest hit of gospel, but it's one of the, it's gotta be one of the Top 10, you can't have a Black church and go too many Sundays without singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot or else you'll have your Black church status revoked. 

Music [00:22:40] [Swing Low Street Chariot by 103rd Street Gospel Choir featuring Pat Lewis plays]

Kamau Bell [00:23:03] There you go, see. It's got that bounce. Remix!

Sophie Bearman [00:23:07] That's the moment.

Kamau Bell [00:23:12] See, and it's also about the arrangement of it. Like this one is, there's everybody arranges it differently. So some people it's a dirge the whole time and some people like that, it gets bouncy and you know. But it's like — but yeah, it's just so yeah, that's a — that's a classic. 

Sophie Bearman [00:23:26] As you're talking about this decision to focus mostly on race in your work, and I'm thinking about what you said earlier about how your mom was always making that a priority, it feels really full circle. Did that have an influence on you?

Kamau Bell [00:23:39] The way I put it is that, like, my mom was doing all this, like, movement work and also just making sure her job also reflected her ideology. So, like, she was a textbook editor but she made sure that the stories in the textbook were diverse and this is back in the, again, in the early '80s before diversity was even like a buzzword. She just wanted to make sure that, like, like she put my name in the book, Kamau, because she wanted there to be diverse types of kids names in the English textbook she was editing. And so, and it wasn't her job to make them diverse. She just did. That's what she, I always say Black — I always say Black people have two jobs: the job you're hired for, and then the job to make it easier on your people who are coming behind you. So that's the thing I learned from her, what she learned from her dad, it's like just the way it was. Like he was like, 'I work hard. I have three jobs to make, to pay the rent. And then I do, I go to church every night to help the community,' you know. So, and I, and he's on leadership boards and things. And so that's a thing I've learned from my mom that she learned from her dad. And, so, I was just a kid who was an '80s kid who was like, 'I like Saturday Night Live, and Eddie Murphy, and comedy, and Jerry Seinfeld.' And so when I started doing comedy, I wasn't really trying to do political, race comedy. But those jokes would come up. Whenever I told them, they wouldn't always work. And I'd sort of be like, 'uh-huh, maybe I shouldn't do these jokes.' But I always sort of found myself drawn to that kind of material. And the way I sort of looked at it later was like, basically, defeating white supremacy was our family hardware store. And so no matter what you do, that you're gonna work in the family hardware stores. So even if I'm a comedian, eventually I gotta take over the hardware store. So that's what I did is like, this is how my mom did it through like self-publishing books with Black quotations and I'm doing it through stand-up comedy and documentaries, but it's still the family hardware store of defeating white supremacy. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:24] So this next song you described in your notes to me as perfect.

Kamau Bell [00:25:29] It's Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears, an '80s classic. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:33] Why'd you choose it?

Kamau Bell [00:25:34] So there's a lot of great pop music in the '80s, but when I was — so that album came out in what, '83? 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:40] '85, I think.

Kamau Bell [00:25:41] '85. So I'm 12, I don't know why I like that album. There's something about that guy's voice, the lead singer, there's something there about the melodies, there's something about the melancholy of it. I think even as a 12 year old, I was like, 'I'll never find a woman either.' You know what I mean? So there's something. And I love the fact that it almost starts at the climax and then goes back to the song and comes back to it. So it gets very cleverly written. And I just think about, it reminds me of being 12, sitting in the back seat of cars. And that song would come on and I would just be, like, taken away on the melodies. And I was like, 'I don't even understand why I like this.' Like I'm 12, you know. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:13] That's that special age. Yeah, I have a couple songs where I just like screamed into a hair brush, you know, and you're like...

Kamau Bell [00:26:18] Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:18] That's not even relevant to my life.

Kamau Bell [00:26:19] Yeah, it's like these two white British dudes. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:21] Yeah.

Kamau Bell [00:26:22] And they actually sound like white British dudes. They're not doing the thing where they pretend to sound like Americans. And I love this song more than I should. This is a song I'm like, 'nobody's going to expect this one,' but I really like it. 

Music [00:26:35] [Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears plays]

Kamau Bell [00:26:35] You get those falsettos. Here we go, here we go, here we go. 'Feel I —' oh, there you go. You gotta have a falsetto. And it's also got movements, like it's sort of like, here we go. See now, it's 'don't, don't throw it.' Got the synthesizer, '80s synthesizer, synthesizer-ing. And then at the end, 'this is my four leaf clover.' Like, it's just so like, it like, man, it's like maple syrup. It's like so, yeah, that's a good song. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:10] So you and your wife have three daughters.

Kamau Bell [00:27:13] Yup. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:13] You chose a song — it's your last song, it's a song by Nina Simone that you wrote that you, uh, used to or still do play for your daughters?

Kamau Bell [00:27:22] Yeah, so we — this started during the pandemic for my two oldest kids, 'cause it was a way to, like, get them out of bed in the morning and motivate them. And it's an uplifting song, and it's also a very Black song, and Nina Simone — I didn't learn about Nina Simone until I was in my twenties. And one thing as a parent, I was like, 'I really gotta make sure they know who Nina Simone is.' Like, it just felt like — felt like a hole, my mom... I was like, 'how did you do that to me, mom?' And so, it's not a thing I play to wake them up anymore, but it is a song that we will play in the house. So it's definitely a part of the... their, the, the DNA of the Bell family is, is Nina Simone, just generally, because we've played other Nina Simone songs, but that one specifically. And also I think for me, knowing that they're all mixed race and wanting them to sort of really understand that that still means that they are Black, it's a great way for them to claim their Blackness. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:06] This is Nina Simone's song, Young, Gifted, and Black. 

Music [00:28:08] [To Be Young, Gifted, and Black by Nina Simone plays]

Kamau Bell [00:28:23] It's also a very sweet Nina Simone song and not a lot of her songs are sweet. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:29] It's very sweet.

Kamau Bell [00:28:30] Some of her songs have some edge to them, which — and they've heard those songs too, like Mississippi Goddamn. But also I like the dissonance of it: 'young!' Like it's a little bit like, and she's a classically trained singer, so she knows what she's doing. Is that like, it's little bit, 'young, gifted, and Black!' There's a great live version of her doing it in front of a group full of like Black kids and young people on YouTube. And it's her explaining why she wrote the song, where the song came from. And then it's her performing it and she sort of narrates through the song. And it's — I've... we've played that video in my house a bunch of times. 

Sophie Bearman [00:29:03] I love that. You know, earlier you talked about how dismantling white supremacy is kind of like a family business, it's a hardware store that you're all working at. And so when you think about your daughters right now and their futures, and I'm thinking especially in this particular moment in time, what are you thinking about? What does that look like?

Kamau Bell [00:29:26] So, the way that I sort of think about it is that like, my family is descended from American slavery. So, if you think about the — we're not that far away from enslavement, like that many generations away. So the enslavement generation, just by the fact they survived and were able to have kids who were free, those kids have like, I think of it as the Black baton, they're getting past the Black baton. And the Black baton is lighter just 'cause you're not enslaved. And then the generation who was like sharecropping then passes it down to the next generation, who are actually able to have, like, professional jobs and maybe even own a business or two or something, or just be in the community. So the baton gets lighter. Then that generation passes it down to my mom's generation, which is actually the Civil Rights Movement and can actually achieve levels of success and do things that her parents generation didn't get to do. The baton get lighter. My mom passes it to me. It is significantly lighter since she fought the Civil Right Movement. And I feel like I got the Black baton now, potentially handing it off to my girls. And it might get heavier because of where we are right now. And so for me, it just means that like, if I don't want it to get heavier, I got to really do a lot more work and I got really inspire others to do more work and help other people do work because otherwise I will be the first generation of Black people who's handing their descendants a heavier baton to carry the weight of Blackness and I don't really want to do that. So I would say that my daughters are very aware of the fact that you want to be successful in life but you also got to make sure that you're making it easier for the people behind you. Now they're young, so it doesn't mean anything to them, but they understand that their Blackness is a part of their identity, and Black liberation is gonna be a part of their job someday. We call it the family business. Part of our family business is helping other people. Now it's — at thirteen, ten, and six, it really, at this point, just say 'thank you' and be nice, you know what I mean? Just be gracious and be kind, and so that's a big thing we talk about. But at some point it means, like, actually help. 

Sophie Bearman [00:31:25] What's something you're working on now, like a project you're mulling over?

Kamau Bell [00:31:28] I mean, I'm back to stand up for the first time in like, I took like five years off, sort of like thought I was retired, but then came back. And a lot of it is about the girls and then the girls actually participate. Like Sammy would open and play guitar like she did last night. And Juno, sometimes when she's there, she sits off stage with a microphone and sort of talks to me through the show and has a couple of jokes she does. My mom, for six of the seven shows, like, basically went out to introduce me, but she would like, sort of like, do some jokes about me. Like not that she perceived them as jokes, but she'd tell stories that were very funny. And it was just like, 'this is exactly the way I wanted it to be.' Like it's just stand-up comedy can be such a solitary act, but it was like, it was made so much better by the fact that my family was involved. So I'm really excited about doing it in a way that it's like a whole family thing happening and not just sort of the selfish act of stand-up comedy. 

Sophie Bearman [00:32:14] Kamau, thank you so much.

Kamau Bell [00:32:16] Thank you. 

Sophie Bearman [00:32:41] Life in Seven Songs is a production from The San Francisco Standard. If you liked Kamau's episode, you might enjoy Margaret Cho's, where she talks about how comedy saved her life. Check it out. Our senior producer is Jasmyn Morris. Our producers are Michelle Lanz, who also mixes the show, and Tessa Kramer. Our theme music is by Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler, and Clark Miller created our show art. Our music consultant is Sarah Tembeckjian. Executive producers are Griffin Gaffney, Jon Steinberg, and me. As always, you can find this guest's full playlist at sf.news/spotify. I'm Sophie Bearman. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.