85 South Talks Sensitivity And Cancel Culture In Comedy During NJ Tour Stop: “It’s Good To Be Funny”
85 South is an explosion of a comedy trio consisting of DC Young Fly, Chico Bean, and Karlous Miller. Individually, the Wild’n Out stars are funny, but together onstage for their Big Business Tour, they’re truly unstoppable.
At their recent Newark, NJ, stop on Saturday (July 27), the guys didn’t hesitate to immediately point out multiple people in the crowd to crack a few jokes. Much like they do on the hit VH1 show, the guys unapologetically called out body shapes, appearances, sexual orientation and more — all in the spirit of comedy.
“You look like me,” DC could be heard joking on one attendee as the entire arena bursted in laughter. And like a good sport, the target laughed it off as they were shown on the jumbotron.
Speaking with VIBE backstage, 85 South spoke on a few things that many seasoned comedians of today are dealing with; such as being canceled for their humor and dealing with sensitive fans.
“They understand where they coming to,” DC spoke of their supporters. “They know it ain’t no love lost when we doing that. It’s more so how we communicate and how we show love. At the end of the day we’re professionals, this is a culture thing. We grew up doing this type of sh*t.”
Miller added, “And plus, we’ve been doing this for so long, we got a large crowd. Whether they’re on the floor, in the front or whatever, they know that we’re going to say something [about them]. They look forward to it. Especially the people who buy the close seats. They love to be a part of the show. Plus the way that we do it, it’s all in good fun. We ain’t never really embarrassed nobody.”
DC chimed in, “We ain’t being facetious. We’ll never be facetious,” as Miller said, “It’s no aggression behind it. It’s just all good, clean, family fun.”
When asked of being timid to say certain things on stage in fear of being “cancelled,” the comedy trio seemed unfazed by the possibility. 85 made it clear that there’s no “malicious” intent in their jokes and the same way they joke on the crowd, is the same way they joke on one another.
“Can’t nobody shut it down. You dig what I’m saying? We don’t even think about those type of things,” DC said, as Miller foreshadowed, “You seen all those people at the Prudential center; the show is packed. So can you imagine that sh*t not happening because one person got offended?”
“Those are not even the type of people that come to support, them not the type of fans we want anyway,” DC added.
The guys asserted that they use their comedy as healing energy for themselves and others in the crowd. DC, who lost the mother of his children last year, shared that he uses his “trauma as motivation.” Miller, 41, also shared how being funny is a “good” as it “helps people” to “take their mind off of whatever they got going on at home.”
“Whether it be life situations, financial situations — just to be able to provide that escape — people depend on it,” he said. “Just knowing that they’re getting more than just a few seconds of laughter and you actually helping with the healing, it’s just amazing.”
Chico shared, “There’s no way that you could have came and told us when we was first starting out that people would come up and say some of the things that they say to us about what we do. So just to have a natural ability to affect people’s lives in the way that ours does, it is very fulfilling for us as well.”
“We know that there’s a village of people who are looking to us for motivation and looking to us to help them get through things,” he added.
85 South’s Big Business Comedy Tour is scheduled to hit the next set of cities including Dallas, Memphis, Jacksonville, Charlotte and more before wrapping on Nov. 23rd in New Orlean, La.
Grab tickets here.
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