Run The Light With Jamar Neighbors

In this edition of Run the Light, we interview comic Jamar Neighbors

Brad: You recently did a spot on the Fresh Faces show at the Laugh Factory, how did that go?

Jamar: Fresh Faces was great. The Laugh Factory venue has always had great energy.

Brad: You seem to have new material to try every day, are you a joke writing machine or what?

Jamar: Haha a writing machine. I’m a thinking machine. I love doing new stuff because it makes comedy that much more fun for me. I see people do the same material over and over, which is fine because people are going to work the way they work, but I look at them like, “Man I’d kill myself if I had to work like that.”

Brad: We’ve heard many people list you as their favorite comic to watch, what up with that?

Jamar: Man, I wish I knew. Maybe it’s the unpredictability. I think a lot of comics watch and go, “this may be the set where he pulls out his penis, and we don’t see that often.” I think comics dig the fearlessness I hear them say often. You know what’s so crazy? What they call fearlessness is what I call naivety. Does that make sense. A lot of times I’ll say something and somebody will walk up to me and say, “Man I can’t believe you said that!” and I go, “What did I say?” then they’ll repeat it back to me and I usually go, “And what’s the problem?” Yeah so maybe it’s the fearlessness. Which is always kind of been a weird thing to me, I rarely ever see a reason to fear something you’ve thought. It goes back to that Eminem quote, “If I’m sick/crazy enough to think it, then I’m crazy enough to say it.” That’s how you stand out.

Brad: Growing up, which comics influenced you the most?

Growing up the first comic I ever saw was Martin Lawrence on Def Comedy Jam. It must’ve been Like 1992 I was 6, I wasn’t even aware of the art form, I just saw a man on stage cursing and people were laughing. A part of me at 6 was like, “Hey I may wanna do that when I get older.” then later I got into Dave Chappelle because that’s the first comedian I saw and felt that we were similar. He’s like a goof ball mixed with a philosopher. So I was like, “hey that’s me!” Then of course the Eddie Murphy’s, Richard Pryor’s I got into after Chappelle and Lawrence later and everyone else who’s great (Rock, Carlin, Carmichael, Anwar, Baker, Neighbors) hahaha. Honorable mention to Mitch Hedberg.

Brad: You have a crazy cool voice, you ever think about doing voice overs or anything?

Jamar: Ha, voice overs! Eventually I wanna get into it. I had one voice over audition because of my voice which was really fun. It’s crazy I never usually do it, but lately I’ve been recording my sets on my phone and I never really used to like to listen to myself because I was insecure about my voice but now that i listen to it, I wrote this little synopsis for a movie about a house roach named Antwone. I want it to be the first animated animal in a movie to say, “Nigga” for some reason. So that’s a thing I definitely want to do eventually. But other than that, no voice over work right now. Just strictly stand up and screen and concept writing for me right now.

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