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Even Bell's most ardent supporters would not say his act is perfect. He can come across as too professorial at times, his topical material sounding like a Daily Show retread, and his sets lack that perfect jolt of profanity, paired with insight, that help make Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, or even Sarah Silverman grab-your-sides, gasping-for-air funny. But he has tapped a nerve.
"Kamau has a lot of 'heat' right now in the industry," says the Punch Line booker, Molly Schminke, in an e-mail, noting that Los Angeles talent agents have been calling her for more information on him. Longtime Cobb's Comedy Club booker Tom Sawyer says that Bell has broken through. "It's not difficult for a funny person to write jokes; it's difficult for a funny person to find his or her voice, the voice that makes them honest with who they are," Sawyer says. "That's the path Kamau is on."
There is a very real threat, though, that Bell is out of step with the current national mood. In one set, he said something about a haiku, and then snapped back, "Bet you didn't expect to hear me say 'haiku.'" Well, actually, we see our president delivering ten-dollar words every day on TV.
Larry Wilmore, the Senior Black Correspondent for the Daily Show, recently noted that improved racial relations was terrible news for a black comic, whose "bread and butter is the seething unease between the races." And already this year, black comics D.L. Hughley and David Alan Grier have seen their topical news shows cancelled by CNN and Comedy Central, respectively; both shows suffered from a lack of clarity about who their audiences were supposed to be, let alone what messages about race to impart.
But perhaps Bell is the right guy for these confusing times. To appreciate his brand of comedy, you do have to come into the room wanting to talk about race. But you will also get to twist the subject matter, turn it, and approach it from multiple angles.
For instance, he does a joke about walking around the city, hand in hand with his wife, ending it with a description of his own reaction to seeing an interracial couple. "How do you go home to your mama?" he asks, pantomiming releasing Melissa's hand to face the imaginary couple. As Bell is fond of saying: Everyone's racist somehow. It just takes a comedian to talk about it.
