It’s almost the weekend and I wanted to leave you, dear readers, with this brand new gem of a comedy album from Hari Kondabolu, a stand-up from Queens, New York. His brand of humor trends #racial #liberal and #progressive, which makes him sound like a bookish snore. Not the case! I’ve been to many of his shows (and many of his brother’s shows) and, while he certainly does appeal to the socially-minded, racially-conscious among us, he does so with an adeptness rare among contemporary popular comics. If Chris Rock circa Bring The Pain was the embodiment of outward comedic rage as a result of marginalization, then Hari is the smoldering inward counterpart. It’s no wonder he was a writer for the brilliant but (unfortunately) now defunct Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell.
Hari is removed from Seattle by less than a degree of separation — he used to live in the Town and counts Blue Scholars and Macklemore among his friends — so he falls conveniently within 206UP’s purview. In any case, Waiting For 2042 functions as both a comedic insider’s perspective on what it means to be a person of color in America and as a translation for those on the outside (read: white people) who wish to understand what it means. (Those people are rare, but they do exist and I’m trying to collect as many of them as I can.) As it turns out, some of my best friends are actually “you (white) people” and this album is required listening if you hope to keep me around for much longer.
A SEATTLE HIP-HOP BLOG 