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Late registration , graduation , and 808s and heartbreak, taylor swift incident at the vmas and my beautiful dark twisted fantasy, yeezy fashion debut and the life of pablo, social media controversies, ye , donald trump, and donda, continuing controversies and vultures 1.

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Kanye West (born June 8, 1977, Atlanta, Georgia , U.S.) is an American producer, rapper, and fashion designer who parlayed his production success in the late 1990s and early 2000s into a career as a popular, critically acclaimed solo artist. One of the most controversial and influential celebrities of his generation, West attracted notoriety with a public persona that at times overshadowed his music .

West was the child of an Atlanta -based news photographer and former Black Panther father, Ray West, and a college professor mother, Donda (née Williams) West. His parents divorced when he was three, and West was raised by his mother mainly in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago , where she began teaching at Chicago State University . When West was 10 years old, he moved with his mother to China for a year for an education exchange program in which Donda West taught at Nanjing University. West showed artistic ability at a young age, often winning talent shows as a child. He attended Chicago State University for one year before dropping out to pursue a career in music.

Early on he demonstrated his considerable abilities as a producer, contributing to Jermaine Dupri’s album Life in 1472 (1998) before relocating to the New York City area, where he made his name with his production work for Roc-A-Fella Records, especially on rapper Jay-Z ’s album Blueprint (2001). West’s skillful use of accelerated sample-based beats soon made him much in demand as a producer, but he struggled to be allowed to make his own recordings (partly because of the perception that his middle-class background denied him credibility as a rapper). When he finally released his debut solo album, The College Dropout (2004), it was massively successful: sales soared, and critics gushed over its sonic sophistication and clever wordplay, which blended humor, faith, insight, and political awareness on songs such as “Through the Wire” and the gospel -choir-backed “ Jesus Walks.” The latter cut won a Grammy Award for best rap song in 2005, and West also picked up awards that year for best rap album and best rhythm-and-blues song (as one of the songwriters of Alicia Keys ’s “ You Don’t Know My Name”).

Abetted by his flamboyant personality, West quickly rose to stardom. His second album, Late Registration (2005), repeated the commercial success of his first—with a number of hit singles, including “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” and “Gold Digger”—and earned West three more Grammy Awards. He also gained attention for his widely quoted assertion that the federal government’s slow response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans in 2005 demonstrated that U.S. Pres. George W. Bush “doesn’t care about Black people”—a comment that Bush later characterized as one of the worst moments of his presidency.

As his career as a performer took off, West continued to work as a producer, with credits including songs by such high-profile artists as Nas , Mariah Carey , and Beyoncé . He also founded the record label GOOD Music, an imprint of Def Jam Records . His third release, Graduation (2007), produced the hit singles “Good Life” and “Stronger” and garnered him four more Grammy Awards. In 2008 West released 808s and Heartbreak , an album that dwelled on feelings of personal loss and regret. (His mother had died the previous year from a heart attack following cosmetic surgery .) Its sound differed radically from his previous releases, as West chose to sing (with the assistance of a vocal production tool called Auto-Tune) rather than rap his lyrics.

West spent much of late 2009 rehabilitating his image. He had rushed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards, preempting Taylor Swift ’s acceptance speech for best female video, to declare that “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” Video footage of the incident quickly went viral on the Internet, and West found himself vilified in the media. A series of apologies, some of them appearing as a stream-of-consciousness narrative on West’s Twitter (rebranded as X in 2023) feed, soon followed.

The brashness that caused him such trouble in 2009 fueled a triumphant return to music the following year, with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , a monumentally complex exploration of the nature of success and celebrity. With potent rhymes that were in equal parts boastful and self-effacing, instrumentation that ranged from tribal drums to soaring orchestral accompaniment, and a list of guest performers that included Jay-Z, Rihanna , Kid Cudi, and Chris Rock , the album represented some of West’s most ambitious work, and it was rewarded with a trio of Grammys. He followed it with Watch the Throne (2011), a Billboard chart-topping collaboration with Jay-Z that featured the Grammy-winning singles “Otis,” “Niggas in Paris,” and “No Church in the Wild.”

In 2012 West presented Cruel Summer , a compilation album featuring him and some of the artists signed to his GOOD Music label. A year later, on Yeezus (2013), West continued to explore the dark corners of his psyche, at times filtering his observations through the provocative lens of racial politics, as on “New Slaves.” In contrast to the extravagance of his previous solo efforts, the album found him rapping over jagged minimalist arrangements evocative of house and industrial music and embellished with spare samples of soul and dancehall vocalists. Its most successful single was “Bound 2,” in part because of its racy music video featuring West and his then girlfriend, the reality-television star Kim Kardashian . (The couple, who were frequently in the public eye, were married in 2014 and eventually had four children: North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm. In 2021 it was announced that they were divorcing, and their split was finalized in 2022.)

In February 2015 West, in conjunction with German apparel company Adidas , unveiled the first “season,” or collection, of his long-awaited fashion line, YEEZY. YEEZY Season 1 featured men’s and women’s streetwear, including oversize sweaters, military- and surplus-inspired jackets, sneakers, boots, and more.

West’s fashion work continued leading up to the release of his eighth studio album, The Life of Pablo (2016); in fact, he debuted tracks from the album at his showcase of YEEZY Season 3 at Madison Square Garden in New York. The gospel-tinged album further demonstrated West’s inventiveness as a producer, but critics found it disjointed. In addition, the work itself was somewhat overshadowed by the unconventional circumstances of its release; after making an initial version of the album available online, West continued to tinker with it in the studio, calling it a “living breathing changing creative expression.” The tour supporting the album was abruptly canceled in November 2016, and West was briefly hospitalized. West’s fifth fashion collection, YEEZY Season 5, was released at New York Fashion Week in February 2017.

West was uncharacteristically quiet for several months before provocatively reemerging on social media in April 2018. He notably defended a statement he had made in a televised interview suggesting that enslaved African Americans had cooperated in their enslavement. Later that year he released the chaotic and unsettling ye , on which he declared that he is bipolar . Kids See Ghosts , a collaboration with rapper Kid Cudi, followed shortly thereafter. Like ye , it focused on mental health but to much better effect; intense and spooky, the album was widely viewed as more interesting and rewarding than West’s solo effort. His next release, Jesus Is King , was a gospel album that reflected his recommitment to Christianity ; it later won the Grammy for best contemporary Christian music album. During this time West remained involved in fashion, and YEEZY Season 6 and Season 7 were released in 2018 and 2019, respectively, though neither was shown at New York Fashion Week.

In July 2020, less than four months before the U.S. presidential election, West announced that he was running for the office as a member of the so-called Birthday Party. He did little campaigning, but he released a platform that notably called for reforming the police and legal system, reducing student debt, and having prayer in schools. Republican Pres. Donald Trump and his followers supported West’s candidacy, believing that he could lure some voters away from the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden , in what was expected to be an incredibly close election. However, West ultimately garnered only 0.04 percent of the national vote, not enough to have any effect on the outcome. In 2021 he released his 10th studio album, Donda . Named for his mother, it features collaborations with such artists as JAY-Z and The Weeknd . He also opened a private Christian school in California called Donda Academy, though the school was soon beset with numerous complaints and lawsuits. Later that year Kanye West officially changed his name to Ye.

While not a stranger to controversy, West faced particular backlash for objectionable behavior in 2022. During his YEEZY show at Paris Fashion Week in October, he and his models wore shirts emblazoned with “White Lives Matter.” Shortly thereafter West made a series of comments that were widely seen as anti-Semitic . Notably, he posted on Twitter that he was preparing to “go death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Many interpreted the tweet as a reference to defcon, a U.S. military readiness system. This and other comments resulted in Instagram and Twitter locking his accounts and removing content. West subsequently announced that he planned on acquiring Parler, a conservative social media platform. However, the proposed sale never materialized. During this time a number of companies, including Adidas , ended their endorsement deals with West, and his booking agency, Creative Arts Agency, stopped representing him. It was also revealed that Def Jam Records had parted ways with West and GOOD Music, their contract having expired in 2021.

In December 2023 West posted an apology to the Jewish community on Instagram. Written in Hebrew , the statement read in part, “Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity.” Also in 2023 West teamed with rapper Ty Dolla $ign to form the duo ¥$. They released the single “Vultures” in November, followed by the album Vultures 1 in February 2024. With no record label, West distributed the album solely through streaming services. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and earned more than $1 million in its first week. Among those making guest appearances were Lil Durk, Freddie Gibbs, Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, and West’s eldest child, North West. Shortly before its release, West hinted that volumes two and three of Vultures would be released in early 2024.

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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Kanye West

By Jon Caramanica

• April 10, 2015

For over a decade, the rap superstar has made music that pushes boundaries, courts controversy and divides critics. Now, the man who has compared himself to Jesus and Steve Jobs just wants to make clothes for the masses.

On a Sunday afternoon in early February, Kanye West was in a makeshift conference room at the downtown New York showroom of Adidas, mapping out his vision for fashion, and everything else, too. It was three days after the presentation of his first sportswear collection, Yeezy Season 1, at New York Fashion Week. Produced in collaboration with Adidas Originals, Yeezy was the culmination of more than a decade of striving, self-teaching, self-humbling and agitating for attention.

The Yeezy presentation — where Jay Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Alexander Wang, West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, and their squalling daughter, North, sat in the front row alongside Anna Wintour — was not a traditional runway show. Instead, West had staged a phalanx of 50 models, many of them selected from an open call. The aesthetic of the unisex clothes borrowed from contemporary “athleisure” wear and traditional military surplus, distorting familiar silhouettes and distilling high-minded influences into street-ready looks. Not all the feedback was positive, but West seemed unfazed. “We destroyed the first village, the fashion village,” he told the group of 10 or so, graphic designers and members of his creative team obliged to attend a Sunday lunchtime meeting.

West, who is partial to lofty rhetoric, is most at ease when sermonizing, delivering extemporaneous speeches that are part Vince Lombardi, part Tony Robbins, part Martin Luther King Jr. (“They classify my motivational speeches as rants!” he has said.) As the group listened, rapt, he segued from his plans to teach feng shui and color theory in schools, to having passed on what he says was a multimillion dollar partnership with Apple, to — in language both admiring and profane — the surpassing perfection of Kris Jenner’s progeny. And then he got to his point.

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6 Lessons on public speaking from Kanye West

Kanye West. Rapper. Father. Fashion designer. Horrible public speaker.

This Sunday’s Video Music Awards (VMAs) featured phenomenal performances by some of the music industry’s top performers, and then one huge mess of a speech delivered by West. We’re not entirely sure what Kanye was even trying to say, but below are some of the ways to avoid sounding like a complete lunatic while addressing millions of people.

Knowing the following lessons below in the business world, it’s clear that even in the entertainment industry, you need to be professional. Professional public speaking builds credibility and will make the overall effectiveness of your speech that much more meaningful. Take a look at the all the things Kayne West did wrong during his speech and then never repeat the same mistakes.

Six lessons on public speaking learned from Kanye West:

• Bullet points  • Regardless of how famous you are and how much the crowd wants to revel in your glory — get to the point. Kanye spends approximately 1 minute and 7 seconds introducing himself when he has already been clapped for and introduced over the loud speaker. It’s OK to love hearing your name chanted, but you only have so much time to deliver your speech, and people only have so much time to listen to you brag about yourself.
• Know your audience  • Avoid addressing your audience as “BROOO.” You may have some “bros” in the audience but you also probably have some “Mrs.’s” and “Dr.’s”
• Listen & then speak  • Do not interrupt your speech to give a shout out to your ex-girlfriend (even if she is Amber Rose). No one has time to listen to your relationship drama while attempting to find the point to your speech that still has not become remotely evident.
• Know body language  • If you can clearly tell that your wife and biggest supporter is having immense amounts of second-hand embarrassment and shaking her head at you, it might be time to wrap it up.
• Make sense of what you are saying  • When you finally get to the center of your speech, which in this case is some very heavy commentary on racial inequality, make sure you articulate it in a way that makes it seem as important as it is. Once again, ending your potentially eloquent sentences with “bro” is a sure fire way to remove all credibility from your speaking.
• Research & Prepare  • Finally, before getting up to speak to millions of people, make sure you have some sort of idea of what you’re going to talk about because although you may touch on some important topics, you don’t always have four minutes of time to rant about nothingness before you get to the point.

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Kanye West is an outspoken Grammy Award-winning rapper, record producer and fashion designer.

Who Is Kanye West?

Kanye West initially made his mark on the music industry as a producer for leading artists. He showcased his own abilities as a rapper with his 2004 debut, College Dropout , and cemented his place atop the hip hop world via such chart-topping albums as Late Registration (2005), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), Yeezus (2013) and Ye (2018). The winner of nearly two dozen Grammy Awards, West is also known for his awards-show theatrics, forays into fashion and marriage to Kim Kardashian .

Kanye Omari West was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 8, 1977. His father, Ray, was a photojournalist for the Atlanta Journal newspaper and was also politically active in the Black Panthers; he later became a Christian counselor. West's mother, Donda, was a teacher who became a professor of English at Chicago State University, and eventually, her son's manager before she died at the age of 58 from heart disease after cosmetic surgery in 2007. Her passing would profoundly affect West musically as well as personally.

Ray and Donda divorced amicably when West was three. After that he was raised on Chicago's middle-class South Shore neighborhood by his mother, and spent summers with his father. At the age of 10, West moved for a year with Donda to China, where she taught as part of a university-exchange program; he was the only foreigner in his class. After returning to Chicago, West was drawn to the South Side's hip-hop scene, and he befriended the DJ and producer No I.D., who became his mentor. West graduated from Polaris High School and won a scholarship to study at Chicago's American Academy of Art — but dropped out of college altogether to pursue music, an act that would inform the title of his first solo album years later.

Music Producer

After spending time producing for local artists, West developed a signature style, dubbed "chipmunk soul," characterized by sped-up soul samples. He then moved to New York in 2001. Here he got his big break handling the production for the Jay-Z track "This Can't Be Life," which appeared on the 2000 album Dynasty: Roc La Familia . The following year he cemented his burgeoning reputation by producing four songs on Jay Z's The Blueprint , widely regarded as one of the greatest rap albums of all time. From there, West went on to produce for other stellar talents, including the rappers Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Ludacris , and the singers Alicia Keys and Beyoncé .

But West was not content to be a backroom player. He wanted to be the headline act but initially struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper. He pleaded with Roc-A-Fella records to let him rap, but as co-founder Jay-Z later told Time magazine, "We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by. Then there's Kanye, who to my knowledge has never hustled a day in his life. I didn't see how it could work." West got a similar response from other labels. "I'd leave meetings crying all the time," he recalled.

With reluctance, Damon Dash signed West to Roc-A-Fella in 2002, but he did so mostly to retain him as a producer. That October, as West was driving home from a recording session in a California studio, he was involved in a head-on car collision that left him with a shattered jaw. He wrote and recorded a song about the experience, "Through the Wire," with his jaw still wired shut following reconstructive surgery. He then wrote much of the rest of his debut album while recuperating in L.A. But once the album was complete, it was leaked online. In response, West decided to make it better: he revised and rewrote songs and refined the production, adding stronger drums, gospel choirs and strings (he paid for orchestras out of his own pocket).

'The College Dropout'

The album was finally released in February 2004 — it sold 2.6 million copies and made West a star. Titled The College Dropout , it broke the gangsta-rap mold, with themes including consumerism (he was critical of it back then), racism, higher education and his religious beliefs. On the single "Jesus Walks" he rapped, "They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus /That means guns, sex, lies, videotapes/But if I talk about God, my record won't get played." The College Dropout peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart, and West received 10 Grammy nominations, winning three awards including Best Rap Song for "Jesus Walks" and Best Rap Album. Shortly after the album was released, West founded his record label, GOOD music — an acronym for Getting Out Our Dreams — in conjunction with Sony BMG. He would put out music by John Legend , Big Sean, Common , Pusha-T and more.

'Late Registration'

West spent a year and $2 million on his sophomore album, hiring an orchestra and working with the composer Jon Brion, who had never worked with a rapper before. West, the restless bourgeois-creative, wanted to "see how far he could expand" hip hop, he told the New York Times. The results were spectacular, yielding another three Grammy wins — Best Rap Album again, plus Best Rap Song for "Diamonds from Sierra Leone," and Best Rap Solo Performance for "Gold Digger." Late Registration debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200 — a feat West would repeat with every subsequent solo album release.

"On Late Registration , the Louis Vuitton Don doesn't just set out to create pop music — he wants to be pop music," wrote Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone's five-star review of the album. "So he steps up his lyrical game, shows off his epic production skills, reaches higher, pushes harder, and claims the whole world of music as hip hop turf."

In September 2005, a month after Late Registration 's release, West appeared on an NBC broadcast to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He caused a national media storm — his first, but by no means his last — when he opined live on air that " George Bush doesn't care about Black people," articulating widespread criticism of the president for not visiting the devastated city of New Orleans right away. Bush was deeply stung by West's comment, later calling it a "disgusting moment."

'Graduation'

After touring with U2 in 2005-2006, West was inspired to make hip hop more anthemic, to be performed in stadiums and arenas. He began to draw influence from both rock 'n' roll (the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Killers) and house music (which originated in his hometown of Chicago). This led to his third album, Graduation , on September 11, 2007. It dropped the same day as 50 Cent 's album Curtis , in what was hyped as a battle for hip-hop's soul — the erudite showman versus the bullet-scarred street thug. But with Graduation 's groundbreaking (for hip-hop) palette of layered electronic synthesizers, and sloganeering wordplay — "I'm like the fly Malcolm X /Buy any jeans necessary," he smirked on "Good Morning" — there could only be one winner. West's album sold 957,000 copies in its first six days, going straight to No. 1.

With the music industry beginning to wring its hands about the effect of the internet on its profit margins, West simply embraced the change with his video for the single "Can't Tell Me Nothing," for which he hired the comedian Zach Galifianakis to lip-sync along to the lyrics on an alternate version, creating a viral sensation on YouTube.

Mother's Death

West was on top of the world, hailed as the artist who had killed gangsta rap. And then, in November 2007, tragedy struck. His beloved mother, Donda, died from a heart attack following cosmetic surgery. During his first concert following the funeral, he dedicated a performance of "Hey Mama" to her. Months later, West broke up with his fiancée, Alexis Phifer. His next album, 808s & Heartbreak , released 12 months after his mom died, was shot through with grief, pain and alienation. West even abandoned rapping altogether, preferring to sing through an Auto-Tune vocal processor, which lent his voice a robotic tone — a technique now ubiquitous in hip hop. He classified the new album as "pop art" (not to be confused with the visual art movement) and announced: "Hip hop is over for me." (It wasn't — he won two Grammys for guest raps he made that year, on Estelle's "American Boy" and TI's "Swagga Like Us.")

Taylor Swift VMA Diss and Feud

The fragility of West's state of mind was called into question at the MTV Video Music Awards the following year. At the ceremony in Radio City Music Hall in New York, he invaded the stage during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for the Best Female Video award (for "You Belong to Me") to protest that Beyoncé should have won instead.

The reverberations from that moment are still being felt. West apologized, then retracted his apology in a New York Times interview in 2013. By 2015 they had become friends and were even spotted at dinner together. Then in 2016 Kanye rapped on his song "Famous": "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that b**** famous." Swift hit back from the stage at the 2016 Grammy Awards — this time uninterrupted — with the words: "I want to say to all the young women out there: There will be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments... Don't let those people sidetrack you."

READ MORE: Taylor Swift and Kanye West: A Timeline of the Musicians' Decade-Long Feud

After the Swift debacle, West took a break from music to focus on fashion. He had already been collaborating with labels including A Bathing Ape and Nike on limited-edition sneakers since 2006. He even reportedly interned at Gap in 2009, and later Fendi, to gain experience. He launched his first collection in Paris in 2011 — but it was widely panned. "You can't just dump some fox fur on a runway and call it luxury," sniffed Long Nguyen, style director of Flaunt magazine. West gave a wounded-sounding speech at the show's after-party. "Please be easy," he said. "Please give me a chance to grow." After his second collection a year later received a lukewarm reception, West announced he would no longer be showing in Paris.

He collaborated with the French label APC on a capsule collection in 2013 and signed a $10 million deal with Adidas, launching his first apparel collection Yeezy Season 1, with the brand in October 2015. The line has had a mixed reception — although his Season 5 collection in February 2017 won praise from Anna Wintour . "I liked it a lot," she told the New York Post. "A little bit more focus than sometimes we've seen from him."

'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'

West returned to music in November 2010 with his fifth album — with paranoid celebrity and rampant consumption the dominant themes: it was a bombastic and towering monument to self-aggrandizement that sounded "like an instant greatest hits" according to Pitchfork. It was the best and worst of Kanye West rolled into one: a magnum opus that bordered on the delusional. It yielded four singles, including "Monster," on which West, Jay Z and Rick Ross were memorably battered into runners-up spots by a blistering guest verse from Nicki Minaj . West and his old sparring partner Jay Z then released a collaborative album, Watch the Throne in 2011 — it yielded seven singles including "Otis" and "Niggas in Paris"; and added three more Grammy wins to West's and Jay Z's respective hauls.

Marriage to Kim Kardashian and Children

In 2012 West released a compilation album, Cruel Summer , showcasing artists on his GOOD Music label. But that year the headlines were more concerned over his relationship with the reality-TV star Kim Kardashian, which began in April. They got engaged in October 21, 2013, after West proposed at the AT&T baseball stadium in San Francisco, and they married on May 24, 2014, in the historic Fort di Belvedere in Italy. Andrea Bocelli sang as Kardashian walked down the aisle, in front of guests that included the designer Rachel Roy, the tennis champion Serena Williams , the film director Steve McQueen and music stars Legend, Q-Tip, Rick Rubin, Tyga and Lana Del Rey . The couple have three children: daughter North (born June 15, 2013) son Saint (born December 5, 2015) and another daughter (born via surrogate January 15, 2018). The couple welcomed their fourth child, son Psalm, via surrogate in May 2019.

In February 2021, Kardashian filed for divorce from West.

Anyone listening to West's sixth album, Yeezus , which came out in June 2013, would hear little evidence that the rapper was living an idyllic existence. Sonically the album was abrasive, raw and almost entirely melody-free — West had enlisted the producer Rick Rubin to make wholesale changes just days before the release. Lyrically, West sounded paranoid and narcissistic to the point of bathos, especially on "I Am a God," which contained the immortal line "Hurry up with my damn croissants."

West claimed the album was an "attack on the commercial," and certainly it contained little that was radio-friendly — barring the magnificent glam-rock-inspired single, "Black Skinhead" (the first of only two singles from the album). Yeezus remains the only West album to have sold fewer than 1 million copies in the US. Yet it was critically well received — not least by the rock legend Lou Reed, who told Rolling Stone that "Each track is like making a movie... The guy really, really, really is talented."

Jimmy Kimmel Beef

A Twitter spat erupted that September with West and Jimmy Kimmel , after the talk-show host mocked an interview West had given to the BBC in the UK. Kimmel hired child actors to recite some of West's more bombastic quotes on his show. But West was far from amused. "Jimmy Kimmel is out of line to try and spoof in any way the first piece of honest media in years," read one of a series of angry tweets. Kimmel gleefully read out West's tweets during his next show — sparking more opprobrium from the rapper, who shared a link to a Slate article titled: "Kanye was right."

The following month West appeared in person on Jimmy Kimmel Live — the interview lasted most of the episode, and featured several free-flowing Kanye monologues, covering everything from his career to his thoughts on the paparazzi, Steve Jobs and Jesus. "I don't know if you know this, but a lot of people think you're a jerk," joked Kimmel, although he went on to praise West's character. It turned out the two had known each other prior to the spat, which was why West had been hurt by Kimmel's portrayal of him. Kimmel admitted that considering a celebrity's feelings was "not something that comes to mind when I'm cooking up a comedy sketch." By the end of the show they had cleared the air.

Collaboration with Paul McCartney, Rihanna and More Public Outbursts

At the start of 2015 West became the only rapper in history to record with Paul McCartney , releasing a single, "Four Five Seconds," with the Beatles legend and Rihanna . But a month later came another award-show disruption, this time at the Grammys, where West objected to Beck winning the Best Album award. "Beck needs to respect artistry, and he should have given his award to Beyoncé," West said after the ceremony. Months later he retracted his statement in an interview with The Sunday Times newspaper in England. "I was inaccurate with the concept of a gentleman who plays 14 instruments not respecting artistry," he said.

In March, West was announced as a co-owner of the music-streaming service Tidal, along with various other artists including Beyoncé, Jay Z, Rihanna, Madonna , Chris Martin and Nicki Minaj. In June he headlined the Glastonbury festival in the UK, despite a petition of 135,000 signatures asking for him to be removed from the bill.

'The Life of Pablo'

There was more controversy in the run-up to his seventh album, The Life of Pablo . Before its release on February 14, 2016, West hit the headlines for a series of controversial tweets - including one that proclaimed Bill Cosby , on trial for drugging and raping women, to be innocent. He started a beef with the rapper Wiz Khalifa , whom he mistakenly believed to have criticized his wife, Kim Kardashian ("I am your OG and I will be respected as such," West tweeted.). He also apologized to Michael Jordan for appearing to diss the basketball legend in his lyrics. And then the day after his album came out, West bizarrely urged his followers to lobby Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion into West's "ideas." He also claimed to be $53 million in debt.

The album itself was another change of direction, and another triumph. It covered a much broader sonic sweep than Yeezus , incorporating a vast array of sounds, styles and influences, from trap to gospel to Auto-Tune crooning, to avant-pop, classic soul and dancehall. Guest vocalists included Frank Ocean , Chance the Rapper , Rihanna, Desiigner and Kid Cudi. It became West's sixth solo album in succession to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Tour Cancellation and Return to the Spotlight

On November 20, 2016, while on his Saint Pablo Tour, West stopped a concert in Sacramento to embark on a garbled rant about radio playlists, MTV, Barack Obama , Donald Trump , Beyoncé and Jay Z ("Jay Z, call me, bruh... I know you got killers. Please don't send them at my head..."). It was the second time within a week that he had ranted onstage and voiced support for Trump, and this time it sounded like a public breakdown — he did not complete the show. The following day he canceled the remaining 21 dates of his tour citing exhaustion, subsequently spending eight days hospitalized at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In February 2017, the GOOD music president, Pusha T, said in an interview that West was working on a new album. Rumors surrounding the album's development continued to surface, with some reports saying the award-winning artist had retreated to the mountains of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for creative inspiration.

West began working his way back into the news cycle in April 2018 with the announcement that he was writing a philosophy-themed book, Break the Simulation . Days later, he confirmed the rumors about new material in a rapid-fire series of tweets, declaring he would drop two albums within a week of one another in June, the second one involving longtime collaborator Kid Cudi.

The artist then caused a stir when his tweets veered toward his support for President Trump, calling him "my brother" and noting how they shared "dragon energy," even posting a selfie in which he wears Trump's "Make America Great Again" hat. West later sought to clarify things by saying he loved Hillary Clinton too and didn't agree with everything the president said. "I don't agree 100% with anyone but myself," he wrote.

In an early May interview with TMZ, West revealed that he had been addicted to opioids prior to his November 2016 onstage meltdown and hospitalization, which he began taking after undergoing liposuction because "I didn’t want y'all to call me fat." He also raised eyebrows by describing the history of African American enslavement in the U.S. as a "choice," his words again inflaming social media outrage and prompting another attempt at a clarifying explanation later.

Topping the Charts with 'Ye'

On May 31, West held an exclusive listening party in Jackson Hole for industry insiders and select celebrities, like Chris Rock and Jonah Hill , to debut his new studio effort, Ye . The seven-track album, which included contributions from Kid Cudi and Minaj, touched on issues ranging from the sexual assault accusations facing Russell Simmons , to the Tristan Thompson - Khloé Kardashian cheating saga, to the rapper's own controversial comments about slavery and being bipolar.

West expanded on the bipolar topic in a subsequent interview, confirming that he had recently been diagnosed. Echoing his track's lyrics about how it is his "superpower," he insisted that the condition fueled his creativity, but also admitted that it led to unfortunate consequences. "Think about people who have mental issues that are not Kanye West ... think about somebody that does exactly what I did at TMZ but they just do it at work," he said. "Then Tuesday morning they come back and they lost their job."

On June 12, it was revealed that Ye had debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200; it marked West's eighth consecutive chart-topping album, matching the record held by the Beatles and Eminem . Additionally, all seven tracks from Ye had cracked the Top 40, with "Yikes" charting highest, at No. 8.

Sunday Service Sessions

In early 2019, West debuted his Sunday Service sessions — performances of the rapper and associates singing gospel versions of his hit songs from various locations. Little was known about these invite-only sessions, with the public getting glimpses via social media clips.

West then brought a larger-scale version of his new project to Coachella in April for a special Easter Sunday show, in which he and a large contingent of singers and dancers, dressed in matching mauve robes, performed atop a man-made mountain.

'Jesus Is King,' 'Jesus Is Born,' 'Emmanuel' and Operas

Meanwhile, the artist continued working on a new album. Titled Yandhi , with a planned release date of September 29, 2018, the album was pushed back to November 23, before being delayed indefinitely. In August 2019, it was announced that another studio project, Jesus Is King , would be released on September 27, though that date also passed with no sign of the promised album. The gospel-tinged Jesus Is King was finally unveiled on October 25, the same day as a 35-minute IMAX film of the same title that documented one of the artist's Sunday Service sessions.

At the Hollywood Bowl in November, West debuted Nebuchadnezzar , an opera featuring Sunday Service-style choir singing with its creator reading Bible passages from off to the side of the stage. He followed with Mary , an opera based on the nativity story, before releasing the 19-track gospel album Jesus Is Born on Christmas Day.

West dropped the five-track Emmanuel on Christmas Day 2020, consisting of “ancient and Latin inspired new music,” according to the press release .

2020 Presidential Run

On July 4, 2020, West tweeted that he is running for president: "We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States."

West held his first campaign rally on July 19, 2020, in Charleston, South Carolina. With "2020" shaved into his head, he spoke about Planned Parenthood, marijuana and slavery, among other subjects, in his speech that lasted over an hour.

On October 12, he dropped his first campaign video urging voters to write his in on their ballots.

West eventually conceded and alluded to a presidential run in 2024.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1977
• Birth date: June 8, 1977
• Birth State: Georgia
• Birth City: Atlanta
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Kanye West is an outspoken Grammy Award-winning rapper, record producer and fashion designer.
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Chicago State University
• Polaris High School
• Interesting Facts
• Kanye is one of the most successful artists in Grammy Awards history. As of 2017 he has won a total of 24 Grammys.
• As of 2015 Kanye's net worth is around $147 million.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

• I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.
• I liberate minds with my music. That's more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.
• Fashion breaks my heart.

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Kanye West was involved in a car accident that resulted in a fractured jaw on October 23, 2002. The accident occurred in Los Angeles after he fell asleep at the wheel while driving home from a recording studio. This incident had a significant impact on his life and influenced his music and subsequent creative projects.

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this is not mine its @logicswhitehalf on tiktok but idk if someone put it here or not its really informative.

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Kanye West PowerPoint Template

• Google Slides , Music, Culture and Art , People , PowerPoint , Templates

Introducing our free Kanye West PowerPoint & Google Slides template – a bold and stylish presentation solution inspired by the iconic artist, visionary, and cultural icon, Kanye West. Immerse your audience in the avant-garde world of creativity and innovation with our dynamic template, featuring a sleek black background that echoes the sophistication and edge synonymous with Kanye’s persona. Whether you’re a fan, a creative professional, or simply seeking a bold aesthetic for your presentations, our template is designed to elevate your content. Showcase your ideas with the confidence and flair that Kanye West embodies. Download now and infuse your slides with the unmistakable essence of one of the most influential figures in contemporary culture. Transform your presentations into a canvas of creativity, where each slide is a masterpiece, just like Kanye’s body of work. Let your ideas shine against the backdrop of this sleek template, and make a statement that resonates with the daring spirit of Kanye West.

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Creating an impressive presentation is easy with our template, available in PPTX and Google Slides formats. You’ll find plenty of helpful slide layouts to help you organize your thoughts for maximum impact. Plus, if you want to impress your audience, be sure to read some of our blog articles that offer tips and tricks to improve your presentation skills.

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Kanye West Shrinks Madison Square Garden

­­­Tickets to Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 presentation at Madison Square Garden were almost as inaccessible as the rapper and designer’s sneakers. Despite the promises of accessibility and the utilitarian vibe around Kanye’s fashion, hefty prices have kept his clothing out of reach for the average fan. But there were plenty of ways to see his newest apparel draped on models: on social media and iMessage, in person via a last-minute link to held-off Garden seats, or at the theatres screening the presentation nationwide. The links to the Tidal livestream burst with action and then froze sporadically, as droves of Internet onlookers tried to watch in as close to real-time as possible. Rightfully, the fans on site wanted trophies, and clamored at deep-red-colored merch booths with lines that looped around the stands. “I went to four different tables,” one woman shouted into her handset in frustration, well before the show had begun. “The Kardashians have to be here,” another patron said to her guest while ordering beers. “They’re family!”

At the Garden, Kendall Jenner emerged with North West tucked under her bicep, trailed by her sisters, including Kim Kardashian West, and, in a few moments, a voice broke the ambient hum of the sound system: “Hey.” West was about to play his latest album, “The Life of Pablo,” he announced, and, if anyone felt so inclined, they should get up and dance along. By the end of the opening track, a giant tarp had been pulled away to reveal a dense crowd of models contained within a set that resembled a refugee camp. The beiges, olives, and browns that have colored West’s tops, bottoms, shoes, and outerwear for years gained a new and timely context; some fans had speculated before the show that he was planning to cast Syrians as his models. But brooding in their place were media interns, Instagram models, Naomi Campbell, Young Thug, and a bevy of other somebodies. For the audience, West had invited a dizzying spread of prominent figures in the style and entertainment worlds, and he appreciated their company. “Make some noise for Olivier,” West nodded to the thirty-year-old creative director Olivier Rousteing, seated just in front of the rapper’s wife and daughter. The crowd was hesitant: “Come on, y’all be wearing y’all Balmains!”

Even if there are precedents for the album-listening and fashion show as one live event, West’s active presence, amiability, and hunger for engagement still gave the evening a surreal atmosphere. The lights stayed up, the songs were played manually from a laptop, and access to the sound system was passed around to other artists in attendance. Madison Square Garden felt a tenth of its size. “Tell me how you feel about the clothes this season,” West prompted. “They trash, they trash,” a voice shouted to laughter from nearby pews. Still, hundreds of fans in the stadium sported West designs to the show, or those of his understudies and associates, such as Virgil Abloh and Heron Preston.

And, if not directly sporting the West label, nearly all attendees were on-trend enough to claim a corner in his next inspiration folder. The silhouettes West and his wife have helped popularize—exaggerated outerwear, slim fits for wide forms, sleeves that run well past fingertips—seemed to consider, and cater to, a new ideal. The cameras feeding the arena’s display screens stalked the details that the models brought to the stage themselves: tangles of pastel-colored dreads, fingernails sharpened under fresh paint coats, curls hidden under stocking caps that further distorted wide hips, like a fish-eye lens for the peach-shaped figures that have continued to inspire West’s designs.

Whereas the music on “The Life of Pablo” reaches downward, directly heeding those fans who’ve demanded a return to a soulful, socially conscious form, West’s latest Adidas collection, and its presentation, continues to shout upward, to the business and fashion élite. The evening was the realization of a pitch that he’s been delivering since taking on fashion: his celebrity, specifically as a rapper and producer, gives him a platform unlike any other contemporary figure to communicate directly and honestly to the most covetable and influential swath of consumers. To see the Atlanta rapper Young Thug, after a year of being swept up by traditional product-placement deals and posing ornately for publications like  Vogue  and  Dazed , sulking just feet away from the accomplished supermodel Naomi Campbell, felt transcendent.

Any debates about subversion and appropriation and gender simply had no room on the floor: there were too many ideas blasting forward, too many details to hunt out, too much information. “I wanna thank Adidas for paying for this,” West remarked to applause, and a spontaneous “Fuck Nike” chant seized the stadium. It’s quite difficult to imagine, at any other point in history, a crowd at a hip-hop concert or a fashion show chanting down a corporation with cultural roots as deep as Nike’s. “So many artists are defined by corporations, or public perceptions, or finances,” West said. “But, if you’re an artist, you have to just dream.” West had probably dreamed of this evening. On the way out, fans pieced it all together, like a dream they’d shared in bits.

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Free Kanye West PowerPoint Template and Google Slides Themes

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What is Kanye West famous for? Named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005 and 2015 by Time, West is also the most successful musical artist in human history. He also gained more fame after his marriage with Kim Kardashian.

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• 2024’s Comedians You Should and Will Know

Two dozen of tomorrow’s stand-up, sketch, and online comedy superstars, according to industry insiders.

The comedy industry is undergoing a metamorphosis in 2024. Name-brand comedy venues are opening new locations , beloved local venues are being bought out by megacorporations , and streaming-service-helmed comedy festivals are usurping the old-fashioned ones . Post–WGA strike, TV-development execs are growing green-light-shy ; other streamers are entering the stand-up fray ; and YouTube specials are becoming just as, if not more, worthy of watching as Netflix specials. A comedian asking an audience member what they do for a living is transforming from age-old stand-up cliché to heated (and mockworthy ) comedy debate , and platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which only a few years ago were looked down upon, are now churning out some of the most consistently talented performers on the internet.

With so much going on, the mattmosphere is sure to be Rife with hacks and phonies, but it’s also full of undiscovered treasures — or, more accurately, treasures who deserve to shine much brighter than they already do. Out there amid this industry chaos, there are touring vets who have honed their craft across the country, young oddball weirdos brimming with disruptive brilliance, and everyone in between, all waiting for their next big break. They’re posting clips on Instagram Reels, releasing self-produced specials, playing tabletop-roleplaying games to loyal fan bases, starring in one-person shows, or hosting podcasts — an audio medium that is for some reason also video now. There’s never been more comedy to parse, and it can be difficult to train your algorithm toward the aforementioned treasures.

So to hell with the algorithm, we say, and turn instead to Vulture’s 11th annual roundup of “Comedians You Should and Will Know.” This year’s list of comics includes such oddities as straight dudes with consciences, career women who left desk jobs to pursue their passion, TikTokers who inspire fancams, club classics , cheeky Australians, showy Canadians, and queer luminaries saying the wildest shit. The list paints a portrait of a world where improv is so back, a Don’t Tell 15 is the new Comedy Central Half Hour , everything old (CollegeHumor, the ancient art of clown, jokes with actual punch lines) is new again, and emerging comics crush like headliners behind their own paywalled gardens. One upside to the clip-based comedy economy? This year’s best comics’ jokes are memorable — immediate calling cards for who they are as artists — and most of all, tight. 

We’ve kept this year’s list tight, too. After polling more than 100 industry insiders — including TV execs from streaming and linear TV, bookers for clubs across the country and late-night talk shows, artistic directors from comedy theaters, indie-comedy producers, podcast-network heads, top brass at animation studios, terrestrial-radio chiefs, comedy record-label execs, comedy-festival programmers, comedy historians, live-show photographers, and performers featured on last year’s list — we were left with a pool of more than 200 comedians. From there, we had to grapple with some questions: Which names came up over and over again? Who stood out from the crowd(work), are on the rise to stardom, and will be the masterminds of our future-favorite TV shows and stand-up specials? In the year of our Lord 2024, we thought it fitting to choose 24 of the absolute best. From clown college to Dropout, here are this year’s “Comedians You Should and Will Know.”

Meet the Comedians:

Sabrina Brier | Sam Campbell | Nico Carney | Aaron Chen | George Civeris | Francesca D’Uva | Brandi Denise | Malik Elassal | Roz Hernandez | Skyler Higley | Chloé Hilliard | Leslie Liao | MANDAL | Gavin Matts | Youngmi Mayer | Vic Michaelis | Brennan Lee Mulligan | Courtney Pauroso | Chloe Radcliffe | Rekha Shankar | Veronika Slowikowska | Gianmarco Soresi | Emil Wakim | Eagle Witt

Sabrina Brier

@sabrina.cinoman.brier #friends #comedy #la ♬ original sound - Sabrina Brier

Sabrina Brier’s face can turn the most unremarkable life experience into a meme. Case in point: the way her eyes bug out and she juts her body forward like a blonde Dilophosaurus when she says her Memorial Day weekend was ah- mazing except for her “RAGING UTI.” Or the way she clenches her smile and the life drains from her eyes when she learns that a friend invited someone else to join them for lunch. Videos like these two where Brier plays “That friend” — “That friend who is an open book” and “That friend who only wants 1 on 1 time,” respectively — have become a genre unto themselves since Brier began posting comedy online in 2021. In each, she starts off presenting as chill, hot, and put together until she encounters a specific social dynamic that reveals the needy, anxious, unself-aware mess underneath. Other examples include “That friend who gets defensive about her bestie,” “That friend who is personally offended by everything,” and “That friend who still has your dress.” It’s not just the relatability of her behavioral observations that helps this persona connect with her massive online audience (1.27 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and X); it’s the palpable way she revels in the squirmy grotesquerie. There are entire cringe compilations of her uttering the single syllable “Oh.”

Offline, Brier’s talents extend beyond her POV videos. She’s translated her persona to live shows, landed a deal for an audiobook appropriately titled That Friend , and guested on the most recent season of Abbott Elementary as “Jessca,” a flippant substitute teacher who responds indignantly when Quinta Brunson’s Janine tries to give her teaching advice. The standout appearance is a fitting stepping-stone for Brier, who has often cited Brunson as a role model for her show-business aspirations, and as an added bonus, she got to bring her signature “Oh” to national TV.

Sam Campbell

In Sam Campbell’s 2022 solo show, Comedy Show — winner of the prestigious Best Comedy Show award at that year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe — the comedian introduced his brand of comic absurdism to the audience with a tongue-in-cheek one-liner: “My mind is a prison full of crazy ideas, and I think there’s going to be a jailbreak!” With delivery verging on manic, the comedian leads audiences through a maze of offbeat non sequiturs , experimental multimedia , bizarre participatory rituals , elaborate fabrications , and subversions of comedy norms . But even his most anarchic material is meticulously crafted. In one bit from his 2022 set on U.K. comedy-news show The Russell Howard Hour , he seems to stumble through a joke about taking a picture of the moles on his neighbor’s back to send to a dermatologist when a caped “audience member” crashes the stage and hypnotizes him into delivering it competently. “The moles, they’re in quite an intricate pattern,” Campbell continues with newfound confidence. “My phone thought it was a QR code!” Then, amid an applause break: “My phone thought that my neighbor Ian was a ticket to see Michael Bublé!”

As Campbell has matured as a performer, he’s grown more adept at translating his style for mainstream audiences. Consider his 2022 special, Companion , which features an increased emphasis on accessible observations and traditional joke structure, all while edited to look like he’s performing in the crosshairs of an assassin’s sniper rifle. This evolution coincided roughly with Campbell’s move in 2022 from Australia to the U.K., where he broke out as the chaotic season-16 winner of the popular panel show Taskmaster the following year. Outside his frequent television appearances , Campbell writes and stars in his own shorts and sketches , co-hosts the podcast Lucy & Sam’s Perfect Brains with comedian Lucy Beaumont, and recently helmed the Channel 4 comedy pilot Make That Movie! Medium aside, one thing remains consistent: Campbell’s eccentricities are palpable but never alienating. In one 2021 sketch , he plays a boyfriend meeting his girlfriend’s discriminatory parents for the first time. But their instant dislike of him isn’t rooted in religious or racial prejudice. They simply can’t get past the fact that he’s 30 percent transparent.

Nico Carney

Once Nico Carney gets to the part in his set where he reveals that he was a Division I athlete in college, everything clicks into place; only years of early-morning drills and after-school practice lead to stand-up that’s this consistent, smooth, and fine-tuned to kill. At only 26, Carney’s got a beguiling mix of boyishness and old-pro confidence that makes audiences lock in, like when he starts a set with an introduction to his trans identity — opening material that might feel obligatory in a lesser comic’s hands but is handled with gleeful irreverence by Carney. “People are very curious about trans people,” he says in his Late Night With Seth Meyers appearance from earlier this year. “People ask me sometimes, ‘How did you know? When did you know?’ And it happened to me the same way it happens to all of us: Caitlyn Jenner bit me.” That joke encapsulates the Brooklyn-based comic’s sense of humor: full of switchbacks and trick corridors, a mix of the personal and pop cultural. In an art form that for decades treated gender like the utmost binary (women do be shopping, men don’t put the toilet seat down, blah blah blah), Carney uses his unique vantage point to play with these borders and categories, like in an extended bit about going to the gynecologist as a man, or being a much more devastating fighter than other dudes because he was a middle-school girl and middle-school girls know how to be mean.

Carney reaches beyond his own experience when he points out how transmasc-coded so many cis celebs are nowadays, comparing himself to Timothée Chalamet and Tom Holland during his Netflix Is a Joke festival appearance in 2022 . “I could be the next Spider-Man. Trans Spider-Man. Like, ‘It doesn’t shoot webs, but it’ll get the job done,’ you know what I’m saying?” The joke is cute on its own, but when he throws up the Spider-Man hand pose, “It’ll get the job done” becomes dirty, winky, cheeky. Offstage, he co-hosts a podcast with his friend Conor Janda, Boys’ Club. Never has the phrase felt more welcoming.

@800pgm We give Aaron 5 stars for this. 🎥: Aaron Chen, 'If Weren't Filmed, Nobody Would Believe' Love comedy like us? For free specials, new releases and a weekly clip in your Friday inbox, sign up to the Troop at the link in our bio! #aaronchen #uberdriver #uber #funnyuberrides #5stars #standupcomedy #standup #comedy #comedian #jokes #fyp ♬ original sound - 800 Pound Gorilla Media

Aaron Chen’s stage persona demonstrates the practiced, deliberative quiet of someone who knows that discomfort is an art. Some comedians stride onstage with a sense of grandiosity and expansiveness; Chen stands, blinks calmly, and waits for the audience to recalibrate to his measured pace. In his 2022 YouTube special, If Weren’t Filmed, Nobody Would Believe , Chen starts by referring to his two-piece camo-patterned outfit. “This show is sponsored by a paramilitary organization,” he announces, which gets a laugh because it’s so counter to Chen’s otherwise weird-kid vibe. Then he waits, pauses, and continues with the next joke. He took an Uber to the show, he says, and the driver asked if Chen minded if he talked to a friend. “Of course,” Chen says, followed by a long beat of a pause. “And thank you for considering me a friend.”

Beneath the softly awkward exterior, Chen thrills at a joke with just a touch of edge, especially when he makes himself the target. It’s present in his acting roles, as in his role as the mild-mannered probate clerk George on the Australian sitcom Fisk . He has the straight face necessary to hold onto a bit, like the 2020 Adult Swim “Infomercial” where he plays an expert interviewer with a Philomena Cunk–esque approach to asking questions, or his 2019 appearance at the Melbourne Comedy Fest’s Great Debate, where he gives a middle-schooler’s polite “We’ve all had fun” opening before pausing to ask, “Where will you be during the upcoming race war?” (Another favorite: a silly bit on the panel-game show Have You Been Paying Attention? about what he calls “New York” that required several appearances on the show to create.) Chen’s charming and delightfully shy performance proves how magnetic it can be when someone dials a whole crowd into their own odd wavelength.

George Civeris

“I can’t believe I fell for orange wine for three years,” George Civeris, filled with self-loathing, tells the audience . “It’s because I have too much faith in food professionals because of my progressive politics.” It’s a classic Civeris setup: He’s exasperated by his own taste, even while his taste is his whole identity. Civeris is a gay, glasses-wearing, cynical Greek man who, in the stand-up world, is wildly overeducated (Stanford and MIT alum, hello). As he put it to his podcast co-host Sam Taggart, “I’m default either bitchy, condescending, or rude.” In his stand-up, Civeris is often spying through white-picket fences at how his more culturally hegemonic neighbors live. In one runner he performed at Brooklyn’s Union Hall as part of his new hour, he imagines what it would be like to have a beautiful daughter (who hates him). In another , he describes attending progressive straight weddings: There’s a cellist with blue hair, the bride is being walked down the aisle by a random lesbian, and “the bride’s dress is ripped to represent our broken justice system,” he says, getting a hit of invigoration while imagining how straight people can be so well-intentioned without noticing the cringe. Can’t you see that this is lame? he seems to ask. And why does it probably feel so good?

From 2021 to 2023, Civeris worked as a senior editor at the now-lost Gawker reboot, where he chronicled whether or not Josh Gad’s LeFou was going to bottom. He’s appeared on Comedy Central , was a Just for Laughs New Face, and wrote for Fox’s Let’s Be Real , Comedy Central’s Drag His Ass , BBC’s Comedians vs. the News , and Quibi’s Gayme Show . But he’s most beloved for co-hosting the podcast StraightioLab with Taggart, who serves as the horny Ernie to his overanalyzing Bert. On each episode of the podcast — which we called the best comedy podcast of 2022 — Civeris, Taggart, and a guest examine a different aspect of straight culture like it’s a disease cell under a microscope ( “Preppy Clothes,” “Museums With Slides in Them,” and “Society” are memorable topics), and it leads to true revelations about the minutiae of the heterosexual experience. No one else is slicing into the gendered experience of pizza like this show.

Francesca D’Uva

Francesca D’Uva’s got the pop acumen of a Swedish hitmaker and the comedic sensibility of an entire 30 Rock writers’ room. She probably could have a lucrative career writing five songs an episode for Netflix reality shows. Instead, she creates the best musical comedy in Brooklyn, which is saying something in a borough that has more musical comedians per capita than doctors. D’Uva has an innately likable and goofy stage presence, queer POV, and tendency to cut off a comedy game before the audience can predict its rules, bounding off into uncharted territory as a song unravels into a Moana homage or an ode to taint. A Mary Poppins–on–poppers song about nannying (“I am your nanny and I will be ’til I die … / I’ll never leave you even after I die / I’ll be your ghost nanny”) finds her voicing a little Cockney boy with a budding foot fetish. A song about wanting to play Joseph in the Catholic-school kindergarten Nativity play functions as an exploration of the ways she struggled with being othered as a kid, but it also ends with another kid getting crushed by a cross and a pitch-perfect Shakira impression.

D’Uva has been producing and performing these songs around New York for years on top of hosting regular shows at Brooklyn venues like Baby’s Alright and C’mon Everybody, places more accustomed to DJ sets than they are comedy shows. D’Uva takes to those stages naturally, even when a pop-inflected song veers into musical-theater territory with a Les Miz –inspired death scene. (“I have loved you, I was never faking it / The vultures will take your body into heaven where you will be seated at the right hand of the father,” she sings to gay Bachelor Colton Underwood.) Non–New Yorkers might have heard her theme song for 2023 “Comedians You Should and Will Know” duo Natalie Rotter-Laitman and Charlie Bardey’s popular Exploration: Live! podcast, or seen her on some of the scene’s greatest cultural-export TV series, including Julio Torres’s Fantasmas and Adult Swim’s Three Busy Debras . Next up, she’s gonna be One Busy D’Uva as she takes her one-person show, This Is My Favorite Song , Off Broadway as part of Playwrights Horizons’ upcoming season. It’s a leveling-up for D’Uva, as she weaves in her older material with new work to create a piece about losing her father in the early days of COVID. Trust she’ll be playing the hits as well. As she sings in one of the two greatest songs ever written about a nanny named some variation of “Fran,” “Once you go Franny, you’ll never, ever want to go back.”

Brandi Denise

Brandi Denise’s signature stand-up bit centers on her previous career as a social worker, when she says she’d often get hit on by her clients. “You got to have a lot of confidence to hit on your social worker after the interview ,” she says in her 2022 Comedy Central Stand-Up Featuring set. Much of Denise’s material is rooted in her sitcom-like life experiences and the difficulties of dating, and this joke draws from both. “You just told me you live in an underpass; you haven’t had a job. You can’t feed you! I know you can’t feed me !” Her gifts don’t lie in staking out revolutionary new comic premises but rather in enlivening familiar premises with counterintuitive perspectives and energetic delivery. Consider her 2024 joke about starting therapy . “I’m your employer!” she imagines reminding her therapist whenever her professional opinion starts to feel too “disrespectful.” “You ever employ somebody and then you go to work and then they just pull out an AK and be like, ‘You’re a manipulator, you’re a gaslighter, you got mommy issues’?! I’m up there getting shot the fuck up! Like, girl, I will fire you! Insubordinate!”

Outside her stand-up work — for which she earned a spot on Just for Laughs’ New Faces list in 2022 — Denise is an accomplished actor who has appeared on TV shows like Starz’s Power and Power Book II: Ghost and BET’s Games People Play . As a series regular on the last, her role as Quanisha allowed her the chance to flex the comic timing and instincts she honed during her training at Second City Chicago. Her most impressive onscreen performance is her 2023 guest spot on Abbott Elementary , in which she plays Cassandra, a rude, impatient, and overworked mom who blames her son’s misbehavior at school on her teacher (Quinta Brunson’s Janine); her villainous turn hints at yet unseen dramatic range.

Malik Elassal

How many comedians can say their journey into the performing arts began with their high-school teacher attempting to pilot a theater program just to nurture their talents ? Such is the improbable origin story of Malik Elassal, who delivered book reports at his Islamic private school in Calgary with so much theatrical verve that one kind teacher was inspired to take up his cause. It wasn’t long before the program was shut down by another teacher out of an abundance of religious precaution, which may be why Elassal continues to joke about the teachers who didn’t encourage his stand-up aspirations to this day. “You want to be a funny guy, huh?” he says in his 2023 Don’t Tell Comedy set, while impersonating one such teacher with the flair for character work he displayed as a teen. “When you see the power of Allah on the Day of Judgment, brother, you will not be laughing.”

Elassal moved to New York in 2023 after capping off his rise in the Canadian comedy scene with a series of television appearances . Prior to this, he honed his stand-up on the road, where he often performed material about being Muslim to small-town audiences who had never met a Muslim before. The upside of this grind is noticeable in his aforementioned Don’t Tell set, in which he unfurls perspectives shaped by his cultural and religious identity to the broad audience without breaking stride. To wit, Elassal’s bit referencing Israel’s former occupation of Lebanon is crafted so artfully that it lands without a hitch — despite the fact the set was recorded on October 7. In the coming months, Elassal will continue to vindicate the faith of his one encouraging high-school teacher; Snowflakes , an FX comedy pilot he starred in this year, was recently ordered to series .

Roz Hernandez

@itsrozhernandez Things get all queer and paranormal when my crew is together 👻😍 #livingforthedead #queertiktok #witchesoftiktok #spiritualtok #hauntedhouse #scaryvideos #creepytok #liminal #transandproud #gaytiktok #queer #fashionista #glowymakeup #makeuptok ♬ original sound - Roz Hernandez

Roz Hernandez is, with apologies to Demi Lovato, the most fabulous ghost hunter ever born. With her heavy black bangs and penchant for dressing like a paper doll from the 1960s, the comedian is loud, indignant, and ready to entrap both spirits and audience members. In her stand-up, she leads audience members down a cliff by coaxing them into saying the other name for a water spritzer (it’s “mister”), then getting offended that they misgendered her. Part of the fun of Hernandez’s act is how her joyfully exuberant style so directly contrasts her connection with the macabre. The classic Hernandez image is of her in a zebra-print coat with a blue-feather collar, recapping how a ghost ruined her hookup by turning the lights on when her makeup wasn’t done: “These shady-ass ghosts said, ‘Sir, I want you to see what you’ve signed up for.’”

Hernandez has a regular platform for discussing said shady-ass ghosts with guests like Rachel Dratch and Nicole Byer on her successful podcast, Ghosted! , leading to episode titles like “Vinny Thomas Would Break Bread With a Ghost” and “Jackie Beat Saw a Gay UFO.” Hernandez appears in the Netflix queer-comedy documentary Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution , and she was the breakout star of the Kristen Stewart–produced ghost-hunting reality show Living for the Dead on Hulu, in which she was billed as the “researcher” in a crew of queer ghost hunters (but really just provided the best color commentary). In one scene, Hernandez declares, “I swear to God, if I’m possessed, I’m gonna be fucking pissed off.” In another, she gets very offended when a ghost calls her fat and “faggot.” She becomes less offended once she realizes that she doesn’t respect the ghost after he misidentifies the color of her dress as red. It’s obviously magenta.

Skyler Higley

Although he came out of the Chicago comedy scene, Skyler Higley grew up in Utah as a Black child of white Mormon parents. This is, as Higley puts it onstage, half of what’s wrong with him. That perspective of observing and feeling outside a dominant dynamic drives much of Higley’s stand-up material, which trends toward sharp bits of scene-setting where he becomes the one person who can actually identify the strangeness of what’s going on. In material about his childhood, it’s descriptions of how much white parents dislike it if their Black child sings spirituals while doing chores. In a bit about the odd social arrangements of asking someone to watch your laptop while using the bathroom at a café, he takes pleasure in performing an exaggeration of Blackness to the discomfort of a white woman nearby who made it weird. He’s the guy who says everything everyone else was thinking but was maybe too polite to say.

It’s an instinct that’s made Higley successful as a staff writer for a number of comedy gigs, including Conan , The Onion, and currently on After Midnight . (One of his Onion headlines : “Smithsonian Devotes New Exhibit to First African American to Use Whites-Only Glory Hole.”) It shapes his onstage persona, too. He talks about his background and the specific disorientation of his early family experiences, but he also describes how powerful it can be to do hallucinogens and see the world in a completely different way. He has a joke about being high on acid while riding public transportation and realizing a guy near him has his whole ass hanging out. “I don’t want to look at ass. I want to look at a beautiful sunset. I want to see a rainbow,” Higley says. “But then because I was tripping, I realize, I’m not looking at ass. I’m looking at billions and billions of cells, made up of billions of billions of atoms .” He ends up gasping to the rest of the train, “That ass is amazing .” The ability to look at a bare stranger’s ass, decide it’s amazing, then make that a functional joke? That’s amazing.

Chloé Hilliard

Reaching six-foot-one by the age of 12 is sure to give a person a unique vantage point. For Chloé Hilliard, who says that her sense of humor “stems from being the awkward ‘big girl’ who had plenty of time to observe others,” this was always going to lead to comedy. “First day of high school, I walked into this: ‘Shh shh shh shh shh, the teacher’s here,’” she jokes in her 2019 set on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . That authoritative presence has carried through to her onstage work, and her material — which showcases a flair for statistics and history Hilliard also displayed in her previous career as a journalist — benefits as a result. “I kinda miss ISIS, y’all,” she begins one joke from her 2020 album Big Dick Energy . Why the nostalgia? Domestic acts of terror have increased since the height of the ISIS threat, she explains, and the news no longer shows the Homeland Security Advisory System “color grid” to tell her how much she should be on alert. “I want a color grid!” she pleads. “I mean, it ain’t gon’ be no color. It’s just going to be different shades of white, cause that’s who’s doing it.” A standout joke from her 2022 Don’t Tell Comedy set , in which she breaks down the differences between New York and Los Angeles by digging into their historical origins, also spins out of a similar fact-based approach. “L.A.’s origin story is the gold rush,” she explains. “They was like, ‘I’m gonna be the one to find a fucking nugget of gold and change my family’s life forever.’ That’s why, today, everybody in Los Angeles is delusional.”

Outside her stand-up credits, Hilliard wrote on A Black Lady Sketch Show  — a series that was able to jump from the court room to biblical times to the Harlem Ballroom scene without skipping a beat — and wrote Fuck Your Diet , which was awarded Best Comedy Book in 2020 by the African American Literary Award Show. She’s the A student raising their hand in class, the quietly observant kid hiding behind them, and the class clown all wrapped into one. That’s range.

Leslie Liao

Comics who start stand-up young often look back at their early material and criticize it for its lack of voice and perspective. Leslie Liao, who began performing comedy at 29 after spending her 20s consuming comedy professionally as a scout for management and production companies, avoided these growing pains. Her stage presence is uncommonly composed — slow, steady, and deep-voiced — and she pairs this assured affect with jokes full of short, declarative sentences that speak to her hard-earned outlook. “I am 36 years old,” she begins one joke about the inefficiency of first dates in her 2023 Netflix’s Verified Stand-Up set. “I have a bedtime and decisions to make. I don’t have all night. You need to give me information that matters to me. All I need to see is your penis and your paycheck.”

In 2017, Liao began a day job working in human resources at Netflix while she pursued her passion for stand-up. After years of flexing her comedy muscle onstage, she started posting videos online in early 2023. “When I was younger, I used to be sad about being single,” she says in one of several early viral clips . “Now I’m angry … I feel like when I find him, I’m going to be like a mom whose kid got lost at the grocery store, like ‘Where have you been?! Get in the car! That was so embarrassing. Everyone was staring at me!’” Six months later, she was named one of Just for Laughs New Faces and later got booked on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . This momentum led to a meeting with an executive at another division at her workplace: Netflix’s head of comedy, Robbie Praw, who booked her on Verified Stand-Up and gave her the final push she needed to quit her job at the end of 2023. If her work at the company is over in one sense, in another, it might have only begun.

When MANDAL is on a podcast , the best course of action is to clear out space for him and let him cook . The Atlanta comedian possesses a rare, Norm Macdonald–like quality wherein his natural cadence, parlance, and body language make the journeys to his punch lines as rewarding as the punch lines themselves. At its best, the appeal of MANDAL’s stand-up is similar. All kinetic energy and little giggles, he leans on animated stories and sprawling bits that build momentum as they unravel. “I’m gonna get out of here on a joke that doesn’t work,” he says near the end of his 2022 Don’t Tell Comedy set. “I was talking to this lady who just broke up with her boyfriend, right? And she wanted me to take her to go get crab legs. And I was like, ‘Dang, girl, you gonna need two Old Bays.” True to his prediction, the joke falls flat. But then MANDAL spends the next two minutes explaining the joke’s double entendre, earning bigger laughs with each new layer of deconstruction.

MANDAL’s expressive style lends itself naturally to voice-over , sketch , and musical comedy , all forms he’s successfully dabbled in. Most notably, he voiced a mens’-rights podcaster character in an Adult Swim short titled Buster & TJ: Podcast , which went viral in 2022 largely thanks to the misguided confidence with which MANDAL delivers the line, “Nah man, I ain’t never had a girlfriend.” More recently, MANDAL’s work has caught the attention of John Mulaney, who tapped the comedian to handle warm-up duties for his live talk show Everybody’s in L.A. — a task he’s well suited to given his multiple bits explicitly designed to pump up crowds — and open his Netflix Is a Joke show at the Hollywood Bowl .

Gavin Matts

Self-deprecation is easy. In life, it’s a defense mechanism, and in stand-up comedy, it’s usually a cheat code. But nothing about what Gavin Matts does is easy. He connects the personal to the systemic, the mundane to the existentially troubling. So when he calls himself toxic and adds, “But I’m not masculine — I’m just regular toxic; my toxicity has no masculinity” or insists that he’s stupid, he’s always building toward something bigger. In the case of the latter, it’s police brutality. During a set at the Comedy Cellar in May, he said, “It’s hard to articulate that you’re intellectually insecure when you’re dumb as hell. That’s why I understand why police get so violent as soon as they step on a college campus. They’re like, ‘Aw fuck, everybody here reads? I gotta start hitting somebody.’” Matts sets a tone of gentle irreverence and relatable millennial defeatism ( “We are the first generation of all roommates” ), and from there, he plunges into climate nihilism or a roast of transphobes : “Older people will be like, ‘There’s two genders.’ How the fuck would you know that? You have six remotes … You have more remotes than there are genders? I don’t think so.”

Matts started out in Vancouver, and after winning SiriusXM’s Top Comic competition in 2017, he hit the ground running. Since moving to the U.S. in 2018, he’s performed on Conan , Comedy Central’s Stand-Up Featuring and Bill Burr Presents: The Ringers, and landed a small part in season two of Ramy. Over time, he’s figured out how to use existing bro-tifs to upend expectations and shepherd audiences through more anxious, ruminative material. Hilarity ensues at the intersection of “philosopher prince” and “kid called into the principal’s office.” ”How can I get sucked off at a time like this? When the whales are in the situation they’re in, I couldn’t possibly succumb to some top right now,” he jokes in his 2023 All Things Comedy–produced special Progression , his performative faux distress barely masking genuine, soul-weary distress. It’s that mutability that makes him fit in at the Comedy Cellar or alternative shows in equal measure. More recently, Matts has been quietly fighting for the soul of stand-up itself by doing biting, brilliant takedowns of the crowdwork trend, inadvertently proving himself to be incredible at crowdwork in the process. In a stratified comedy landscape, Matts could be the one bro to save us all.

Youngmi Mayer

@youngmimayer im just saying i get it ♬ original sound - youngmi

“The fact that I am a failure and fucking nuts and also constantly bring it up” is how Youngmi Mayer describes her own appeal on the first page of her upcoming memoir , I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying. While we can’t comment on the last two confessions, the claim that she is a failure may be in jeopardy. Mayer, who grew up in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, is a whirling dervish of off-the-cuff neuroses onstage, a relatable queen on TikTok , and a blunt and brash storyteller on the page. She’s a master at taking would-be clichés — a front-facing comedy video in which she adopts a Korean accent to imitate a Soju Korean Uncle , for example — and elevating them into intergenerational character studies through sheer specificity. When Soju Korean Uncle takes long cigarette drags while staring into the distance, he’s not just getting a nicotine fix. He’s remembering the “IMF crisis.” Across all of her work, Mayer’s superpower is her ability to tap into the emotional core of whatever she has her sights on — racism , the death of her cat , the contents of her son’s backpack , etc. — and articulate it in such a way that reveals how closely humor lives on the other side. The last, for example, features her crying uncontrollably at the fact that her son packed a “cool rock and a really good stick” to bring home, because the discovery makes her prematurely sad that there will come a day when he’s no longer this innocent.

The most complete expression of Mayer’s sensibilities to date arrives in the form of her aforementioned memoir. The book delves into her own life, her family’s history, and the broader histories of both Korea and of whiteness. Along the way, she jabs at everyone from both of her grandmas to a former peer she nicknames “Raw Egg Girl.” Next year, she’ll present her solo show, Hairy Butthole, as part of a performance series at Joe’s Pub, curated by Margaret Cho. The live show shares the same title as Mayer’s podcast , which she began hosting in 2022. The term, she explains in her book, is from a Korean proverb: “Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole.” All we’re saying is that if you see Mayer’s book on the shelf of a potential hookup soon, don’t expect a clean ass.

Dropout’s Breakouts: Vic Michaelis, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Rekha Shankar

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By the time legacy-media company IAC sold CollegeHumor to CCO Sam Reich in 2020 , the long-running online-comedy institution had been struggling to find a viable business model for years. Two years prior, it had launched Dropout , a streaming platform that sought to monetize the fan base the brand had built on YouTube, and when Reich took over, this is where he refocused his efforts. Free of the growth mind-set of corporate overlords who wanted the company to pump out content at a breakneck speed without the adequate budget to do so, Reich worked to build a more sustainable and egalitarian business by investing in low-cost unscripted comedy programming — closer in tone to the comedy panel and game shows popular in the U.K. — where performers’ personalities shined. It’s working: Dropout now has evolved into a talent-incubation machine for stars with their own devoted followings.

Brennan Lee Mulligan, the most recognizable of the streamer’s stars, has become a phenomenon in the online-tabletop-gaming community thanks to the popularity of his show Dimension 20 , in which he plays tabletop-roleplaying games with a rotating series of guest players. As the show’s energetic host and game master, he builds whimsical worlds for participants to play in and breathes them to life with an array of silly voices. He brings an endearing try-hard energy to his appearances on other Dropout comedy game shows as well — the perfect comic foil for contestants with more of a kids-in-the-back-of-the-classroom mentality. Over 1.6 million people follow Dimension 20 across TikTok and Instagram, and an appetite for his comedy exists offline too: Earlier this year, Mulligan hosted a sold-out U.K. and Ireland theater tour, and next year, against all odds, he’s bringing live Dungeons & Dragons to Madison Square Garden.

@veryimportantpeopleshow Don’t you feel better??? #veryimportantpeople #vicmichaelis #zacoyama #tommyshriggly #energypowder #feelingbetter #health #dropout #interview ♬ original sound - Very Important People

Another Dropout breakout is comedian Vic Michaelis, known for their chaotic appearances on the streamer’s game show Game Changer — the premise of which changes every episode, hence its name — as well as the improv-game show Make Some Noise . Since December 2023, they’ve served as host of Very Important People, a talk show in which Michaelis interviews comedians who are transformed into characters by makeup artists. The series offers the host a chance to showcase their anxious deadpan and improvisational skills: In one episode, Ify Nwadiwe, dressed as a purple alien, introduces himself with a long series of indecipherable noises, and Michaelis, unfazed, responds by asking if the name is “spelled the way it sounds?” Where Michaelis has had mainstream acting and improvising opportunities outside their work on Dropout — on Amazon Prime Video’s Upload , the Hallmark movie Round and Round , and Comedy Bang! Bang! — none has raised their profile to the same extent. Season two of Very Important People is set to premiere this fall, and its high-profile lineup of guest stars (John Early, Kate Berlant, Chris Redd, and Paul F. Tompkins, etc.) illustrates the show’s growing reach.

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Comedian Rekha Shankar, the third Dropout star on the rise, made the jump from being a sketch writer and performer at CollegeHumor to utility player at Dropout as the company changed gears. During her time working with the streamer, she’s competed on Game Changer , created the Chef’s Table parody Gods of Food , and hosted the shows Celebrity Slumber Party and Erotic Clubhouse with a touch of playful irreverence. As of April 2024, she’s hosted Smartypants , in which she skeptically “yes, ands” semi-serious PowerPoint presentations by other Dropout performers. (One standout segment sees Demi Adejuyigbe making the case for “Which Cartoons Characters Are Invited to ‘The Cookout?’” ) An instant hit, thanks in part to Shankar’s quick-witted asides, the show already boasts nearly 500,000 followers across social channels. Outside of this ecosystem, she’s written on TV shows including NBC’s Grand Crew and Comedy Central’s Digman! and acted in 2019’s Between Two Ferns: The Movie. Traditionally, getting plucked for mainstream opportunities like these after starting out on an internet platform would have been considered a graduation of sorts. In the case of Shankar, Mulligan, and Michaelis, it’s been more beneficial to drop out.

Courtney Pauroso

“I took four months off of stand-up to work on a project and all of a sudden there’s a very prominent clown community in Los Angeles,” tweeted 2015 Comedian You Should Know Ian Karmel in 2023. Where clowning — a comedy subgenre in which performers commit to over-the-top character work marked by boorish physicality and purposefully exaggerated stupidity  — has been rising in prominence in L.A. for years, it’s recently begun to capture the buzz and attention previously reserved for work staged at improv theaters. Courtney Pauroso, who got her start in one of these theaters (famed SNL cast-member factory the Groundlings), felt creatively lost when she left it behind in 2012, until L.A. clown Natalie Palamides — famous for her 2020 Netflix special Nate — introduced her to the art of clowning in 2016. Pauroso quickly became one of the community’s driving forces, embodying the scene’s style of confrontational silliness and anarchic sexuality.

Pauroso spends years developing clown shows, fleshing out the characters she plays and the worlds they inhabit to probe deeper questions. Her work in this space, as compared to her earlier sketch comedy, is more high concept and socially aware. Take her 2019 and 2023 one-person shows, Gutterplum and Vanessa 5000 , which focus on femininity and the commodification of sexuality. In one moment of the latter — which heads to Dropout as a filmed special this fall — Pauroso, outfitted in black-leather lingerie and fishnet stockings, robotically performs a strip routine to Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” to woos and cheers from the audience, then starts twerking for a disconcertingly long time. “Uh-oh, I am stuck,” she says in a robotic deadpan, before continuing, “I am your stepmom. Please help me. I’m your stepmother.” Outside of live performances, Pauroso recently collaborated with Palamides on a Duplass brothers–backed TV series, The Broadcast, which she described on Instagram as “ 1984 meets The Three Stooges meets Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? meets Eraserhead ”; it had its premiere at SXSW in 2024. That she’s finding a way to bring clown sensibilities to mainstream platforms speaks to her position at the head of this growing movement. Pauroso is clown mother. Sorry, no, she is clown stepmother.

Chloe Radcliffe

One of the lines Chloe Radcliffe often uses during a set is a fast jab designed to explain and then quickly dispense with the fact that she has a birthmark on her face. “For those that don’t know, it’s a birthmark. That’s what it is. It doesn’t lower my self-esteem enough for me to fuck you.” It’s an agile way to do the “Yes, I’m aware of what I look like” joke that most comedians need to do in some form or another, but more than that, it’s a handy on-ramp for what the rest of Radcliffe’s material actually feels like. Radcliffe, who says her comedy style developed out of her nerdy high-school and college career as a speech-and-debate competitor, is a cheerful, straightforward, and pragmatic thinker about sex and relationships. She talks about the insecurities and miscommunications that drive them, about her own flaws as a partner, and about how hard it is for straight women to have satisfying sex lives.

When her ex refuses to take direction in bed and complains that it’s like going to a factory and being told to pull a lever, she’s delighted and exasperated . “I’m going to need you to put on your safety goggles and go in there and save American manufacturing!” she says. When she realizes a group of guys in the front row of her show are Swedish, she launches into in a long digression about a Swedish guy she once dated who didn’t take off his condom for an hour and a half. “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she finds herself chanting in her mind, as they start having sex again using the same condom. Radcliffe has been a staff writer for Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show and acted and written for Stephen Soderbergh’s sci-fi series Command Z , but her 2024 solo show Cheat is where Radcliffe fully honed her persona. Her humor is built on the concept that insecurities can be reframed as aggressive and captivate self-confidence, and it works because it’s framed within Radcliffe’s broader performative approach: thoughtful, unflappable self-awareness.

Veronika Slowikowska

“Another hard but captivating watch. Thanks. ” “Brutal watch! Thank you. ” “This was EXCRUCIATING … Thank you .” “veronika I can’t keep doing this. ” These are typical comments found below the TikToks of half a million-follower-strong Veronika Slowikowska, and their raves. Online and onstage, the comedian possesses all the indefatigable verve and cartoonish physicality of a possessed wind-up doll. Once she gets started on a riff, tangent, character, or song, she feeds off her own energy, doing voices, dances, and faces like a petite female Robin Williams spinning into infinity. Her ability to leapfrog from one idea to the next — as she improvises a song about Friends or invents an intense, too-committed fantastical excuse for why her roommate can’t use the bathroom after her — is why Slowikowska has taken off in such a huge way online. It’s like she’s curated an insane FYP in her mind, and as she performs, she’s scrolling through it at 2x speed. Sometimes, she quite literally bounces off the walls .

Slowikowska is a seasoned live performer, having spent years in Toronto’s sketch- and improv-comedy scene before moving to Brooklyn in 2023, where she co-hosts, along with Haley Stiel, recurring Improv But Good live improvised musicals. Onscreen, she makes college-student roles shine, as seen in her appearances on What We Do in the Shadows and in cult-fave indie I Like Movies . But TikTok is where she’s flourished, in part due to the way she’s managed to serialize her comedy shorts by playing a version of herself with no sense of social awareness, a randomly incredible singing voice, and a deep and abiding crush on her roommate, Kyle, played by her podcast co-host, Kyle Chase. The ongoing will-they-won’t-they saga of her videos — pranking him for attention, trying to make him jealous by paying Lucas Hedges to go on a date, sharing a pivotal New Year’s kiss — gives structure to her train-of-consciousness antics and stakes to her daffier bits. She elevates cringe comedy to a high art, drawing frequent comparisons to real comedians like Kyle Mooney and fictional characters like Michael Scott. That she’s also crafted TikTok’s own Jim and Pam arc is just icing on the face .

Gianmarco Soresi

@gianmarcosoresi Technically speaking…🤣😬🤣 #standup #comedy #comedian #funny #standupcomedy #jokes ♬ original sound - Gianmarco Soresi

Ubiquity is a skill. Blanketing social platforms with material can only get a comedian so far; being as undeniably universal as Gianmarco Soresi requires an improbable combination of energy, productivity, and an ability to read the room (and work the algorithm). It’s not just one platform, either. Soresi was a Just for Laughs new face in 2022; performed on The Late Late Show ; appeared in The Last OG , Hustlers , and Bonding ; and has a popular podcast called The Downside With Gianmarco Soresi , but he’s most impressively inescapable online, where his posts reliably rack up tens of thousands of views and his TikTok has over 700,000 followers. He has Poster’s Disease in the best possible sense: He’s constantly developing new material, and he’s relentless about getting it out into the world. “My girlfriend, she wants us to get a mezuzah,” he says in one of the dozen TikToks posted in the last few weeks. But he feels anxiety about it, “so I got a watermelon mezuzah.”

That ceaseless energy is a career strategy, but it’s also a reflection of who Soresi is onstage. He is effusive and expressive, a chatterbox of ideas and reactions with dense stretches of jokes that draw the eye in the compressed, attention-strained landscape of vertical video. His material about current events plays well in that environment, as do his regular clips of crowdwork . But it’s not surprising that in his longer sets, he’s also the unusual comedian with material about MrBeast. “It’s kind of pathetic, filming strangers to build up your YouTube following,” Soresi says, before his head falls in a moment of self-awareness. The crowd roars because they get it. He lives in that place, he owns it, and he possesses the rare gift of translating it for the in-person experience of live comedy.

Some comedians talk about politics with a sense of gravitas — the humor has an edge of anger, or the point of the joke is to clarify injustice. Emil Wakim’s comedy is often political, and it is often about injustice. His material covers conflict in the Middle East and prejudice he experienced during childhood, and even jokes that are ostensibly about sex or relationships often morph into jokes about political correctness or identity. But his political focus has an unusually gleeful tone to it, a bro-y pleasure that often lands on a note of happiness, or at least a sense of excitement that he’s gotten away with something fun. It’s not good that older generations are relying on young people to fix the world, he says. Greta Thunberg should be out at parties having fun : “You can’t penetrate the voice of a generation. It’s wrong! It’s like shooting an eagle. It kills the hope. But that’s what I want for the world. I want Greta to squirt.” “That’s optimism!” he shouts after that punch line. And he’s right.

Wakim grew up in the Midwest and has been featured on The Tonight Show and at Just for Laughs, and in those sets, he often begins from the same premise as all of those  naughty-proud comedians who are hung up on a much angrier vision of what’s allowable in comedy. Like them, Wakim tells jokes about wanting to say bad words, jokes about gender and trans people and shame. But he turns those premises towards a joyful or at least absurdist twist by the end, which creates an oddly buoyant sensation of laughing happily at political material rather than chuckling sadly. Wakim’s material allows audiences to laugh at the current state of the world in a way that’s both sincere and satisfying. In that way, it feels almost rebellious.

Eagle Witt is a trickster. He creates tension in his jokes by slithering around the different, often contradictory sides of an argument, and he has a gift for living in pockets of uncertainty. In a joke from his 2023 Comedy Central Stand-Up Featuring set, for example, Witt remembers being “infuriated” when one of his white friends called Bob Dylan “the greatest lyricist of all time” … until he actually listened to a Dylan song: “You ever lose an argument so hard you become a fan?” He goes on to concede that Dylan’s “got bars” after all and reads the audience a profound lyric to prove this point. “Isn’t that beautiful?,” he asks — and then, the twist: “Yeah, that’s Jay-Z. Fuck Bob Dylan!” He’s visibly delighted at forcing people to confront their implicit beliefs and assumptions and unwilling to let audiences — especially white audiences — stay comfortable. Later in that same set, the born-and-raised New Yorker makes the case for Kanye as president (“He’s the Black president white America deserves”), then tells a story about the time a heckler believed he was making this argument in good faith: “Bitch, this is a joke! I’d never vote for Kanye West. He’s my favorite rapper. I trust him with beats, not the button.”

Witt’s low-key unpredictability makes him an interesting fit for Wild ‘n Out , a show that leans toward broad, high-energy comedy. After years spent touring as a stand-up, including opening for Aziz Ansari in large theaters and arenas in 2022, he joined the cast of the comedy game show’s 21st season in 2024. In the first game of his first episode , “On the Gang,” where the contestants try to make the stone-faced Chain Gang laugh — often with surface-level roasts and by questioning their manhood — Witt sidles up to the gang’s four big dudes and says, “Y’all look like y’all have strong-ass picnics.” Like in his stand-up, it’s his instinct to zag that gets the laugh. Over its 20 years, Wild ‘n Out has proved to be one of comedy’s most fruitful talent showcases with Katt Williams, DeRay Davis, the 85 South Show trio, and Mikey Day emerging as notable breakouts. It is still early in Witt’s career, but he’s already positioned for a similar trajectory.

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