Comedian Hannibal Buress has been all over the place: as a writer on Saturday Night Live, an occasional guest star on Louie, and in the Ed McMahon role on Adult Swim's warped talk show The Eric Andre Show. He also maintains a busy schedule doing stand-up, including a weekly gig at Brooklyn's Knitting Factory that features frequent and occasionally surprisingly big guests like Chris Rock and Chappelle's Show writer Neal Brennan, as well as the occasional musician. His second big Comedy Central special, Hannibal Buress Live From Chicago, will have its television premiere on March 29. During a break in his busy schedule, we sat down to talk about rap skits.

ESQUIRE.COM: People talk a lot about the ways music and comedy intersect. I know that you bring in a lot of musical guests for your weekly thing at the Knitting Factory so I'd like to hear your perspective on it.

HANNIBAL BURESS: I mean, it just works. I like to put together a show with a little variety if I can. It's nice just to have that energy and mix it up, to have people laughing and then have them rock out. I had Chris Rock and Talib Kweli on the same night, and you know that's a crazy show. Now with my headlining sets on the road, I've started having music acts open for me. So I had Chicago rapper Calez open for me last week, and Brother Ali came out in Minneapolis, and Jean Grae did a couple dates with me. It's a nice energy.

ESQ: It seems there's something very similar between comedians and musicians, personality-wise and creatively.

HB: Yeah, the cliché is that comedians want to be musicians and musicians want to be comedians. I guess it's partially true. Musicians do their banter between songs where they try to be funny. Even Kanye, I went to his Yeezus tour and he was cracking jokes in the middle. He's a funny dude.

ESQ: It seems like there's always been a lot of crossover between hip-hop and comedy.

HB: Yeah, because rappers have skits on their albums or comedians doing interludes. That's a classic part of hip-hop. Also in rap videos, it's not as prevalent now, but definitely in the '90s and early 2000s a comedian would be in the video, in a skit in the video. The music would stop and there'd be this scene with just whoever — D Ray or Kevin Hart or Lil Duval. I guess I can't think of any white comedians who did that. Rodney Dangerfield had a song, but Seinfeld wasn't popping up in a Van Halen video or some shit.

ESQ: Are there any rap skits in particular that you think stand out as classics?

HB: The Wu-Tang torture skit. "I'll keep feeding you and feeding you." Is that funny? It's pretty weird. And Kanye West on Late Registration, that had skits all the way through. There's lots more but those are the ones that are fresh in my mind.

ESQ: Are you checking out any music while you're down here in Austin?

HB: I'm gonna try to, man. It's such a zoo down here, but sometimes I like to just walk around and pop into stuff. There are a few Chicago artists down here — Vic Mensa. I'm actually introducing Childish Gambino at the Woodies later. I went to the G.O.O.D. Music thing yesterday. I don't have that many particular artists that I want to check out. I'm just gonna walk around drinking and see what I can see.

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