To call the rise of comedians Desus Nice and the Kid Mero meteoric would be an understatement. In just six years, the duo have taken a cult following on Twitter and turned it into a budding empire of cultural commentary, which led to a show on Viceland and now on Showtime, plus a book, God-Level Knowledge Darts: Life Lessons from the Bronx (on sale April 14). When it all started, their reach may have been confined to those in the five boroughs of New York City with a specific sense of humor.

Amazon God-Level Knowledge Darts: Life Lessons from the Bronx Desus & Mero amazon.com $22.99 Buy

But a lot has changed since Daniel Baker (Desus, left) and Joel Martinez (Mero, right) first put their Twitter fingers to use. The medium that helped make them has devolved into an underregulated hotbed of hate. And all the while, the Bodega Boys have been continually rewarded for their nuanced takes on everything from what counts as chopped cheese to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s grilling of Mark Zuckerberg. Who better to talk about what it means to earn fame now than two guys so relentlessly authentic that they were able to find success at the bottom of the barrel of society, a.k.a. on the Internet?

ESQ: Our March issue is about what fame means in 2020. We thought you guys would be the perfect people to talk to about it, given your own ascent, which we don’t have to get into, because, you know, you’re famous.

DESUS: We thank you for that, because every interview is like 20 minutes of “How’d you meet?” Maybe that’s part of fame, you coming to interviews like: You already know that; don’t you dare ask that.

ESQ: That’s the thing about social media, too. We just know everything all the time.

MERO: Fucking up the journalism game. It’s already on Twitter. I’m not breaking any news, fuck.

D: Because remember, back in the day, you never knew what a rapper was doing. You didn’t know what Ghostface Killah had for breakfast. You didn’t even know if they had emotions.

M: It sucks so much man. I remember Mobb Deep had beef with each other on Twitter. I was like, I grew up listening to Mobb Deep. It was like these mythical superheroes. And now they’re fighting.

Desus (left) and Mero (right) return to Showtime for the second season of Desus & Mero on February 3 at 11 p.m. ET. Charley Gallay

ESQ: Now you’re in a situation where you’ve got people chirping all day.

M: All day. And I’m thirty-six so I’m in that weird place where it’s like, I saw the internet be born. So my whole thing is I just default to, “What the fuck did you just say to me?” It’s like goal posts have been moved by the internet so badly that that doesn’t even work anymore. I’m trying to untrain my brain to go there.

D: After you have a certain amount of followers, the power balance is gone. You’re not allowed to respond to these people. Because you’ve already been successful in life. So if you have a million followers and someone has 23 followers and they tell you, “Go fuck yourself.” And you go get them dragged. Well, now you’re the bully.

ESQ: If you can handle it, look at the mentions and just pass them off.

D: I’ve got people like, “Oh my God, look at your hairline!” And I’m like, “Yeah yeah yeah, look at my hairline when I was getting an award from Time Magazine and my face was in Time Magazine. Oh my God, so tragic!”

ESQ: What did you guys think about Twitter back in the day, when you were first starting to do cultural commentary, before you had a big audience?

M: I was writing a blog, just like sitting around with friends and shit, and we would be smokin’, and then I would just pop out like a random non sequitur, and my homegirl’s like, “Twitter is made for your wild ADD-ass brain.”

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

D: When I first started, in like ’08, I was working at nightclubs. So when I was tweeting, it was basically a journal. You’d say some fucked-up stuff, because you never thought there would be this culture of “Yo, let’s see what the fuck you said on September 13, 2009.” I think people on Twitter now, they don’t have that freedom we had.

ESQ: You don’t really see it as a source of fame anymore. The people who’ve made the most of Twitter to achieve things. . .

M: . . . already achieved it!

D: Twitter is not a big deal. When people get dragged on Twitter, like, “Oh my God, I got canceled on Twitter.” I’m like, stop five people on the street and ask them if they’re on Twitter. They’re gonna be like, “What the fuck is Twitter?” Go home and tell your grandfather, “OK, Boomer.” See if he doesn’t try to fight you outside. He’s not gonna know that’s a meme.



ESQ: What counts as being famous? Where is the bar now?

D: There’s a Jerry Seinfeld quote—he says that being famous means you meet a person and they know everything about you but you know nothing about them, and you have to repeat this hundreds of times a day. But it kind of means something different in New York. New Yorkers make eye contact with you real quick, they might do a head nod, and they just keep on moving.

ESQ: When you guys started out on Twitter and started the podcast you had civilian day jobs. Desus, you were a small business reporter and Mero, you worked at a school. Tell me the stories of when you quit your jobs and said “We’re gonna do this for a living.”

M: Throughout the Complex era, I was still working at the school. And it was wild because John Caramanica ran a piece on me in the New York Times and I was trying to be low at the school. But then you pop up in the New York Times and then I got this guy, Mr. Skelly who is the principle, he sees me one day, and he’s like, “Hey Martinez! The Kid Mero, huh?” And I was just like, “Fuck, ahhh, no!” I’m working with kids and I’m tweeting wild shit. Is he reading these tweets now?

My kids are like, “Yeah, you’re on TV—that’s cool, but that just means you can buy us more video games.”

D: We started doing like Desus vs. Mero, audio only, and I was still working in this office of the magazine. And so it’s getting a little traction. And I’m like alright cool but where the hell can a podcast go? At the same time, I’m trying to take over my boss’s job. So when push comes to shove, I get some weird email from my homegirl Jean and she’s like, “Yo, congrats on your show.” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” And she said, “Oh, in Variety it was announced that Desus and Mero is pivoting to video.” And then the guy called me in the office and was like, “Yo, we were gonna try to fire your boss and she’s got too much power here. She’s not gonna leave so you can’t have the IT job.” That was that. I wanna say that was at 1 o’clock. At 1:13 I printed out my letter of resignation, at 1:25 walked in, gave it to him, he was like, “Are you for real?” I was like, “Yeah.” And I said, fuck it, let’s see where this podcast shit goes.

ESQ: When did you feel like something was actually happening, that the risk had paid off?

D: We were doing the podcast and the TV show for Desus vs Mero on Complex. And then A-Track hit us up to host Fool’s Gold Day Off the big concert in Brooklyn. And the idea that you got two guys who have never hosted anything, and now they’re gonna host an all-day concert? And there was a moment, French Montana was performing, Bobby Shmurda performed, and they closed it out. And then everyone left. And there’s a group of people just chilling in front of the stage and we’re just like, “Yo, what are you—?” And they’re just like, “We’re waiting to meet ya’ll.” I was like, the fuck. Like from a podcast? But even at that point, I don’t think we ever thought it would get to this level that it’s at now.

ESQ: Mero, I just saw a video of you in the Dominican Republic. People were chanting, “Mero!”

M: Yo, it was nuts. I fully expected to walk out there and people to be like, “Who the fuck is this guy, and why is he having all this unfettered access to this shit?” And I just hear one dude be like, “Ay, Mero!” but in Spanish: “Mero, Mero!” I was like, “Y’all get Showtime out here?” And Robinson Cano was there and it was less fanfare for Robinson Cano. I was like fuck that I’m just gonna come out here and run for President.

ESQ: That’s one of those smell-the-roses moments.

M: Hell yeah, bruh. I was like, “See, Mom, it’s legit; it’s international.”

ESQ: Parents will always appreciate something different from what you will.

Desus on stage during the 2019 New Yorker Festival on October 11, 2019 in New York. Ilya S. Savenok

D: My mother, when she got to this country, one of her main jobs was she worked in a New York Public Library. One day, my good friend Lisa Lucas, who is in charge of the National Book Foundation, was like, “We want to interview you at a library.” Packed house. Everyone was like, “We’re so proud of you—you were raised as a baby in the library,” and everyone afterward was showing me pictures of my mother, like, “Yo, send this to your mother!” And I showed that to my mother, and she literally teared up, like, “Wow, you’re really out there; you’re really famous.” And I was like, “I was just hanging with AOC and Don Cheadle—this is what impresses you?”

ESQ: People remind you to smell the roses because it’s so hard to remind yourself.

D: I think because our lives had really just such low bottoms, everything here feels like the highest point. If you’re not able to become comfortable in this, it’s going to kill you. Being famous means not only do you have to be comfortable with yourself but also comfortable with the way the world views you and you not being able to change that view.

ESQ: A new level of fame is when people don’t know you by your real names. Does anyone call you by your real names anymore?

D: I was just at Shake Shack and I used my real name, and everyone was super fucking confused. Everyone at Shake Shack is like, “Who’s this famous person?” And there’s this one guy on staff, he does the nod, and I’m like, “You know who I am. So put extra ShackSauce on there, man—hook that up for me.”

ESQ: What do you guys do now to make a point of keeping your feet on the ground?

Mero on stage during the 2019 New Yorker Festival. Ilya S. Savenok

M: Bro, like, I am anchored to the ground. I have four kids; my wife does not call me Mero. My kids are like, “Yeah, you’re on TV—that’s cool, but that just means you can buy us more video games.” I am still going to basketball practice; I’m still at ShopRite. I don’t even have the space to get bigheaded.

D: I’m still in the Bronx. Every night, I have to go buy beer and go buy blunt wraps. I always talk to people in the ’hood, just asking them about their day. And these people are like, “Yo, I can’t pay my rent this month” or whatever, and it just reinforces the fact that, like, we even made it out of the Bronx was super lucky. The whole thing goes back to fame. We have to handle it well, because they’re watching and they hope we make it. I want to keep continuing to help you out and help the Bronx.

ESQ: This interview is going to come out in early February. I'm wondering about a couple of things in the zeitgeist now, and if they'll be relevant then.

D: Let’s go.

M: Baltimore is gonna win the Super Bowl.

ESQ: Peloton wife. Will we be talking about her in February?

M: She’s gonna be huge. She’s gonna be huge access. You know how we were talking about go viral? This Peloton ad is the best thing that ever happened to her. I looked at her Instagram and everything and people love her. They’re demanding that she be in other films and stuff.

ESQ: Are we going to talk about baby Yoda in February or March?

D: Baby Yoda The God. I like his trajectory because that meme is about to become corrupted. So you’re going to start seeing like Baby Yoda with cuts in his eyebrow, baby Yoda with Airpods, Baby Yoda with shorts and Timbs the summer. This is not what Disney intended when they made Baby Yoda.

M: Across the entire spectrum. Alt-right Baby Yoda.

ESQ: Last question: Who’s the most famous person in the world?

M: Right now, this second? I feel like it’s Donald Trump, unfortunately. He’s always in the news; people all over the world are talking about this jerk-off.

D: I gotta go with Jesus. Jesus is the most famous person in the world. And it’s not even in a good way. Even if you’re an atheist, you stub your toe, you’re like, “Ah, fuck, Jesus fucking Christ.” It’s just great branding.

Editor's Note: Baltimore did not win the Super Bowl, and all has been quiet on the Peleton Wife front. Unfortunately the far right did co-opt Baby Yoda.

A condensed version of this interview appears in the March 2020 issue of Esquire.

Subscribe



Ben Boskovich Ben Boskovich is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, where he also writes about style.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io