Standup comedy takes many forms. Some comics tee up a joke and quickly deliver the punch line, rapid-fire. Others work the crowd, creating an interactive experience. Ali Siddiq, a native of Houston, Texas, takes another tack: a storytelling approach, allowing the pace of his comedy to ebb, flow and build.
Launching his comedy career in 1997 after release from prison on drug trafficking charges, Siddiq worked his way into larger venues, opening for bigger names and eventually earning headlining status. Today, with more than a dozen solo albums and streaming TV specials to his credit, Siddiq is one of standup’s brightest stars. Ali Siddiq comes to the San Jose Civic on June 6.
Like the best observational comics, Siddiq draws his standup material from real-life experiences. He says that everything that happens to him in a given day is potential fodder for his monologues. “But I’m just gonna remember the 25 minutes of it that I like,” he explains. “Each day, something’s gonna happen to me that—I’m quite sure—has happened to somebody else. I’m just aware enough to tell a story and not be embarrassed about it.”
Our interview takes place via Zoom, with Siddiq taking a break in the shade of his back yard. “I have a tiller here that is totally broken,” he says. “And I’m feeling faint.” Acknowledging the incongruity of seeing a popular standup comic doing yard work, he places it into a larger context. “I’m only a star Friday and Saturday,” he says. “The rest of the week, I’m just a regular dude.”
Over the years, Siddiq has become a go-to personality when a staged or televised event needs a host. In the ’90s, he hosted “Apollo Night” at Houston’s Just Joking comedy club. Siddiq hosted several episodes of HBO’s Def Comedy Jam. For three years, he co-hosted the Uncle Funky Larry Jones & Ali Siddiq radio show on Houston’s KMJQ-FM. And he learned an important lesson along the way. “Hosting makes me a better headliner,” he says. “When you’re the host, it’s on you to set the pace; you’re coming out cold.”
Coming up in the comedy scene, Siddiq also took part in improvisation. And while he emphasizes that he “doesn’t do crowd work,” Siddiq maintains an element of spontaneity in his shows. He recalls a performance during which an audience member showed up several minutes into Siddiq’s monologue. “I’m gonna catch you up on where we are,” he told the man. “Because you walked in at the middle of the movie.”
Siddiq doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as a bad audience. “A bad show is me not having fun onstage,” he says. To that end, he keeps his material fresh. “Sometimes an audience wants me to do older material; they yell out, ‘Stories!’ But those [stories] are things that you can see on the Internet,” he explains. “I don’t want to be they guy [about whom people say] ‘Oh, every time he comes, he does those stories!’”
Still, Siddiq will occasionally relent and share one of those classic stories. “People will shout out for ‘Mexican got on boots,’ he says, referring to one of his most well-known pieces. “And that’s the story that I will not do,” he emphasizes. “Because I can never get through it; people yell out their favorite parts of it. And then I’ll tell the audience, ‘Man, y’all suck. You’re not even letting me say it!’”
Now nearly 30 years into his career as a comic, Ali Siddiq says that the perspective that informs his comedy has “changed quite tremendously” over time.
“I used to be worried about whether I’d win a competition or not,” he says. “And then I learned just to be grateful for the experience. I’m not [Joe] Rogan. I’m not Mike Epps. So I stopped judging my success by other people’s success.” He recognizes his strengths, and chooses to leverage those rather than branching out into other areas just because that’s the customary path for many comics. “I’m not a movie guy; I’m not a sitcom guy,” he asserts. “I’m a comic. And that’s what I want to be.”
Siddiq winces and shakes his head when a bit of inaccurate biographical information comes up in the conversation. Contrary to what one might read on Wikipedia (and thus repeated in many other outlets), he didn’t get his start as a comic during his stint in prison. “Somebody wrote that, and people keep going with it,” he says. “I keep telling people: There are no comedy clubs in prison!”
Siddiq wonders aloud how the misinformation gained traction; he imagines that someone had an idea: “Between the chow hall and the warden’s office, there’s this little spot…” Siddiq emphasizes that Texas Department of Criminal Justice facilities didn’t have brick-wall-and-bar-stool stage setups where he could try out new material in front of a captive audience.
But he did joke around during his six years behind bars. “I do think that becoming jovial in a place that was…a little non-jovial helped me with audiences,” he allows. “I was making people laugh while I was inside, so [when I encounter] people who don’t have any cares in the world because they’re free, it shouldn’t be hard to make them laugh.”
“And,” he adds, “Nobody’s trying to stab you.”
Ali Siddiq takes the stage at 8pm on June 6 at the Civic Auditorium, 135 W San Carlos St, San Jose. Tickets: $41.25-$142. sanjosetheaters.org
