Kai Wright

You know, like a few years earlier, he was doing Bill Cosby jokes on Ed Sullivan.

This pivot to his more profane self is a success, but it's specifically a success with black people.

And this stuff is a hit.

Craps, in particular, like, was kind of a cult classic for Black people.

That's how I encountered it.

My parents had that album, you know, and I was digging around in it, you know, decades later.

But it would be the beginning of his success.

He had a concert film in that same year that was a big hit.

His next album, which was titled That Nigger's Crazy.

Okay?

Like, that's a huge hit.

But, like, even still, he's wrestling with this fame and with his place in the culture, and it kind of comes to another head with the gay sex thing.

I'm going to tell you a story about that.

Hmm.

So it's 1977 and he's a superstar by this point.

Right.

And he's booked as the headliner for a show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

That's a fundraiser for gay rights.

OK.

Because so now this is the moment in the history of gay rights where it's like the movement has moved from like Stonewall and liberation and sexual liberation to like a proper civil rights movement.