Comedian Lil Rel Shows the World
“What Dat Do…ALL DAY!”
By Sandria M. Washington
The world loves Chicago for its architecture, fine cuisine and high-end shops along the Magnificent Mile, but Chicagoans—the real people who live here and make the city breathe—love Chicago for reasons that puzzle many.
We love the griminess of the “L” train, chicken shacks that drench our fries in “mild” sauce and though it’s difficult to admit, we even love the young sistas from around the way—affectionately called hoodrats—with their sassy ways and sweet slang. It’s hard to make outsiders understand what it means to really live in and love Chicago, but Gwendolyn Brooks did it through her stories and poetry, Common and Kanye do it through hip hop and now Lil Rel is telling our stories through comedy.
Lil Rel, a 26-year-old West Side native, is steadily etching his place in history by captivating crowds with his Chi-town flavored comedy. With appearances on BET’s Comic View, Jamie Foxx’s Laffapalooza and the Big Black Comedy Show, Vol. 3 DVD to his credit, it’s no wonder why this comedian describes himself as being cocky.
His cell phone ringtone with Mike Jones tauntingly singing, “Back then they didn’t want me…now I’m hot they all on me,” says it all. Lil Rel has come a long way from his early days of seating patrons at Riddles Comedy Club in Orland Park to enjoying a tightly booked bicoastal calendar, sometimes performing at multiple venues in a night.
This comedian/actor/writer/glasses model has made a career out of staying true to himself and his hometown roots. At the age of 12 Lil Rel, then a precocious young boy named Milton, realized he wanted to pursue comedy.
While attending Crane High School he honed his comedy chops by cracking jokes with his friends. Rel’s personal style, which erred more on the preppy side than thug, was different from most of his high school peers. “I didn’t realize I was a nerd until I went to Crane.” His crew enjoyed watching Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld and he studied those shows intently. He understands life from both the urban and mainstream perspectives and this is what makes his comedic appeal so great.
“I work real hard at selling my personality and learning how to explain where I’m from,” says Lil Rel. Long gone are the days of Chicagoans envying the styles of New York and L.A. “I want to be one of those people that really puts us [Chicago] out there and make people want to be like us and say ‘Joe,’ ‘ALL DAY!’ and ‘What dat do?!”
The success of his hard work is evident with catch phrases from his skits being quoted from comedy lovers nationwide. The “ALL DAY Chick”—based off of the classic hoodrat stereotype (you know this sista-she has to end every sentence with either the phrase “ALL DAY!” or “What Dat Do?!”)—is a crowd favorite.
Listeners of Chicago’s Power 92.3 radio station can also catch his impersonations of Peetey Pablo, Akon and the Erratic African.
Away from the stage you can find Lil Rel hard at work on any number of scripts for his future sitcoms, narrating the voice of “Red” on Power 92’s Dem Damn Rats and he recently taped a pilot for a comedy show hosted by Reynaldo Rey.
With the respect of his peers and comedy vets like Earthquake, his credentials no longer warrant the phrase “up and coming.” Lil Rel has already come up; we just have to get on his level. ALL DAY!
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