Nick Cannon Squeezes Stand Up Into Already Packed Schedule

Nick Cannon is late calling in for a phone interview, but with the schedule he’s keeping these days, it’s easy to cut him a little slack.

In the space of a week, Cannon has hosted two live episodes of NBC’s America’s Got Talent, been on the air daily as the main morning personality for New York’s WXRK/92.3 FM and begun a run of stand-up shows in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area. The latter is part of his first national stand-up tour, which comes to the Arlington Improv this weekend.

Pile on to that Cannon’s other careers: R&B singer, actor, producer, chairman of cable TV channel TeenNick, with the 29-year-old coming full circle to the Nickelodeon empire that gave him his breakthrough when he was still a teenager.

As busy as Cannon is, it doesn’t seem like he’d need to add a national stand-up tour to his plate — especially while AGT is in the thick of its season. Within the past 10 days, Cannon has hosted the show in Hollywood, flown to Florida for his act, flown back to Hollywood for another week of AGT, then made his way to Texas. But he says it was time to do the stand-up tour.

“I’ve gotta exercise my stand-up muscle. I’ve got to prepare and get out there,” he says. “It was time to put a few months in on the road, and get out there and develop a strong set.”

One reason he’s doing it is he’s preparing to film a nationally televised stand-up special. Still, it seems like he could do the tour with less jet lag, by, say, doing a West Coast swing.

“But then you don’t really get to feel the country,” he says. “You don’t get to feel all of the perspectives. If I would’ve just done a West Coast run, then that’s only one perspective, especially if you’re doing comedy just in Hollywood. That’s a jaded type of environment. You don’t really get to feel the everyday person.”

Cannon should know; according to his America’s Got Talent bio, he headed to Hollywood at age 15 from his hometown of San Diego and got gigs at comedy clubs such as Improv, the Laugh Factory and the Comedy Store. He did warm-up for the Nickelodeon show All That, and had such a knack for it that the producers cast him on the show and hired him as a writer — when he was 17.

He later became host and executive producer of his own show, The Nick Cannon Show, then went on to a movie career, making his breakthrough with the 2002 sleeper hit Drumline. Around the same time, he began a recording career, releasing his debut album in 2003. In 2009, he took over as host of America’s Got Talent when Jerry Springer departed.

Cannon says his stand-up act will be pretty freewheeling, and that he’ll talk about “everything.”

“I’ve been quiet for a while, compared to all the things that have been going on in my life,” he says. “Talking about everything, finally getting out there, speaking my mind on all issues.”

All includes pop superstar Mariah Carey, whom Cannon married in April 2008.

“She helps me with a lot of my material,” he says. “I always tell people she’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. I run everything by her. But I haven’t let her come to an official show yet, because I don’t feel like it’s all the way right where I want it to be, and she’s the person I want to impress the most.”

Cannon says that he probably could’ve waited till this season of America’s Got Talent had ended to do the tour, but he wanted to do it in the summer, when more people could see his stand-up show, and he has upcoming movie projects that could affect doing it later in the year. And the AGT schedule (shows air at 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, KXAS/Channel 5) only keeps him busy the first half of the week, allowing him to travel to do the Thursday-Saturday stand-up shows.

It does seem, with the hundreds if not thousands of acts that run through the America’s Got Talent audition process, ranging from sincere singers to outlandish performers who appear better-suited to a freak show, that Cannon could mine some material from the show.

“[We] had this guy who thought his talent was to [light] firecrackers on his crotch,” Cannon says. “The ambulance had to come and everything. I don’t know what was going on there. It was bizarre. People do strange things for attention.”

At press time, one North Texas act, 11-year-old Denton rapper-dancer CJ Dippa, had been eliminated from the competition; another, Dallas’ Da Maniacs, was scheduled to perform this week, but their status won’t be known till after this story has gone to press. CJ Dippa is talented, and showed a knack for good-naturedly talking back to the judges (who liked him) without seeming impertinent. Cannon has a theory about why he didn’t last past the quarterfinals.

“The buzz was there,” Cannon says. “People were lovin’ him, especially young people, but I believe that because the voting starts so late, that all the young people were in bed by the time it was time to vote for him.”

As Cannon begins his stand-up show, another project of his will premiere on TeenNick: The Nightlife, four summer variety specials (8:30 p.m. Thursdays, TeenNick) centered on music, dance, fashion and entertainment. Among the people scheduled to appear are rapper-actor Ice Cube, Up in the Air’s Anna Kendrick and hip-hop artist T.I., as well as several dance troupes.

“It’s just creating a destination for young tastemakers,” he says, “the same way that we all grew up on American Bandstand, Soul Train, all the way to TRL. It’s just today’s generation, giving them that same outlet.”

The series is currently down as four specials, but Cannon says he thinks it could go beyond that.

“I’m hoping, as the person who runs the network, that it keeps going,” Cannon says with a laugh. “As long as it rates well, it’ll keep going.”

Source: Star Telegram