From The Comic's Comic

I spoke with Ali Siddiq last month after seeing him perform earlier this spring at the Beacon Theatre, where Siddiq told me afterward backstage that not only was it his first time headlining in New York City, but also his first big show in the Big Apple ever?!? That couldn’t possibly be right, and yet Siddiq said he hadn’t performed properly in NYC since his big win in Comedy Central’s “Next Up” competition in 2013, which held its finals at Carolines on Broadway during that year’s New York Comedy Festival under the banner of Comedy Central’s Comics To Watch showcase. I’d also spoken with Siddiq a couple of other times through Comedy Central, once when his 2018 special premiered, and then again that summer when I moderated comedian panels for Clusterfest.

Six years later, a lot has changed for Siddiq, and although I had barely more than a half-hour of his time on Zoom, I wanted to make sure to find out how he feels about finding success now, after all of those years in the grind.

A version of our conversation appeared online Sunday in The Daily Beast. This is our full conversation. Enjoy it!

At the age of 49 — three decades removed from an FBI drug bust that sent him to prison, and 24 years into his career as an ex-con turned stand-up comedian — Ali Siddiq was still seeking his big break in show business.

His debut special, It’s Bigger Than These Bars, found him back in a Texas jail performing for inmates, but it came and went on Comedy Central after a few airings in 2018. The following summer, NBC put him in primetime where he competed against a similarly then-unknown Matt Rife on Bring The Funny (Siddiq won that round). But come 2022, Siddiq, just like Rife, found himself on his own, producing and releasing his next stand-up special straight to his YouTube channel. And just like Rife, Siddiq’s career and fame have skyrocketed since. The Domino Effect: Part 1 has earned more than 15 million views in just over two years, and landed Siddiq on multiple year-end best of 2022 comedy lists. But unlike Rife, Siddiq’s viral fame has yet to lead to a lucrative Netflix deal, even while he continues to rack up massive viewership on YouTube. 

The subsequent two chapters of The Domino Effect (with some 20 million combined views and counting) have followed Siddiq as he tells the rest of the story of how he grew up in the Houston projects, wound up selling drugs, and eventually getting busted at 19. The fourth and final chapter, The Domino Effect: Pins & Needles, premiered last month on the subscription platform Moment (making him Emmy-eligible), and drops for free on his YouTube channel just in time for Father’s Day. 

Siddiq sat down with me to talk about how far he has come without taking a Netflix deal or leaving his hometown of Houston, and how Father’s Day hits different for him now that he finds himself as a successful comedian trying to raise both an adult son and a teenager who will never truly understand the struggle he endured. There’s a lot to get to, so let’s get to it!

Here’s a trailer for his complete series, The Domino Effect, available on YouTube.

And here are some other clips we referenced during our conversation.

Back in 2006, Siddiq showed up in the middle of the music video for Lil Keke’s “Chunk Up The Deuce,” where he gets arrested and interrogated by the cops.

Of course, his appearance on Ari Shaffir’s This Is Not Happening turned things around for Siddiq in a big way, and represented the first time he began telling stories onstage about his time behind bars.

But right before the pandemic, Siddiq was in primetime on NBC, wowing Bring The Funny judges Kenan Thompson, Chrissy Teigen and Jeff Foxworthy, and defeating Matt Rife in a head-to-head semifinal to book his place in the finals.

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