Basketmouth is in London and he sat down with Adesope Olajide of
Vox Africa to speak on the r*pe joke he cracked on facebook that went
negatively viral a few days back.
On r*pe Joke Controversy:
“Definitely I am sorry about what happened. The people that it
offended. I won’t say the people that misunderstood but the people that
it offended. It’s not like I left Nigeria because of that, I already
booked my ticket since three months ago.
It limits me though. Now it limits the type of jokes I’m going to
be cracking right now. Sadly, every joke hits people the wrong way. If I
crack jokes about food, there are people in third world countries
saying, ‘Why is he cracking jokes about food? Have I chop na?’ They will
just go on twitter and say ‘This guy should stop cracking jokes about
food, I haven’t eaten’.”
On topics that are off limits:
“No. If you’re a comedian, you have the power to crack jokes
because the truth is humour has no limits. You can crack jokes about
death, living, anything you want to crack jokes about. Humour has its
own education that sends a message. Everything is funny. Everything in
life is funny, there is humour in everything that we do. Society
actually structures one.
For me, the only thing that limits me is if I go for a church
event I won’t crack any joke that has any X in it. Then if I go for an
event where everyone is drinking and drunk with their wives, I’m not
going to be cracking jokes about Noah and Solomon, I have to crack a
joke that suits them. I crack my jokes according to the audience.
So that’s my limit. I limit myself according to the audience, but
when it comes to jokes there shouldn’t be any limit. But because of the
culture and everything, you have to respect the fact that people might
find it offensive and just hold back.”
On people finding jokes offensive:
“The truth about jokes is no matter what type of joke you crack
there are people in the audience that won’t find it funny. People get
offended for different reasons. Wale Gates was telling me about a joke
he cracked about his wife and how someone was upset and said, ‘Why would
you crack a joke about your wife.’ And he said ‘Look, she’s my wife. If
anyone is going to be upset, can you let her be upset?’
And she heard the joke before and she wasn’t upset. People take
jokes in different ways, unfortunately everybody made it look like it’s
the first joke that I’m cracking. I cracked a joke about “Two things
involved” and it ended up being a positive angle and nobody talked about
it. The only joke that people like that I’ve cracked right now is about
me dying. I cracked a joke about my funeral and they loved it.”
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