Several years ago The Humor Mill launched a comedy series titled Life After Def which was an inside look into the lives of comedians who performed on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, the comedy show which was infamously known as the groundbreaking show that debuted in 1992. If you recall, it was hosted by then new actor/comedian Martin Lawrence and the show was THE premiere platform to watch tons of comedians who no one had ever heard of, who was hysterically funny, and from the urban communities across the country.
As you probably already know, Def Comedy Jam introduced us to many comedians that we know as household names today, 
including Bernie Mac, DL Hughley, Steve Harvey, Sheryl Underwood, Chris Tucker, Joe Torry, Mike Epps, Earthquake, Tony T. Roberts, Sommore, and many more.
Urban comedy was new to the scene for cable television at the time and if a comedian performed on DCJ, it definitely affected your career in one way or another. For one, you could ALWAYS use that as a label (so to speak) on when you performed at other comedy clubs across the country, and you could command more money for a performance.
What wasn’t said was the other side effect if your performance wasn’t funny then you created some new problems for your career path, and hence the birth of the Life After Def series. Now with the new app Laugh.ly and our new podcast partnership, we delve deeper into the insights of the show. In the new series, we talk to many people who performed on the show as they expose us to the highs and lows and how it affected their career.
In case you are wondering who is Laugh.ly, well, simply put, it’s a comedy streaming service which has an extensive library of comedians’ stand-up sets, including Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, Louis C.K., Hannibal Buress, George Carlin, and Chris Rock just to name a few.
Laugh.ly, created by CEO Dave Scott, formerly a comedian, is also an entrepreneur with a background in e-commerce and marketing automation. Scott had the idea for app lovers who are familiar with platforms such as Spotify and Pandora, to listen to comedy in the same manner. He also had the idea for a new platform for comedians to have a new stream of income in an era where fewer people are buying CDs or DVDs, as they are watching sets online through streaming services like Netflix and HBO Now. Laugh.ly offers the consumer the ability to listen to comedy, and it even suggests other comedians that the listener might like based on the last comedy performance that they liked and rated. It’s being compared to as the Pandora for comedy, as it can create personalized stations of comedy while offering on-demand listening.
With the partnership between Laugh.ly and The Humor Mill the podcast will debut a new interview every Wednesday and as expected we will have some great interviews as many people will tell some great (and not so great stories) about their journey.
