More so than probably any other comedian, Hannibal Buress is very much connected to the hip-hop world: He’s been on stage with Gucci Mane, he directed and co-starred in Chance The Rapper’s video for “NaNa,” and he had his own novelty hip-hop hit with “Gibberish Rap.” He’s even met Jay-Z and Beyonce, although it doesn’t seem like that encounter went super well.
Buress tells the story in a new animated video from TBS, which begins with Buress talking about the time he found himself at Jay-Z’s 40/40 club with a couple of his friends, Chance and Vic Mensa. At some point in the evening, Jay and Beyonce entered the building: “Everybody goes crazy,” Buress says. “The whole energy… I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Then, the couple posed for a photo with Chance and Mensa, and Buress thought it would be a good opportunity for him to snap a picture of his two pals with a pair of legends. That was not the case, as he hilariously explains:
“I take the picture, and Jay-Z’s pointing at me, and he says, ‘Be cool.’ I would never just pull out my phone and take a picture of people just chilling. They’re taking a picture, why not pull out my phone and I get the picture… ‘Be cool.’ What are you talking about, ‘be cool?’
[It was a situation where] the club is too loud to say what you really want to say. I wanted to be like, ‘No, I don’t want to be cool. This is a great picture. It’s two friends of mine from Chicago, they’re doing well, and they’re hanging out with you, one of the biggest rappers in the world, and your wife, one of the biggest stars in the world. I’m not going to be cool.’ [laughs] I couldn’t say that because it was too loud. It would have been weird to yell at Jay-Z. I just took it.”
Watch the video above.
