Anyone who routinely watched the Chappelle’s Showon Comedy Central in the 2000s quickly got to know comedian Paul Mooney. As the prophet and fortune teller “Negrodamus,” Mooney hilariously predicted the future while answering asinine questions such as “Why do white people love Wayne Brady so much” and “What will happen to Rosie O’Donnell?”
But on Wednesday (May 19), the world learned Mooney was off to his next journey. According to media personality Roland Martin, Mooney died of a heart attack in his Oakland home early Wednesday morning.
“Comedic legend Paul Mooney has passed away,” Martin tweeted. “His cousin, Rudy Ealy, just called me from Paul’s phone and said he passed away two hours ago after suffering a heart attack at his home in Oakland. He was 79.”
He added more details in a follow-up tweet that read, “Rudy Ealy, the cousin of @PaulEalyMooney, told me that Paul had been suffering with dementia for some time and had been living with him. Rudy said Oakland paramedics valiantly tried to save him after suffering a heart attack this AM.”
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Paul Mooney was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1941 and relocated to Oakland with his family seven years later. Widely known for his work with the late comedic genius Richard Pryor, Mooney was able to hone his craft while cracking jokes as a circus ringmaster, which ultimately led to his job with Pryor.
Mooney wrote some of Pryor’s routines for Saturday Night Live, co-wrote his material for the Live on the Sunset Strip,Bicentennial N-gger and Is It Something I Said albums as well as Pryor’s movie Jo Jo Dancer,Your Life Is Calling. During his tenure as head writer for The Richard Pryor Show, he helped launch the careers of Robin Williams, Sandra Bernhard, Friday‘s John Witherspoon and more.
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Elsewhere in his illustrious career, Mooney wrote for In Living Color, Good Times,Sanford and Son,The Larry Sanders Show and Real Husbands of Hollywood.
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Par for the course, tributes are pouring in on social media from Ice-T, The Roots’ Questlove, Parliament-Funkadelic legend Bootsy Collins, Freddie Gibbs, Thundercat and more. HipHopDX sends our condolence to all those who loved Paul Money.
Check out some of the reactions below.
