To Him, Rap’s No Laughing Matter : Comedian Franklyn Ajaye feels the heat after accusing hard-core music groups and others of glorifying ghetto life

Comedian-actor Franklyn Ajaye will celebrate his 20th anniversary in show business next year. Though he’s hardly a household name, he figures he’s had a pretty good run. After all, he headlines comedy clubs all over the country, starred in his own cable TV special and bantered with Carson, Letterman and Leno.

More important, he believes he has remained true to his goal of bringing an intellectual, low-key focus to comedy when many of his colleagues are joking about body parts.

Like most black comedians, he notes the differences between cultures. In a comment wondering why blacks aren’t seen much in beer commercials, he said: “Black people drink lots of beer. However, you won’t see us skiing down a mountain for one, or see us diving for Frisbees on concrete for one.”

But it’s Ajaye’s recent non-comedic material that has earned him more publicity and notoriety than almost anything else he has done. He’s getting a rep for his rapping of rap music and rap-oriented comedy.

And some of the fallout has been anything but funny.

Ajaye, who wrote sketches for Fox Television’s “In Living Color” during its Emmy-winning first season before leaving “by mutual agreement,” has raised the hackles of the show’s creator--Keenen Ivory Wayans--and others by criticizing the state of black comedy and music, saying the wrong message is being sent to African-American youth.

“This whole urban rap thing needs to be pulled back some,” Ajaye was quoted as saying in TV Guide. “The ghetto is being glorified, and there’s nothing good about the ghetto except getting out of one.”

Noted educators, sociologists and some members of the entertainment industry have applauded Ajaye, calling him a welcome voice in the continuing controversy over images of African-Americans in popular culture.

They agree that African-American entertainers who have achieved success should place more emphasis on expanding those images to include educated, heroic figures.

“Ajaye is raising questions that should be debated, and he does not stand alone,” said Alvin Poussaint, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and a consultant for “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World.”

But the praise has not been unanimous.

Some in the industry, including former associates of Ajaye’s, hint that the comedian is just expressing sour grapes in a desperate attempt to grab some of the spotlight. The comments have also sparked a professional and personal split between Ajaye and Wayans.

Although he is pleased with some of the response from the controversy, Ajaye believes he is getting a bad rap. He says the comments were taken out of context from an interview with columnist Marilyn Beck and were not specifically aimed at Wayans or his show.

Rather, he said, he was targeting such rappers as the members of 2 Live Crew who say they are following in the tradition of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy in their use of profane languages and images.

“Those remarks weren’t aimed at ‘In Living Color,’ because that’s not a rap show, bottom line,” Ajaye said. “The quotes make it look like I had left under a cloud, that I was treated bad, which was not the case at all.

“I just resent these hard-core, knuckleheaded rappers who are having such a tremendous influence on our youth. And I have anger at the fact that the media have decided to hook onto rappers as the only expression of black culture. I’m angry because it shortchanges other black people.”

Although he was been taken aback somewhat by the reaction to the statements, Ajaye plans to press on with his outspokenness while striving to make his brand of comedy more popular. He knows it may result in lost gigs or resentment from angry colleagues.

“If those comments draw attention to me, fine,” he said quietly while sitting at a rear booth in Maurice’s Snack N’ Chat on Pico Boulevard, one of his favorite haunts.

“But it’s not said to draw attention. I don’t like a lot of attention, but I stand behind what I say. I was just trying to be true to myself. My statements weren’t angry, just blunt.

“I don’t like the fact that most black people or black comedians have to present themselves in a flamboyant way,” said Ajaye, a slim man with a velvet-toned voice, distinctive round glasses and an impish giggle that erupts often during his monologues.

“It’s good if you can do that, but I don’t like to think that’s the way all black comedians are,” he added. “I’m not that type.”

Ajaye has just been hired as one of the writers for “Roc,” a Fox Television situation comedy based on a black family, featuring several Broadway cast members of August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson.”

“I know the creators of the show want to do a better sitcom,” he said. “We’re not going to go for the obvious joke. Plus, we’ve got good stage actors.”

Writing for a network sitcom is a long way from the New York coffeehouses and comedy clubs where Ajaye started performing in the early 1970s after dropping out of Columbia University Law School. He moved to Los Angeles in 1972 and became a regular at the Comedy Store.

He recorded a few comedy albums, but his big break came in 1976 when he co-starred in “Car Wash.” Sporting a huge Afro, Ajaye played an employee named “The Fly” who envisioned himself as a super hero.

Feature roles followed in “The Jazz Singer,” “Convoy” and “Hollywood Shuffle” as Ajaye continued to be a regular on the comedy scene, headlining colleges and clubs. He and Wayans became close through their mutual friend Robert Townsend. Wayans liked a few sample sketches Ajaye penned for “In Living Color” and hired him as a writer.

Ajaye said he left the show in May, 1990, to star in his own comedy special for Showtime. But TV Guide attributed his leaving to his dissatisfaction with the raunchy direction of “In Living Color.”

“I have no desire to be hip to the latest black slang and do the stereotypical black thing,” Ajaye was quoted as saying. “I was a Richard Pryor fan, and I have used profanity in my act. But when it becomes a whole thing that defines (blacks), we’re limiting ourselves. The enemy is us.”

Entertainment Weekly magazine reported that Ajaye was speaking of some of the show’s trademark sketches, such as “The Homeboy Shopping Network,” which features two young hustlers (Wayans and brother Damon) who sell stolen goods to get “mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money.”

“Being black and speaking properly are not mutually exclusive. My father was an African, and he spoke beautifully at home,” Ajaye was quoted as saying. “Nelson Mandela speaks beautifully. Should Mandela put his hat on backwards and say, ‘Yo, homey, this is Nelson. Yo, Winnie, yo, this is def’?”

The reaction to Ajaye’s reported comments was immediate. Word came in from educators and parents who commended him for his straightforwardness. He heard from parents of high school friends he had not seen in years. Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene devoted two columns to Ajaye, praising his courage.

“I heard from hundreds of people, from a wide range,” Greene said. “Many of them were teachers, especially black teachers in predominantly black schools. They were also distressed by the glorification of ghetto language and street talk. They were pretty emotional, saying, ‘Thank God someone in the entertainment industry is saying this.’ ”

Poussaint said Ajaye deserves congratulations.

“There’s a lot of good in rap and a lot of bad, but what some of the rappers are doing at the extremes is very challenging,” Poussaint said. “Franklyn Ajaye is coming out against some of that. He’s saying that our people should not be encouraging young men to be brutal towards women or to be killing each other.”

Jannette Dates, associate professor of communications at Howard University, said many African-American entertainers are not being responsible enough and are perpetuating the same stereotypes that had been set up by white society.

“What has the struggle of African-Americans been about if they are putting out the same stereotypes?” said Dates, who co-edited the book “Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media.” “It is socially irresponsible of those rappers and others who have that visibility to abuse their place in history. Everybody has to understand that they have a responsibility to put out something positive.”

Dates, who has sharp criticism for “In Living Color,” said the most negative images are sometimes the most popular: “It is the ones who are the most offensive and the most outrageous that get the attention. I would love to see us defy these stereotypes. These entertainers are the role models, and children are being shaped by what they do.”

UC Berkeley sociology professor Harry Edwards interpreted Ajaye’s comments as calling for a wider projection of positive black images by African-Americans in the media.

“Where is the breadth? Where is the variety?” Edwards asked. “That is where the rub is. You see the dope pusher, the gangster, the hip person. But where are the educated, heroic figures?”

However, others said Ajaye is being too harsh.

Sandra Evers-Manley, president of the Hollywood/Beverly Hills chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said: “What Ajaye has to do is continue to do these other positive things. But you can’t take away the self-expression of rappers who are doing raw things. It’s a unique dramatization of social dialogue within the African-American community. Not all of it is bad.”

Sherrie Manzingo, a USC journalism professor specializing in the mass media, said there is already a wide variety of images being presented. “It’s not an either/or situation,” she said. “The public is being exposed to a range of comedy and musical styles. There’s lots of black social satire and comedy.”

She also believes that rap, as a trend, is fading. “It’s a flash in the pan,” she said.

Still, Ajaye said most African-American comedians have to be brash or outrageous to succeed. Unlike most black comics, he tries not to stress urban-oriented racial humor in his act.

“I went to Dorsey High School, but I didn’t really have the black experience, not the classic black life,” he said. “I had an African father and an American mother, and I was raised different.”

He said he feels good when fans call his humor “cerebral”: “I’m determined to carve out a following as a low-key black comedian and to make people deal with that. I’m not going to talk about street life. I didn’t live it and don’t feel I have an obligation to relate to it.”

Despite calls and a letter of apology and explanation from Ajaye to Wayans after the TV Guide article, insisting that he had not been targeting the show, their relationship was ruined.

Ajaye said Wayans has not responded to his calls or letters.

“The relationship with Keenen and I is irrevocably broken, unless there’s some miracle--one of us gets cancer” and the other “shows up at the hospital.” He chuckled slightly.

“Keenen was just sensitive about the whole thing,” Ajaye said. “I don’t blame him for being angry, especially if he construed it as an attack. But it wasn’t.”

Wayans declined to comment.

However, Ajaye said that more than enough positive interaction and dialogue were sparked by the comments and that he has no regrets.

“Teachers ‘adopted’ me,” he said. “I got a lot of support from inner-city teachers. For me, that made it all worthwhile, no matter what happens. I know where their hearts are.”

He paused: “Some money I’ll lose, and some money I’ll make. But don’t weep for me.”