Thunderwof Mixtape Release: “Boys Don’t Cry But, Wofs Shed Tears.”
Heirloom Rustic Ales
Tulsa
July 19, 2024
If you’ve been to a comedy show in Tulsa in the last few years, there is a high probability a man named Thunderwof made you laugh. With his new mixtape called Boys Don’t Cry But, Wofs Shed Tears., that man — the government-named Chaz Stephens — aims to get your head nodding too. Last Friday’s release set at Heirloom Rustic Ales showed his move into hip-hop is far from a joke.
Familiar faces from Tulsa’s comedy and hip-hop scenes ate up all available seating in the brewery, with comedian Lacee Rains serving as the event’s host alongside Wof and several hip-hop openers.
Heirloom is no stranger to comedy shows, but it’s always entertaining to see the family-friendly day crowd realize the night is upon them.
As the sun goes down at Heirloom, the “going down on people” jokes go up. Rains, a local comedy favorite, served as hierophant to the ribaldry with riffs on HJs, BJs, and her past as a prospective nun. She even rapped for her first time ever with — true to form — lyrics about blowing Nic Cage.
“She’s hilarious and she asked if she could rap and I was so excited to see her do more cool shit,” Stephens told me. “She wrote, produced, and performed that song like a fuckin’ pro.”
Stephens curated the evening’s lineup, which had more of a hip-hop than comedy lean to it.
“Young Chino is an up-and-coming rapper from East Tulsa,” Stephens said. “Savvy Kray is another sick artist who makes music that folks can dance to but can also make folks excited for a drive down Riverside. $ir Mike is my favorite DJ and producer, and I’m blessed to call him my best friend.”
Apart from Rains’, the only other official “comedy” in the evening came when one MC quipped that Stephens rapping was like an NBA player trying out golf. And he indeed came out swinging.
Wof is a beloved fixture in the Tulsa comedy scene. In his unique sets, he is known to have crowds yell random numbers, or generate them by rolling dice, and riff off the corresponding topics he has numbered in his notepad. Those topics run the gamut from dunking on the school children he teaches to meditations on Oklahoma Blackness.
His mixtape does the same.
On the first track, “Red Ranger Ronnie,” he dons a pitched-down persona, assuming the titular alias which is an allusion to the Black Rodeo legend — and his father — Ronald Stephens. Growing up on R&D Ranch in Turley, Stephens was immersed in Black cowboy culture and brings it to his art.
A sample from the 1972 documentary Black Rodeo, which starred Muhammad Ali, buttons up the song with the words “Because no one ever told you there were Black cowboys.” The song plays back and forth between real life cowboy and nostalgic Power Ranger references, and sets the album’s tone from the jump: Wof can’t help but be humorous, but he’s more cleverly playful than comic here.
Childlike falsettos punctuate the screwed vocals on “BEEF,” and typical Thunderwof-isms about race abound. Extolling his friendships with “Snow Rangers” is a personal fave. “Sambo Unchained” details a Sunday funday full of “melanin and mimosas” and telling Karen to shut up, before Wof sees the face of a cop and the breezy beat degrades into a pulsing drill. The names Sondra, Brianna, Elijah, Trayvon, Orlando, and Terrence are listed in the background, as “the Black boy’s joy [becomes] the Black man’s rage.”
I once saw Wof perform a soliloquy on the art of cunnilingus with his parents in the crowd at his birthday comedy show, and if you’d like that experience you can hit play on the erotic “Talk To Me,” which features the vocals of Michela Walker. That track was the only mixtape song missing from this performance.
I asked Stephens why he opted to play the release event as straight hip-hop, and forego the comedy routine that some certainly expected.
“Well, I enjoy comedy,” he said. “I [also] enjoy not being in a box and making a name for myself as an artist, not just a comedian.”
Still, at the end of his musical debut, he cried out “I survived the set!” — and elicited the last laugh of the night.
Next at Heirloom Rustic Ales: Riff Show hosted by Brett Jeffries, August 3
