Rocking Austin as Eshu Tune, Hannibal Buress flexed serious rap skills in hilarious set

During South by Southwest 2011, Childish Gambino, the actor and comedian also known as Donald Glover, packed a capacity crowd into the classic punk dive Red 7 (now The Creek and the Cave). Glover was just finding his feet as a musician. His rap alter ego was intense, moody, aggro punk and — much to the annoyance of the crowd in attendance, including yours truly — not at all funny. People were mad.

Comedian Hannibal Buress took a completely different tack when he hit the stage across the street from that infamous flop to introduce his rap alter ego Eshu Tune during this year’s fest at Brooklyn Vegan's Lost Weekend day party at Empire Garage.

"This is a new feeling for me,” he quipped at the top of his set. “Not the rapping thing — it's just usually when I play shows in Austin, I get paid a lot of money."

Then he logged a set that punched way above its (nonexistent) cover charge. Backed by a full band, he made it clear that he was in the building to show and prove his rap skills. But still, he peppered the set with jokes, and many of the songs themselves were infused with humor. High points included “Veneers,” a baller anthem about fixing your teeth, and a random cover of Christian pop icon Michael W. Smith’s “Awesome God.”

So, how does the rapper balance his dual pursuits of music and comedy?

“Well … I'm interested in this Gambino thing. Y'all were really mad?” he said with a laugh backstage before his set.

Yes, we were. “I thought (Glover) was going to do stand-up and was disgusted when he started rapping,” local rapper Eric Morgan, who shot a video of Childish Gambino performing at the show with a then-unknown Kendrick Lamar, said in 2017.

More: Remember when Childish Gambino first came to town? Probably not

For Buress, those two creative pursuits have always been closely linked. His career “was adjacent to music from the very beginning,” he said.

“I actually recorded music before I did stand up,” he said. Even as comedy became his primary focus, “my career was always parallel" to music, he said.

Early on, he hosted open mic nights that featured both music and comedy. He did skits on rappers’ albums. He battle-rapped in college. Then his comedy took off.

When coronavirus pandemic lockdowns put the brakes on touring, Buress began pondering his next phase. As the world reopened, standup clubs were “weird," and he didn’t love acting enough to take a COVID test every time he stepped on set, he said. He felt drawn into the studio.

As he crafted his debut album as Eshu Tune, humor was always at the ready.

“I like having funny songs,” he said.

In his most recent single, “Knee Brace,” a limping Romeo’s velcro keeps catching on his paramour’s thong during a romantic encounter. Our hero uses words like “bumfuzzled” and “cattywampus” to describe his awkward plight.

Buress was inspired to make the song “Veneers” after seeing an ad for hair plugs. He’d never had fake hair, but he had fixed a chipped tooth, something he talked about in standup. An early version of the song included a dentist drill, a reverse-ASMR effect that his friends convinced him to remove. A new remix features verses from fellow tooth-fixing rapper Danny Brown and Houston grill-master Paul Wall. (Buress jumped on Brown’s SXSW set at the Doc Martens day party to play the song after rocking Empire.)

The toothsome video for the remix, which Buress shot in January in Austin, dropped during the fest.

When he was developing the project, he wrestled with balance. “I like making goofy, fun songs. And I also have this real stuff, too,” he said.

Eventually, he decided to “just do what I enjoy,” he said. Of the eight songs on his self-titled debut, “four of them are grounded and pretty serious and straightforward,” he said. The other four are “a little on the insane side.”

An enthusiastic SXSW crowd confirmed it’s a winning mix.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Comedian Hannibal Buress hit SXSW in Austin as rapper Eshu Tune