You Will Never Hear Kyle Mooney's High School Rap Group

In Early Works, we talk to artists young and old about the jobs and life experiences that led them to their current moment. Today, it's actor, comedian, and Saturday Night Live star Kyle Mooney, who stars in the surreal comedy Brigsby Bear that sees release in theaters this Friday.

I grew up in a San Diego community called Scripps Ranch—the youngest of three boys. My mother was a journalist for the San Diego Union Tribune, and my father works in city and community planning. I was fortunate, because as the youngest child I was exposed to all the things my older brothers were into, which made me a step ahead of everyone who was my age.

A lot of the stuff I got into as a kid—He-Man, Thundercats, Transformers—was through my brothers. At eight years old, I was already nostalgic for things that existed when I was three. I probably saw Saturday Night Live before most kids my age, and Monty Python when my brother got into it. In 1990, buying a Transformers toy was difficult because the moment had just passed—but when the internet came out, you could just go on YouTube and listen to the theme song. All of a sudden, this stuff was was so accessible.

One could argue that I was a spoiled kid—in ways beyond my mom buying me things. My oldest brother, Sean, got into music in middle school and started playing guitar, and he was really into Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. As a third grader, that rubbed off on me, so I started playing guitar and listening to classic rock. Ryan, the middle child in our family, was the outlier—he was the athlete of the family, the blond-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking popular kid. My brothers and I may have had our moments where we didn't totally click, but over time, we developed a respect for one another. Now, we're best friends.

The first job I had was working for my dad's company. They did city and community planning, but they also had archaeology and biology branches. I mostly worked reception and organized their library. This is going to sound somewhat backward-sounding, but I don't think my dad loved men answering the phones at his company. But my brothers and I all ended up working there at some point, and out of all of them, my dad's always said I handled the phones the best.

In eighth grade, I was named "most likely to be a movie star" by my class. I hadn't done acting per se, but I made my friends laugh and I did characters in the hallway of our school. I'm sure that I was goofy or weird during class presentations, too. I don't know if I thought, That's the route. It seemed far-fetched. I didn't know any actors, you know what I mean? It felt like it was in its own universe.

My dad was always pushing us to get into sports, so I played little league baseball until I couldn't anymore. I never really loved it. I was decent, but I was a kid who secretly hoped it would rain so we didn't have to play. In my junior year of high school, I was like, "I don't want to do this anymore—I'm not that great, and I don't know what the point is." So I signed up for an intro drama class and got into acting. It just so happened that one of the teachers had just founded an improv group on campus too, so I auditioned for that and was exposed to that world.

I really wanted to be a musician, though. I was really into underground hip-hop and started producing, writing, and rapping. I truly thought that could've been the route that I took. I had a group with my friends called Instruments of Intelligence. We definitely prided ourselves on being conscious and not being mainstream. Our album was called Represent Difference. The MP3s are still on my computer. Dave McCary, who directed Brigsby Bear, was a member of this group—but he's very self-conscious about the pitch of his voice, as well as what we were rapping about. He's not super excited for me to share the music with the world.

I love children's videos—stuff that's low production value that you pick up at the Goodwill, where maybe 200 people in total have seen it. I'm generally a nostalgic person, and Brigsby Bear has that element of nostalgia and fandom. So many of my videos are cartoons I watch—I probably have like eight Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers tapes. I remember typing into my Friendster profile in the fall of 2003 that "VHS" was one of my interests, because that was right when DVDs had fully taken over. You could go to a Blockbuster and they'd have budget bins of VHS tapes for sale. I can't speak for record collectors, but I feel like there was a time where you couldn't listen to everything—you'd just go by word of mouth. You could say the same thing about video store clerks, too.

The weirdest VHS tape I've ever found is this video called Prayer Bear. As far as I know, they made three volumes of it. It's this small, animatronic bear called Prayer Bear and his human counterpart, and Prayer Bear leads him on the path of moral decisions. My favorite episode is called "Time to Pray," and it's basically Prayer Bear explaining when's a good time to pray. There's a bully in that episode who finally sees the light through the power of prayer. All you need to know about Prayer Bear is that he loves spumoni ice cream and he's always a good guy to have on your side.

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