1991 super bowl halftime show

In Living Color lasted just five seasons on the air from 1990 to 1994, and when it was cancelled it got the quick, disappointed eulogy one might expect for a show that briefly burned hard and bright but had already lost some of its mojo.

But with time, it’s become clear that In Living Color was more than just a very funny sketch show that helped launch the careers of the Wayans family, Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier, Rosie Perez and Jennifer Lopez.

It was part of a wave of black culture that completely remade the mainstream in its own image. 

Homey Don’t Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution is both the warts-and-all story of the making and unmaking of a once-great television sketch show, and a chronicle of this moment in time when a murderer’s row of creative talent, including Keenen Ivory Wayans, Arsenio Hall, Robert Townsend, Spike Lee, John Singleton, Chris Rock, Chuck D, Queen Latifah, Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur,