During his second night guest hosting “The Daily Show,” Desus Nice had a special segment for Comedy Central viewers: ripping into a guy he doesn’t like, DJ Envy.
“I know some people expect me to come on here and just do my thing where I roast people that I have beef with, but this is a serious show,” Nice said before putting on his “spectacles” and launching into some financial news. The guest late night host then proceeded to use five minutes of his eight-minute monologue to rip into DJ Envy, a man he’s been publicly feuding with since 2018.
“Wow, DJ Envy is in trouble for real estate fraud. What a serious story. It’s definitely not funny,” Nice said.
Understanding Nice’s feud with DJ Envy requires some backstory. Throughout their show and podcasting careers, Desus Nice and The Kid Mero have cultivated a reputation for being unapologetic and a tad bit irreverent. So when the pair implied that DJ Envy’s wife, Gia Casey, only married him for his money on an episode of the daytime talk show “The Real,” they thought the comment was a funny joke about a friend. DJ Envy wasn’t nearly as forgiving.
Nice and Mero later appeared on an episode of DJ Envy’s radio show “The Breakfast Club” and the vibes quickly became contentious. DJ Envy introduced the two as “d–khead and p—y” and told them they owe his wife an apology. Though Nice and Mero apologized, that wasn’t enough for DJ Envy who played another clip of the pair mocking him on their show before storming out of the interview. Thus a beef was born.
Last Wednesday, Cesar Piña, DJ Envy’s longtime friend and business partner who has appeared on “The Breakfast Club” on numerous occasions, was arrested on charges of wire fraud. Piña was involved in what’s been described as a Ponzi-like real estate scheme that cost victims millions. DJ Envy has not been charged in the case and has retained his innocence. However, many of the victims have said DJ Envy’s connection to Piña influenced them to invest.
“It’s not like Raashaun [Casey, aka DJ Envy] accosted me on the radio for making a little joke about him and his wife, which I only thought we were friends. It’s not like he called me ‘d–khead’ and then got so mad he locked himself in the studio for the rest of the show and then told the building’s security I was a threat,” Nice said. “But even if that happened, that’s all in the past. I’m just reading the news.”
Nice then called the story “not hilarious” and noted DJ Envy had no way of knowing he was involved in a Ponzi scheme before switching to a clip from “The Breakfast Club.” As the rule of late night dictates, that clip showed DJ Envy admitting that his friend Joe Budden told him it was a Ponzi scheme “and I was going to go to jail.”
“That clip is not funny. We are not laughing at this,” Nice said. “We’re also not asking, ‘Who’s a d–khead now?’”
The rest of Nice’s opening monologue was devoted to ripping into DJ Envy for being associated with a “‘Property Brothers’ ass crime.” The segment finally ended with a cutaway of Dulcé Sloan reporting live from one of these alleged properties.
When it comes to the world of late night, it’s easy for hosts to slip into doing the same jokes about the same topics. But between this and his casual interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday, Nice has already stood out from the crowd by putting his personal stamp on the late night format.
There’s also a chance this feud may continue on “The Daily Show” itself. Charlamagne tha God, DJ Envy’s co-host on “The Breakfast Club,” is set to guest host “The Daily Show” next week starting on Monday.
