According to the biography on his own website, Hannibal Buress is a “mildly popular comedian.” It’s the perfect understated encapsulation of Buress, who has built a career on deadpan, canny observations, frequently about himself. On Walmart.com, you can purchase a laminated printout of a quote by Buress that reads: “Comedy is basically self-deprecation,” and he once showed up for a Late Night with Seth Meyers appearance wearing a jumpsuit with his own face on it. Then there was the time he told Chicago magazine that he had skipped kindergarten because he was reading at a high level, and then after a moment said: “That’s a weird and cocky thing to say.”

Buress got his start on the Midwestern stand-up circuit while he was still in college, regularly performing at an open mic held in a friend’s bedroom. “When we got big, we moved to the living room,” he joked on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron. He moved from his hometown of Chicago to New York in 2008, performing anywhere that would have him. He finally caught a break when Seth Meyers saw his second-ever late-night appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Meyers liked what he heard and helped get Buress through the door at Saturday Night Live. Buress wrote at SNL for a year—including a shrewd bit about Charles Barkley’s golf swing—before leaving to write for 30 Rock. His career arguably really took off, though, when he left 30 Rock to find his own voice on the road, touring around the country and perfecting his storytelling style of jokes, which eventually led to his first Comedy Central special, Animal Furnace.