Couple Behind ‘The Black Guy Who Tips’ Become Podcast Pioneers

Four decades ago, there was a school bus driver at Steele Creek Elementary School who now deserves at least some credit for what today has become the biggest podcast in Charlotte.

While picking students up in the Yorkwood neighborhood back in the mid-to-late-1980s, this woman would ensure that nobody sat next to one little girl named Karen, who always sat in the front seat, where she’d be joined by a boy named Roderick at a later stop.

“It was literally a running joke,” recalls Karen now. “The bus driver would tell people … When anybody got on my bus and they tried to sit beside me, she was like, ‘You can’t sit beside Karen. Everybody knows this seat is saved for Rod,’ because I got picked up before he got picked up.”

As a creative kid who could be labeled a nerd by some of the tougher kids in his hardscrabble neighborhood, Roderick appreciated not having to make his way to the back of the bus where the rowdy kids sat.

“I didn’t want to sit back there too much,” says Rod. “She was saving me a seat up front, and it’s next to a girl, so everybody just thought I was the man. ‘Oh man, that girl is saving him a seat.’ It worked out for me. I was like, ‘I got somebody to talk to.’”

Forty years later and the two are still talking, with around 20,000 downloads a week to prove it.

Now married, Karen and Rod Morrow have hosted The Black Guy Who Tips podcast since 2010, becoming a notable presence on the podcast scene nationwide for their unapologetically Black, Southern and hilarious takes on politics and pop culture.

Now in their 15th year as podcast hosts, the pair will host a live recording of The Black Guy Who Tips at Stage Door Theater on Feb. 28. The show will feature interactive versions of popular games from the podcast like Guess the Race as well as stand-up comedy from friend of the show J-L Cauvin.

What got them from the front seat of the school bus to a Blumenthal stage? The drive to keep creating and a refusal to be anything but themselves while prioritizing nuance over engagement farming and empathy over rage-baiting.

‘The Black Guy Who Tips’ is born

Roderick Morrow has always been a creative in search of the right outlet. He remembers having a lot of free time in school, having finished his work early and moving on to whatever medium struck his fancy at the moment — writing raps, short stories, poetry and the like.

Rod and Karen stuck together throughout childhood and even attended Fayetteville State University together. After graduating and landing a full-time job in shipping logistics, Rod continued to seek an outlet for his creativity.

He dabbled in rap for a bit, taking the name Sweetwater Tyvola as a hybrid homage: He grew up watching his beloved Hornets play at the Charlotte Coliseum on Tyvola Road while Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first Black player to sign a contract in the NBA.

“I was always creative because I just didn’t think a lot of work challenged me,” he explains. “So even when I had a full-time job, I was like, ‘What if I started rapping?’ I never was trying to make a living off of it … it was always an outlet for fun. I had friends who were like, ‘We need to get on the radio. We need to go on a tour.’ I was like, ‘I just like seeing if I can do it.’”

Rod was also writing at the time, having launched a blog called The Black Guy Who Tips, which evolved from an email chain he would send to his friends with whatever random funny thoughts he was having that day (replacing Biggie’s “Ten Crack Commandments” with his own “10 Weed Commandments” was one idea he remembers).

He was also a fan of podcasts, listening to shows like Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and This American Life. He came across Keith and The Girl, a podcast hosted by Keith Malley and Chemda, a couple in New York City who would bring on eccentric guests and talk about taboo topics.

It was during a feedback episode of that show in which Keith and Chemda read letters from readers that Rod heard a piece of advice that would change his life. One person had wrote in to lambaste the idea that the two podcasters had a difficult job.

“The thing [Keith and Chemda] said was, ‘If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it? You do a show, you become more popular than us,’” Rod recalls. “But me listening, not as a hater, but just listening, I went, ‘Oh yeah, why don’t I do it? I don’t need a person to tell me or select me or let me know I’m qualified. There’s no resume for this. There’s no reason that I can’t give my opinions if I think I’m funny or whatever.’”

He came home from work that day and suggested the idea of launching a podcast with Karen. Fifteen years later The Black Guy Who Tips has built a loyal following of listeners who range across the globe.

Pioneers in the podcast space

Karen was not originally into the idea of co-hosting a podcast with her husband. She wasn’t as familiar with the medium and the same lack of structure that inspired him to go for it made her uncertain.

“What if I’m terrible at this? What is happening here? There was no rules or regulations to it,” Karen says. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Rod says he would have named the podcast The Rod & Karen Show, but his wife’s non-committal stance led him to name it after his blog. Karen agreed to jump on the microphones with him as a pilot program of sorts but reserved the right to drop out if she wasn’t feeling it.

Karen’s still on board 15 years later, but that decision turned out to be one of the most fortuitous things to happen to the show.

In 2010, only three years after the release of the first iPhone, podcasting was still a fringe medium. Only a select few podcasts were reaching a notable audience and there were no Black-led podcasts among those.

“When we first started posting and putting stuff on our social media, so many people said, ‘I went to iTunes, I tapped in “Black” and you popped up.’ That was the number one feedback for a very long time,” explains Rod. “That was so ironic because if Karen wouldn’t have said, ‘I’m going to be temporary and you can replace me or whatever,’ I would have named it Rod & Karen and this would have never happened because no one’s searching Rod & Karen.”

While that serendipitous search engine cheat code brought listeners in, it was Rod and Karen’s hilarious but empathetic takes on all things pop culture and politics that kept them around for all this time, building a loyal fanbase of folks who had been thirsting for Black voices in the podcast realm.

The two have found that their show can be therapeutic for listeners who don’t have a large community of Black folks in their personal circles.

“I think because we talk about Blackness first, we have a lot of people that are in places where it’s very few Black people,” says Karen. “They write to the show all the time, particularly when anything political happens and all the Black people are talking about it, they say, ‘I tune in because I can’t talk to my coworkers. I can’t really talk to anybody about this,’ and they feel isolated. They’re like, ‘I feel crazy. You all make me feel not crazy.’”

The Black Guy Who Tips has also become known for its popular recap shows in which Rod and Karen break down the latest episodes of their favorite shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones.

As with their regular episodes, these recaps have become a haven for listeners in search of a Black perspective on pop culture.

The couple launched the hashtag #DemThrones on Twitter during their Game of Thrones recaps, starting conversations that “span everything from explicit black humor to deep analyses of elements of race, class, and enslavement in the mostly white fictional world of Westeros,” according to an excerpt from a 2019 episode of HBO’s VICE News Tonight that highlighted Rod and Karen’s role as representatives of Black fandom.

“We talk to each other in a non-code-switching Black way because that’s how we talk on the show all the time,” Rod tells Queen City Nerve. “When we do these recaps, there’s a built-in uniqueness to them.”

Reckoning with accessibility in the real world

While Rod and Karen couldn’t be considered A-list celebrities, they have risen to a certain level of popularity that leads to unexpected experiences for both of them. Karen remembers the first time she was approached in public by a female fan while picking up wings at Mac’s Speed Shop with Rod’s mother.

She says she was taken off guard, but it was altogether a pleasant experience and the two took a photo together. From then on she knew things would be slightly different in her life.

Rod was once chased down by a man who came out of People’s Market to try to convince him to go back and have a drink after recognizing him as The Black Guy Who Tips.

“Every in-person interaction we’ve ever had with a fan has been great,” says Rod. “I’m not saying we have no terrible fans, but I ain’t met them … Online though, that’s a different type of interaction because that’s not the same as face-to-face.”

Rod had his first experience with negative virality during the 2016 primary presidential campaign when he launched the #BernieSoBlack hashtag as a joke referencing the penchant for Bernie Sanders supporters to insist that the Democratic candidate knew what Black people needed better than Black activists did because he marched with Martin Luther King Jr.

“I made a joke. It was a joke. It was not serious. I’m not a political pundit. I’m just a person, especially back then,” he recalls. “I went to play basketball. I swear to God, I came back two, three hours later and my email was full of, ‘Hey, the New York Times wants to talk to you,’ and NPR too. I was like, ‘What? For what?’”

He faced backlash from Bernie supporters for weeks online, which was an experience he continues to learn from.

“That was my first real brush with like, ‘Whoa, this could be a toxic thing being this accessible,’” he says. “At the time, I didn’t have really good boundaries. I really was not prepared for that.”

He’s also had to learn some lessons in realizing that, if he’s talking bad about somebody on the show, those statements aren’t going into a void.

In 2011, Rod was critical of a new solo album from Phonte, the third member of Durham-based hip-hop group Little Brother alongside 9th Wonder and Big Pooh and one of Rod’s favorite rappers of all time.

Some time later, Rod and Karen went to a comedy show to see their friend Chris Lamberth perform in Raleigh and Chris introduced the couple to Phonte backstage after the show. Rod had completely forgotten his own critiques of that one album, but Phonte had listened and remembered it well. He was forgiving, but the dinner that the group shared later was awkward.

Then there’s the time Rod playfully dissed Charles Oakley, one of the most intimidating NBA players of all time, only to quickly hear back from the man himself.

“Charles Oakley hit me back on Twitter,” says Rod. “I’m scared of Charles Oakley, that’s a scary dude. At the time, he was in Charlotte working for the Bobcats. I apologized to that man like no one’s ever apologized before. Because I was like, ‘Oh, this is real.’ I’m thinking like I’m talking to 12 people. Anyone in the world can hear this at any time.”

For the most part, Rod and Karen speak with empathy for the folks who find themselves at the center of a given controversy, which has resulted in a like-minded fanbase that for the most part shares their belief in nuance and compassion over the usual rage-baiting of the internet.

“I don’t think you really get too far coming at people or attacking people,” says Rod. “We’re nice people, so our feedback and our fanbase is actually really nice. Over the years, being a podcast listener, I’ve noticed, ‘Oh, you just get out what you put out.’ If you have a really mean, nasty show, an attacking show, that’s what your fanbase is going to be. That’s how they’re going to respond to you.

“I don’t put content into the world to try to hurt people,” he continues. “I try to put things out there that I believe in, things I think would be helpful, and I tried to put it in a way over the years that at least has some nuance and compassion to it.”

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This driving principle leads to a sense of community among listeners that makes events like the upcoming live show at Stage Door uplifting for the couple.

For Karen, who still struggles with speaking up when she has something to add on the show and can feel somewhat insecure about her role in the show, live recordings are like an “on switch” that activate her and make her feel seen.

“I always get nervous, but it’s that thing … I never realized I had an on switch,” she says. “I don’t want to say it’s a personality shift on stage, but it’s almost like show mode. And once I’m like that, I’m fine … because I know that I’m in a safe space. I know that the audience is cheering for me and rooting for me.”

With this being the fourth live show the couple has hosted in their hometown, the value comes in finally connecting with the audience that they know is on the other ends of their mics when they record episodes but only get to see in these rare occasions.

“It’ll be fun to be in that environment because the listeners, when we play the songs live and they’re singing along or they’re dancing, it reminds you that this is a community,” Rod says. “Even if it’s not a physical community gathering in a space all the time, in these moments, it gets to be that.”

The Black Guy Who Tips Live will take place on Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. at Stage Door Theater in Founders Hall, 155 N. College St. Tickets start at $40. Visit blumenthalarts.org for more info.