My first experience of Jerrod Carmichael, probably at least a decade ago now, was watching him captivate a small, not particularly great audience I’d just bombed in while doing virtually none of the things you’d normally expect a comic working an audience to do. He didn’t shout, he wasn’t animated, he didn’t ask them tons of questions to create “energy” or “participation”; he was just an odd, sort of cerebral guy in a hoodie leaning against the back wall of the stage sharing a series of goofy, semi-surreal thoughts. He created a quiet kind of “anti-stage presence” that didn’t feel like shtick.