Possibly you suppose you already know Nick Cannon.
The 44-year-old actor, comic, musician and entrepreneur has been a presence on our TV screens since he was a boisterous teenager on Nickelodeon’s All That within the late ’90s, and he’s been a tabloid headline fixture since not lengthy after that.
However the Cannon who sits down with SUCCESS® for our leisure concern is soft-spoken and delicate. His demeanor is straightforward; he’s fast to giggle. (OK, that half you in all probability might have guessed.) Possibly that’s as a result of years of onerous work within the leisure trade have taught him when it’s OK to be quiet or possibly he doesn’t have as a lot to show at this level, a long time into the profession he constructed out of skinny air. Maybe it’s as a result of after we communicate, he’s simply put certainly one of his sons down for a nap.
One factor is for certain: Cannon just isn’t slowing down. Immediately, on the helm of a media empire that features a number of podcasts and tv exhibits, he’s certainly one of a small variety of actors who’ve efficiently navigated the transition from a conventional leisure and media economic system to search out success within the digital house. He’s nonetheless an actor and entertainer—he’s been the host of The Masked Singer since 2019—however he’s additionally a famous person creator, with greater than one million subscribers on YouTube and tons of of 1000’s of followers throughout his different platforms watching and listening as he sits down with Suge Knight, TikTok-famous hip-hop duo Flyana Boss or Mike Tyson.
For Cannon, this present period is a type of private pinnacle, a media success story that’s on the intersection of his personal life, his artistic life and his entrepreneurial mindset. However whereas he sees the digital media house as the way forward for leisure, in a humorous method, it’s additionally a return to the leisure ecosystem the place he first hustled for fulfillment as a young person.
“Actually, what sort of received me on was I used to be a child with a camcorder, a child [who] would go do interviews and man-on-the-street stuff. That was type of my fashion of comedy and my fashion of leisure within the ‘90s,” Cannon tells SUCCESS®. “So, to see that type of come full circle and it truly turn into a real enterprise at the moment with all of the creators and influencers, it’s like—wow. I’ve been doing this all my life, and it’s type of like second nature for me.”
Ranging from scratch
Within the leisure enterprise, it’s famously all about who you already know.
Cannon didn’t develop up with the connections sometimes required for Hollywood superstardom. He was raised primarily by his paternal grandparents in a public housing improvement in southeast San Diego, California, the place gang tradition was prevalent and expertise scouts weren’t. However the future star was motivated from a younger age—and he was humorous. He was 11 years previous when he received his first gig, performing stand-up comedy on his dad’s cable-access program.
He was nonetheless a teen when he was added to the forged of the hit sketch present All That throughout its fifth season. The Nickelodeon collection, which was like Saturday Night time Dwell for youths, was a staple of the community’s programming for near a decade, and Cannon, for the entire foolish characters he performed, took it extraordinarily critically. “I used to be a young person on the time, coming from my neighborhood like, ‘I’d do something to stand up out of right here. Give me a costume; I’ll put it on! I ain’t scared. Is there a examine that comes with it? Let’s go!’” he recalled in a 2014 oral historical past of the present.
The younger actor had the center and spirit of a fantastic entertainer, however he had the aptitude for onerous work and the mindset of a fantastic entrepreneur. His time on All That (and The Nick Cannon Present, though short-lived) led to starring roles in movies Drumline—for which Cannon’s breakthrough efficiency was nominated for MTV Film Awards, Teen Selection Awards and Black Reel Awards—and Love Don’t Price a Factor. Then, there was Wild ‘N Out—half sketch comedy, half rap battle, half improvised recreation present and all from the thoughts of 1 Nick Cannon.
“After I began the present, I used to be a younger child trying to discover a place to voice my perspective and opinion in a comedic method, and I had so many mates [who] didn’t even have the chance that I had,” he remembers. “So, I used to be like, ‘Oh, let me open this door. Let me create this stage so folks can hear voices like Katt Williams, and Kevin Hart, and Pete Davidson, and Mikey Day and Matt Rife.’”
Cannon felt sure that he had successful on his palms, however MTV executives heard “hip-hop improv comedy present” and weren’t so positive. “They didn’t get it. They didn’t perceive it,” he says. “So, I actually invested in myself, took my very own cash, rented a comedy membership, rented some cameras, received my mates collectively and shot the pilot episode of Wild ‘N Out.” It wasn’t the normal method of doing issues, however it labored. “And if I’d have gone the normal route, allow them to make a pilot, and them pay for it and develop an thought, I wouldn’t have been in a position to personal Wild ‘N Out to this present day,” Cannon says.
Conserving doorways open
This has been his playbook since he was younger—together with his exhibits and together with his music. Listening to “no” doesn’t make it a foul thought, Cannon causes. It simply means it would take somewhat extra onerous work to make it occur. His listing of present artistic endeavors is lengthy and contains The Daily Cannon, a radio present on which he usually highlights up-and-coming music and comedy expertise; audio and video podcast Cannon’s Class, on which visitors talk about far-ranging matters, from the jail system to homeschooling to hip-hop; and Nick Cannon’s Huge Drive, a Tubi present that finds him hopping within the automotive and using together with everybody from Snoop Dogg to Rita Ora.
After which there’s Counsel Culture, the Cannon-hosted psychological well being podcast and present that asks, “What if, as an alternative of attempting to cancel each other, we recommended each other?”
Cannon connects to Counsel Tradition on a private degree: “Being somebody who has been on the chopping block many occasions, I’ve all the time simply identified that, as an alternative of attempting to cancel each other, if we might counsel each other, I believe there could be a lot atonement,” he chuckles. “I actually sit in that house as if I’m sitting on my therapist’s sofa, being as candid and as susceptible.”
However like all of his leisure initiatives, it’s a win-win: Not solely does Cannon have full artistic management over the content material, themes and matters of dialogue, however he additionally will get to provide different folks a platform they may not in any other case have. Now that he’s in his 40s, the previous teen sensation says one of the rewarding issues is giving different gifted and hungry younger folks their first alternatives.
“We get to curate this younger leisure house,” he says. “One in every of my presents is to have the ability to acknowledge different peoples’ presents and to be that man to say, ‘Hey, this individual’s subsequent. This individual deserves a possibility,’” he says.
“If I’m a gatekeeper, I’m the one man holding the gate open,” he continues. “I’m preserving it open for everyone.”
A balancing act
If the thought of internet hosting a number of podcasts and TV exhibits whereas additionally working your personal media firm appears like numerous work, properly, it’s. And whereas Cannon is at some extent in his profession the place he might coast, doing the occasional film or TV present and in any other case quietly amassing royalty checks, that’s by no means been a mindset that feels comfy for him.
“After I sit with my therapist, he calls me a machete juggler,” he laughs. “It type of makes a lot sense… all of the issues folks say I can’t do, I’m like, ‘Nicely, watch me. Imma present you. Throw me yet one more machete.’”
Even fatherhood, he grins, is one thing he approaches in a “machete-juggler sort of method.” With 12 children—Monroe, Moroccan, Golden, Highly effective, Zion, Zillion, Zen, Legendary, Onyx, Rise, Stunning and Halo—he has a lot to maintain him busy as a mother or father. He put his son down for a nap simply earlier than our name, and in a short time, he’ll go choose up certainly one of his daughters from college.
However being a mother or father has given him a sense of function even higher than probably the most thrilling leisure alternatives.
“Possibly 10 years in the past, I used to be type of like—I used to be on the lookout for a brand new problem. I used to be on the lookout for one thing else to intrigue me and encourage me,” he says. “Now, I don’t should look, as a result of it’s proper there in all my children. No matter their desires and aspirations are, I’m simply attempting to feed into that and put money into them as a lot as I probably can.”
And when you’re questioning how he probably balances all of his leisure initiatives with elevating a dozen children… Nicely, he says, it takes multiple calendar. “It’s time administration; it’s vitality administration. No matter I put my vitality in direction of, I’ll discover the time. I believe it’s actually the place my ardour lies,” he explains.
“Idealistic optimism”
Cannon says he’s extra mature than he’s ever been—fatherhood helps with that. However, in some ways, he’s nonetheless the wide-eyed child he was within the early 2000s, stuffed with a youthful exuberance that spills out into his life and work. He explains that he has an “idealistic optimism” that issues will occur for you when you work onerous to determine it out, and that’s an ethos he hopes he’ll move right down to all of his children.
“I don’t suppose that the entrepreneurial spirit has been extra alive than it’s proper now,” Cannon says, his eyes glowing.
He signifies that broadly—the truth that any younger individual can report a humorous video and add it to Instagram or YouTube in moments has upended a number of the previous methods of doing issues in Hollywood, and success is one thing you possibly can attain out and seize for your self now greater than ever. You don’t even should have a camcorder the way in which Cannon did, as a future star doing man-on-the-street-style interviews; only a smartphone will do.
However he may be referring to himself, particularly. Not content material to easily run a media firm, the ever-enterprising Cannon’s NCredible model is stepping into a brand new house this yr, with a renewed emphasis on well being and wellness. The road of NCredible Meals merchandise will embrace NCredible Vitality, an all-natural, zero-sugar vitality drink made with pure caffeine.
“I simply actually, in all probability within the final 5 years, dove into that world in such an actual method…. That’s an area that folks don’t know I’m concerned in: I’m an herbalist for certainly one of my different jobs,” he laughs.
It’s all in keeping with Cannon’s perception that something could be achieved with sufficient onerous work and dedication, as long as you don’t let anybody sway you out of your objectives. He noticed it firsthand with Wild ‘N Out, the scrappy upstart present no tv executives understood at first. Now airing on VH1, the present wrapped its twenty first season in 2024.
Cannon shakes his head, smiling. In the event you’d have instructed him again within the early 2000s that the little present he dreamt up in order that his mates had a spot to inform jokes and rap collectively would nonetheless be round 20-plus years later, he in all probability wouldn’t have believed you. However, because it seems, he had a trailblazing imaginative and prescient in what you can accomplish by casting individuals who have been viral sensations however had little or no tv publicity.
Trying again on it now, “The trajectory wasn’t linear by any means,” he says, explaining how he received the place he’s at the moment. “However I’m so grateful for it. I’m so grateful for each journey, for each lesson.”
This text seems within the Might/June 2025 concern of SUCCESS journal. Photograph by Nick Onken.
