Earlier this year, when comedian Matt Rife announced his ProbleMATTic World Tour, tickets for all dates sold out in a matter of 48 hours, in a Taylor Swift–worthy Ticketmaster presale crash. But if you missed the queue, you can still join the crowds: Matt Rife: Natural Selection, taped on tour in Washington, DC, earlier this fall is streaming now, and it’s major. “We’re doin’ Netflix, baby!” Rife says in the first few minutes of the hour-long special.
It’s also as boldly ruthless as the TikTok clips that made Rife that platform’s most watched comedian and earned him 30 million views for his two self-produced full-length specials on YouTube. Now, the stand-up who, during COVID, broadcast his homegrown socially distanced shows from a pickup truck is being singled out as a “hot comic” by Vogue, and even The New York Times is praising his jokes (and his chiseled cheekbones). As Rife himself jokes, “You can’t cancel me — I’m not your gym membership.”
Stream it right here.
Check it out at the top of this article.
Matt Rife has plenty of scorn for astrology in Natural Selection, but we’re here to tell you the 28-year-old comedian is a Virgo. (He was born Sept. 10, 1995, in Columbus, Ohio — we’ll leave the birth chart up to you.)
Though Rife may seem like an overnight success, he’s been working as a comedian since he was 15 — he was the youngest performer to join MTV’s Wild ’N Out (though admittedly not quite as young as the “meme kid” looks to be). During COVID, Rife and fellow comedian Paul Elia took their pre-pandemic The Comedy Store show Lowkey and turned it into a socially distanced hit: They’d perform Lowkey Outside from the beds of pickup trucks and outside apartment complexes in Los Angeles for small audiences. Meanwhile, Rife started going viral on TikTok for his epic roasts and interactions with audience members — and self-produced his first two specials, Only Fans and Matthew Steven Rife, on YouTube.
“I can’t stand social media,” Rife says in Natural Selection. And yet: You can find him on TikTok, Instagram, and X.
In Matt Rife: Natural Selection, the comedian leaves no stone — and especially no crystal (“Ladies, put the fuckin’ pebbles down!” he implores) — unturned. Nothing is sacred, and that includes throat goat yoga, social media trolls, deadbeat boyfriends, certain American cities, astrology, natural deodorant, vaping, and anyone his own age or younger. Does he like anything? Well, yes. “I fuckin’ love old people!” Rife says in the special. “The worse a person’s posture, the better their stories.”
Yes, Matt Rife: Natural Selection was filmed live on Sept. 22 and Sept. 23 at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. It was part of Rife’s sold-out ProbleMATTic World Tour. Matt Rife: Natural Selection is executive produced by Rife and Christina Shams, and the production company Irony Point, known for I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson and That Damn Michael Che.
Watch Matt Rife: Natural Selection now.
