He shouldn't have put those two statements together because it sounds like he's saying that Martin and Living Single were "hood" shows. What he means is that those shows were cooler and edgier than Family Matters. And why wouldn't they be? Martin and Living Single were about young, established adults. Family Matters was supposed to be a blue-collar Cosby Show. It came on Friday nights next to shows like Full House. It was never going to be edgy or cool. Fresh Prince was a family sitcom, but it was meant to be edgier than most sitcoms were at the time.
The first couple seasons of Family Matters were great, but after a while, they stopped focusing on the family and solely on Urkel. It became more about outlandish shyt like transformation chambers and pirate ships than character-based stories. And there weren't many entertaining characters on the show, either. Urkel did most of the heavy lifting comedically. Those other shows he named were ensemble shows, so everyone pulled their weight. Family Matters is what would happen if you took Fresh Prince, focused solely on Will, and the other characters were basically the second Aunt Viv and Ashley. It works for a while, and then it doesn't.
If Family Matters ended earlier, or stuck to the same formula it had in the first four or five seasons, it would have a better reputation. Even though Urkel took up a lot of screentime, the show still worked. At some point, the writers just gave up and the show turned into Scooby Doo or something like that.
