Man Tracy had a hard life.
Morgan's childhood, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was hard. His Vietnam vet father came back from the war a heroin addict and died from AIDS when Morgan was a teenager, and his relationship with his mother was often strained. From a young age, Morgan turned to comedy to cope with his early traumas and defend himself against school bullies. “When kids are making fun of you in the schoolyard, you go get your big brother, and he comes back with you and he turns into the Incredible Hulk,” Morgan
told Time in 2009. “But my oldest brother was born with cerebral palsy. So I had to develop a sense of humor.”
Morgan’s early struggles culminated after the murder of his best friend. Morgan
told NPR in 2009:
"He would say to me, 'Yo, Tracy, man, you should be doing comedy. A week later, he was murdered. And that for me, that was like my Vietnam. I had my survival guilt when I started to achieve success. Why I made it out and some guys didn't."
Morgan married in his early 20s, had three sons, and gradually achieved success as a stand-up comedian in the 1980s, performing many shows at the
Uptown Comedy Club and the Apollo, where he was discovered by Martin Lawrence's ex-wife and subsequently cast as a supporting character in the sitcom
Martin.