Fully recovered from that racist fruit vendor incident, and even 30 Minutes or Less, comedian Aziz Ansari brings his “Buried Alive” tour to the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on July 19.

Before becoming a breakout star on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, Ansari won over hipsters on the MTV sketch show Human Giant and with his guest spot on Flight of the Conchords, as the vendor who wouldn’t sell an apple to a Kiwi. Since then, his standup gigs and film and TV roles have won him the cover of Rolling Stone’s comedy issue and Paste Magazine’s declaration of his place as one of the top 10 comedians of the decade.

Ansari got a rep for stealing scenes after playing “Raaaaaandy” in Judd Apatow’s Funny People, later appearing in Get Him to the Greek, I Love You, Man and Observe and Report. His first starring movie role, however, alongside Jesse Eisenberg in 30 Minutes or Less, didn’t go so well; the comedy flopped. But between comedy specials, new films in development, and hosting gigs like the MTV Movie Awards, he’s had plenty to fall back on. He’s also pretty much the funniest guy on Twitter—his extended in-flight fantasy about the whole plane rocking out to Jay-Z and Kanye was maybe the best thing ever parceled out 140 characters at a time.

Ansari also performs at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco on July 20. Tickets for both show are $39 and go on sale March 2 at 10am at Ticketmaster.

It’s time to make this clear once and for all: Ricky Reed is not a joke. Ricky Reed is not a clown. Most importantly, Ricky Reed is not an act. “Ricky Reed is real.”

So Eric Frederic tells me in an interview last week, and he should know. He’s the one who created the Reed persona as frontman for Wallpaper, the East Bay musical duo he put together with Arjun Singh in 2005. They found success on the Bay Area scene, including many trips to the South Bay; they’ll return Saturday to the Blank Club.

To many listeners, Wallpaper came off like a spoof of hip-hop and R&B clichés, and Frederic as Reed seemed like a parody of the ultimate white wannabe-fly guy. When the video for “Gettin’ Drip,” from their 2009 debut album Doodoo Face, took off, it solidified the idea that these were two guys clowning on hip-hop.

And yet, Frederic never seemed comfortable with that image. Sometimes, he even seemed frustrated by it. Though he always acknowledged his songs could be funny, even “cold-blooded satire,” he resisted the idea that they were comedy. In some ways, this seemed mystifying, especially with Wallpaper’s ever-growing popularity—why exactly would he try to fix what wasn’t broke?

But with the release of last year’s Stupidfacedd EP, the answer finally became obvious. It’s not that Stupidfacedd isn’t funny. On the contrary, it contains the most hilarious lines he’s ever written, from “White girls/Buy produce/Take ’em home/Make ’em drink Grey Goose” in the title song to pretty much everything in “Fucking Best Song Everr.”

But with this record, everything that Frederic believed about his music is suddenly clear. They may be funny, but the songs themselves aren’t jokes. In fact, Stupidfacedd reveals that the real essence of Wallpaper isn’t comedy, it’s surrealism—the weird, often absurd way that Frederic views the world, and how Ricky Reed gives him an outlet to express it.

“That’s me,” Frederic says of Reed, “and the dream has always been for me to get to this level and get to this place where what I have to say people are actually going to hear. People who thought in the beginning that I was doing this to make joke party records were dead wrong.”

However, he admits that he never had a statement of purpose like this EP before to lay it out for those people. Wallpaper took a huge step musically—the beats hit harder, the sound has diversified, and the production has allowed for punchy, tightly organized arrangements, where before their music always seemed to be soaked in several layers of sound.

“With the old material—which I still stand behind and am proud of, but I feel like the real specific voice of Wallpaper was a little bit shrouded. What I was trying to do, what I was trying to say, was a little muffled,” he says. With this record, “I think I sort of pulled the wet towel off it and made it real clear for everybody to see what I’m about.”

2011 was a big year for Campbell’s Limousines. The electropop duo’s debut record, Get Sharp, was released by Dangerbird Records (home to Fitz and the Tantrums, Silversun Pickups, Ben Lee and others), they spent the summer playing festivals like Outside Lands and BFD, and, in an ironic twist, MTV played the video for “Internet Killed the Video Star,” and featured them during MTV Push Week. They toured the East Coast with Neon Trees, but their biggest boost of all may have come from the national tour they just finished with Swedish indie sensations the Sounds.

“The tour was awesome,” says lead singer Eric Victorino.

Clearly, the Sounds were impressed, too—they invited the Limos back for a 25-date European tour that winds through Germany, Belgium, the UK, France, Spain, the Czech Republic and of course Sweden.

That tour starts in January, with just enough time in between to play a couple of Bay Area shows. Unfortunately, their annual pre-Christmas show at the Blank Club tonight has been sold out for a month. Hometown fans have learned it’s the best show of the year to reconnect with the band’s music in an intimate space. That’s exactly how the band and club owner Corey O’Brien designed it.

“Corey lets us do our thing, he trusts us,” says Victorino. “We just book a couple DJs and we play by ourselves. Last year, it was just us and a DJ set.”

Those who didn’t get tickets to the Blank show will have another chance to see them at their New Year’s Eve show at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco.

They’re also finishing up a video for “The Future,” off Get Sharp. It’s a follow-up to their awesome zombie-themed short film for “Internet Killed the Video Star” that they produced locally last year.

“It’s a similar situation to last time where we just had a massive idea and a lot of luck. Everyone kind of came together,” says Victorino.

When the band put out a call for volunteers to help out on the “Future” shoot, they got a little sampling of how much their fan base has expanded in the last year.

“Some of them were brand new fans who just saw us at Outside Lands and said ‘I had no idea you guys were even from the Bay Area,’” he says. “I love people knowing we’re from here, but it feels like something’s working when someone just sees you at a festival and becomes a fan, and then they find out you live down the street.”