The reckless truth of Dave Chappelle

It’s Sunday, 4 September 2022: Dave Chappelle is telling an audience of 20,000 at the O2 arena in east London how he tried to explain to his wife why he had to go back to the boxer Floyd Mayweather’s strip club in Las Vegas – why he had to make a second visit on the same night. 

Suffice to say, a supposed longing for a “safe space”, a lot of cash, a fish tank and the ingestion of psychedelic chemicals are all involved in the tale. No transcription can do justice to how funny is his account of fear and fishing in Las Vegas – and his desperate subsequent attempts to pacify Mrs Chappelle – so I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it.

It’s a good night for some laughs, too, as all those who follow such dreadful matters know that, the following day, Liz Truss is to be named as the new Conservative leader and Britain’s next prime minister. (What none of us knows, of course, is that the nation is also about to enter a period of national mourning following the death of Her Majesty The Queen on 8 September or that Truss’s premiership will be over barely six weeks later.)

The show is particularly special because it is a megawattage double bill with Chris Rock, another comedy legend who has filled this very venue as a solo act on many occasions. Rock is the Nijinsky of contemporary stand-up: the rhythm of his comedy, his cadence, his command of the stage, his trademark use of repeated phrases… all are perfect. You are always left gasping. How did he do that? 

Yet it is Chappelle’s night, and not even Rock is challenging that assumption. Now aged 49, the man himself has taken to embracing the title GOAT: Greatest Of All Time. Why bother to pretend otherwise? Did Muhammad Ali ever hesitate to call himself The Greatest? Why, then, should Chappelle? It is – after all – true. Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Bill Hicks, Mitch Hedberg, Patrice O’Neal: all are or (mostly) were geniuses. But Chappelle is in a league of his own.

This, of course, remains a matter of personal opinion, and one which some will contest fiercely. But then – not to get combative – I do take the question personally. As much as I loved the September show, it meant even more to be able to take my two sons (then aged 15 and 18) to see Chappelle at the Adelphi Theatre on 2 June 2019, where he was warming up a set that became one of his six Netflix specials. It felt like a cultural rite of passage: sharing a Chappelle performance with the next generation. We had a great time, unforgettably so.

At some point in the last decade or so, I realised that Chappelle had entered my innermost imagination, as an artist whose work I could not operate without and would cherish to the grave. There are hundreds of performers and writers whose achievements I revere. But a very small group occupies a different role: Saul Bellow, JD Salinger, Toni Morrison, Wagner, the Sex Pistols, Joy Division… a few others, but not many, whom I constantly, if subconsciously, consult like inner oracles. And now Chappelle is in there, on the neural granite of this imaginary Mount Rushmore, sharing cigarettes with Johnny Rotten.

Why? To get the most obvious point out of the way: because he is preternaturally, prodigiously talented. Performing since the age of 14, when he was living in Washington DC and his mother, Yvonne, used to drive him back and forth from gigs, Chappelle has, over many years, developed unrivalled comic muscle memory.