{"id":32047,"date":"2015-07-21T02:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32047"},"modified":"2015-07-19T11:00:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T15:00:17","slug":"dave-chappelles-re-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/21\/dave-chappelles-re-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Chappelle’s re-launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

At sp!ked<\/em>, Tom Slater<\/a> looks at Dave Chapelle’s new comedy routines:<\/p>\n

In his own words, Dave Chappelle is the Bigfoot of comedy; a rarely seen legend whose long absence from the stage has only secured his status. The stand-up, actor and writer, who found global success in the mid-2000s for his Comedy Central hit Chappelle\u2019s Show<\/em>, walked away from a $50 million deal for a third season in 2006, after fame and showbiz politics began to weigh heavy on his shoulders. For the past nine years, he\u2019s been a borderline recluse \u2013 living on a farm in Ohio, raising his children and doing the odd, unannounced stand-up gig in mobbed comedy clubs.<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s making his comeback. Touring across America and, this past week, doing a sold-out seven-night run at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, it\u2019s as if he was never gone. And yet, he has returned to a circuit that is not what it was.<\/p>\n

\u2018Are you a Muslim?\u2019, an affable doorman asked my mate, as we handed over our tickets for Monday night\u2019s Apollo show. He wasn\u2019t on counterterror duty. There\u2019d been a few incidents, you see, during the run so far, as Chappelle\u2019s caustic jibes had ruffled some feathers. \u2018He\u2019s got a joke in there about transgenders, and one guy the other night just got up, started shouting and then ran out.\u2019 It seemed our doorman had taken it upon himself to trigger-warn any potential targets of Chappelle\u2019s punchlines. <\/p>\n

It was a strange question. Not least because Chappelle is a Muslim, and anyone who comes to one of his shows should know what they\u2019re getting. Like his hero Richard Pryor before him, Chappelle has a unique ability to craft edgy, racially charged and often scatological humour and serve it up to a mainstream audience. Chappelle\u2019s Show<\/em>, which broke all records at the time for DVD sales, ended its first episode with an extended skit about a blind white-supremacist author who is unaware he is black. It was one hell of a mission statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At sp!ked, Tom Slater looks at Dave Chapelle’s new comedy routines: In his own words, Dave Chappelle is the Bigfoot of comedy; a rarely seen legend whose long absence from the stage has only secured his status. The stand-up, actor and writer, who found global success in the mid-2000s for his Comedy Central hit Chappelle\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,10,28,53],"tags":[351,99,101],"class_list":["post-32047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-racism","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8kT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32048,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32047\/revisions\/32048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}