Turns out Aziz Ansari isn’t the only comedian with an amazing Kanye West story. Performing in Illinois as part of Funny or Die’s star-stuffed Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival on August 31, Dave Chappelle related an amazing moment when Yeezy visited Chappelle’s Show back in 2004. Kanye made his first television appearance alongside Common, performing “The Food” just as he was ascending to stardom. Rather than butcher Chappelle’s recollection of the event, we’ll let Dave take it from here:
Last time I was in Chicago, Kanye gave me tickets to the Watch the Throne tour, now we’re even.. he owed me that though.
The first time Kanye West was on television was on the Chappelle’s Show. It was the week that The Black Album came out. I’ll never forget. We were all sitting in the trailer listening to The Black Album, and Jay-Z says on the record, “Kanyeezy, you’s a genius. You did it again,”* and Kanye stopped the tape and pressed rewind.
He had that energy. You knew he was gonna be somebody. And then they did the show, him and Common did it. And you remember that song The Food? “You love to hear the story, again and again. About those two brothers from the City of Wind.”
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The crowd, “EGHHHHHHHEEE.” Motherfuckers go nuts. I said, “Hey Kanye, look, we’re going back to the studio. We got to edit some sketches, but if you want, you can come with us and check out some of the stuff we’re working on.” He says, “Oh that’d be great!”
He comes to the studio we’re all sitting and there watching all these crazy sketches. Nobody had seen any of this shit before. It was Rick James, all that shit. All on there. It’s on footage, we was all cracking up and then in the middle of it all, Kanye’s phone rings. This is when I knew he was gonna be famous.
He answers the phone, he goes, “Hello. Huh? What? Uh uh, I can’t. I can’t. Cause, I’m at Dave Chappelle’s show watching sketches that nobody’s ever seen before.”
And then he says, “Cause my life is dope, and I do dope shit,” and then he hung up the phone.
If you want to hear the audio, fast forward to the 40-minute mark. At 28:30, you can also hear Chappelle discuss his admiration of Lil Wayne and the rapper’s expertise in, yep, “pussy juice.”
//www.youtube.com/embed/0UYuvulw-B4
