The opening story in the first of Dave Chappelle‘s two new standup specials, “The Age of Spin: Live at the Hollywood Palladium,” details the time Chappelle notoriously bombed on stage in Detroit in the spring of 2015. According to the original TMZ report, Chappelle was “quietly smoking, rambling, and slurring his speech,” “told very few jokes,” and was eventually booed.
“I don’t know if you ever saw on TMZ, the big headline: ‘Dave Chappelle, Drunk on Stage in Detroit. Well if you saw it…I wasn’t drunk,” Chappelle said during his explanation. I had smoked some reefer, with some rappers. Yeah. I don’t know if you know anything about hanging out with rappers, but their weed is very strong – stronger than what I was accustomed to.”
Chappelle didn’t deign to specify the “rappers” that assisted in derailing his comeback, but a recent Instagram post from Detroit’s own Danny Brown suggests that he was one of the culprits: possibly, the sole one. Brown posted a screenshot of a Tweet speculating that he had been the purveyor of the debilitating weed and replied “Haven’t seen Dave new special but heard he gotta bit about that night I got him stoned to the gills … momma I made it!!!”
In his special, Chappelle calls the night “a fucking nightmare,” but it seems like Brown had a fine time.
[Vulture]
