Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dave Chappelle: 8:46’ On YouTube, A Surprise Stand-Up Set That Couldn’t Be Any More Timely

Dave Chappelle released a surprise half-hour performance today on the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube channel, filmed just last weekend at the outdoor Wirrig Pavilion in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was Chappelle’s first public comedy show in 87 days. But that doesn’t mean it was funny. Nor that it was meant to be.

DAVE CHAPPELLE: 8:46: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Dave Chappelle has won the past three Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album for the audio recordings from his most recent Netflix specials (The Age of Spin and Deep in the Heart of Texas; Equanimity and The Bird Revelation; Sticks and Stones), but the celebrated stand-up isn’t looking for any medals or awards for filming his first performance coming off an 87-day layoff in quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nope. Chappelle was compelled to speak out, with a live audience any way he could fashion it, just like millions of Americans have spoken out in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the neck of a Minneapolis police officer. That’s why Chappelle titled this set, 8:46, in reference to how long Floyd was pinned to the ground and suffocated. And that’s why Netflix released it for free worldwide on YouTube.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: It won’t.

Memorable Jokes: The funniest moments in this performance are self-referential.

After making a crude joke at the expense of Candace Owens, Chappelle vows to set the record straight should he ever fact-check said joke, saying “Like Azealia Banks, I’ll tell!” (For those of you not playing the gossip game at home, Banks is a 29-year-old rapper who recently claimed to have had an affair with Chappelle.)

You’ll also catch Chappelle rolling his eyes when he acknowledges that a murderer claimed in his manifesto to also be “a Kevin Hart fan.”

And you may catch yourself, as I did, thinking about Chappelle’s routine in which he places each segment of the LGBTQ community in a different car seat, as he delivers a shout-out to the young people protesting across America. “I am very proud of you. You kids are excellent drivers. I am comfortable in the back seat of the car.”

Our Take: But that’s all beside the point.

After daring CNN anchor Don Lemon to call him out, Chappelle answers the call himself: “Why would anyone care what their favorite comedian thinks after they saw a police officer kneel on a man’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds?!”

Especially since Chappelle has used his platform to joke about police brutality and racism for more than two decades, going back to his first half-hour special for HBO in 1998. He opened that performance in San Francisco with a bit mocking the idea of visiting Alcatraz, which segued into jokes about why he wouldn’t want to visit a jail or call the police.

He elaborated on some of this in his breakthrough hour of 2000, Killin’ Them Softly, (both the half-hour and hour are on HBO Max now).

Here and now, though, Chappelle is standing up and speaking out, in part to support his fellow Ohioan, LeBron James, denouncing FOX News anchor Laura Ingraham for telling James to “shut up and dribble.” Chappelle says we’re all angry because institutions have lied to us for too long. “The only reason people want to hear from people like me is because you trust me,” he said. “You don’t expect me to be perfect.”

He may misremember the date of the Northridge earthquake, but he has not forgotten the names of Christopher Dorner, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, Dylann Roof, Michael Brown or Philando Castile.

He may have forgotten to include one name in his Saturday Night Live monologue from 2016, and that name will surprise you as much as it surprised him.

But he has never forgotten that “the cop that murdered John Crawford (III) pulled me over the night before and let me off with a warning.” Crawford, 22, was shot and killed inside a Walmart in nearby Beavercreek, Ohio, in 2014, four days before Brown’s shooting death in Ferguson, Mo., and Chappelle says Crawford’s name got “lost in the sauce.”

Chappelle knows all too well how, without his fame (or even despite it), his name is another link in the chain of America’s reckoning with slavery and racism. And he claims we need spaces to talk and joke as much as we need spaces to march, because the alternatives are not quite so peaceful.

“I don’t mean to get heavy, but we gotta say something!”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Even Chappelle admits near the end: “This is not funny at all.” But it needed to be said. And this could only be said by Chappelle.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Dave Chappelle: 8:46 on YouTube