Four of Dave Chappelles Best Speeches

um okay man i got to tell you when i was sitting watching what all the other honorees have done with their lives i started feeling like [ __ ] like this is terrible [Applause] and then bobo brought me up and started out good with that ali picture and then it just but that that coloring book that was in the picture i know the ali's are here that coloring book my mother has it and uh the champ he signed it you know the greatest he signed muhammad ali and his sparring partner was there that day and inspiring partner signing said the next heavyweight champion in the world larry holmes and he was and two-year-old dave chappelle colored all in that [ __ ] and just ruined the book but i remember part of the book that i remember real vividly because i asked my mother about it when i was a kid is there's a part where there's a picture i'll be throwing his olympic gold medal into the ohio river that's why it's so weird for me being here you know both of my parents were very brilliant my dad went to brown in 1955 that's right he told me at the time he was one of three black students he said one of the guys got accused of a rape that he probably didn't commit and the other guy killed himself and dancing and i left see that's what makes this chappelle's great we know when to quit y'all just live to fight another day [Applause] i gotta say uh i'm very i'm very honored to be here and i'm very honored to be here with the other honorees really i'm like very humbled by you all the work that you do and you all make me want to be better uh oh you know uh i was gonna stop doing stand-up for a while because four comedy specials in a year is like that's a lot you know but you know shout out to my colleagues in comedy uh i just want i just want to say that in a way this for me belongs to my mother primarily who was a african-american studies professor and a lot of the content that i you know that i say she you know she raised me well i'm not an uninformed person uh but also you know my colleagues in comedy like comedians been getting beat up pretty bad recently and we're somehow nowadays expected to speak with the precision of attorneys or politicians we are not i always think of james baldwin you know james baldwin was one of my favorite writers because he managed to tell white people what they feel like to be around so i ain't gonna hang up my gloves yet i think i got one more special in me so the quote baldwin god gave noah the rainbow sign there's no more water it's the fire next time thank you very much and so if you would please join me in welcoming dave chappelle home again oh thank you you know um i i speak for a living and i'm i'm a little nervous today i wanted to say thank you mr president and thank you bishop green and and thank everyone at allen university for hosting me today because it it feels special right when i when i think of this great grandfather that i've heard about in my life but never never actually touched his legacy so it's like the product of his loins coming to meet the product of his work and and this is an important day for me personally and i know a lot of you guys are students uh and i just want to tell you i'm the first person in my family to not go to college uh and as uh the president has told you i've done outstanding in spite of that but one thing i did want to say and one thing today just made me think about for all the things that i've done i'm most renowned for what i didn't do i i've made decisions in my career that a lot of people have called insane 2004 had 50 million dollar deal on the table and in a crisis of conscience flips the table over and walked away went to south africa everyone said i was running away from the money that is not true in fact i still want that money the idea that i wanted to just share with you guys this idea that sometimes you you do what you think is best uh whether anybody understands or not i heard a story about my father when someone told me he used to do statistics for a company in dc the company he did statistics for started doing business with the south african government so he quit his job it's caused a lot of problems between his him and his wife it's hard for a man when he can't provide for his family the way he wants to and he suffered through it and a generation later when i had my crisis of conscience i was able to go to a free south africa and get away from the heat this idea that what you do in your lifetime informs the generations that comes after you is something like keep thinking about something that is so much bigger than just ourselves and today i'm standing in front of you guys and i know you guys are like oh i know you're bored but i see family of mine in the front row that i some who i've never met and i just realized how how all all of us are are connected that my great grandfather built something more substantial than buildings he built a community and he built more importantly than a community he he built a way you know so i'm very grateful uh very grateful hello police [Music] so this is what black people talk about uh i just want i just want i just want you guys to remember you know that right now there's this thing where where ethics aren't what they used to be this idea that people are trying to replace the ideas of good and bad with better or worse and that is incorrect you gotta keep your ethics intact because good and bad is a compass that helps you find a way and a person that only does what's better or worse is the easiest type of person to control they are a mouse and a maze that just finds the cheese but the one who knows about good and bad will realize that he's in a maze so that being said i just hope that all of you guys transcend whatever you see as your obstacles and that you live outstanding lives and that you stay connected to your communities because you have so much power there and that you grow your communities and you diversify communities and that you don't let anybody anybody tell you you can't or to be afraid it's okay to be afraid because you can't be brave or courageous without fear the idea of being courageous is that even though you're scared you just do the right thing anyway so in 2004 i walked away from 50 million dollars and in november i made a deal for 60 million so although i am not the most famous comedian of my time i would like to know what their great-grandfathers did i'm i'm very proud today thank you very much boy comes as a complete surprise [Applause] i mean i read all the reviews and they said so many terrible things they were embarrassed for me i had lost my way it wasn't even worth watching i hope all you critics learn from this this is a teachable moment shut the [ __ ] up forever two and a nine these aren't them these are the ones i won for the other ones [ __ ] i would like to thank my editor who was nominated unfortunately he did not win but i couldn't have been more honored to work with jeff earring stan latham has been directing television since 1968. any show that i watched when i was growing up he directed it from sesame street to sanford the sun to good times to everything black and finally you [ __ ] finally gave him an emmy tonight he deserves so much more but i'm glad you came around i'd like to shout out all the other nominees tonight tiffany haddish and patton oswald and adam gatsby and brother mullaney you guys are an inspiration to me and i'm honored to be nominated with you i'm sorry that you didn't win tonight but who gives a [ __ ] anyway it's a special night because comedy gets to be itself it's all we've ever wanted i hope the war is over we're good and as always i'd love to thank my wife elaine that's right iranian has been with me for the last 25 years and had to endure the pains of living with the greatest comedian ever see you on monday thank you very much [Music] [Applause] thank you thank you you i like not knowing what's going to happen i like making memories sometimes i do all this crazy [ __ ] around my colleagues just so that they can tell their friends i did it rather than talk about myself just briefly i want to just talk about my genre stand-up comedy is an incredibly american genre i don't think any other country could produce this many comedians and unbeknownst to many people in this audience i don't think there's opinion that it exists in this country that is not represented in a comedy club by somebody each and every one of you has a champion in the room we watch you guys fight but when we're together we talk it out i know comics that are very racist and i watch them on stage and everyone's laughing and i'm like that [ __ ] means that [ __ ] don't get mad at them don't hate them we go upstairs and have a beer and sometimes i even appreciate the artistry that they paint their racist opinions with man it's not that serious the first amendment is first for a reason the second amendment is just in case the first one doesn't work out we gotta let some air out of the bowl man the country is getting a little tight it doesn't feel like it's ever felt in my lifetime so tonight i am honored that my colleagues are here in comedy and in music and i want everyone in america right now to look at me look at me smoking indoors i didn't ask anybody i just did it what are they gonna do kick me out before i get the prize now [ __ ] this is called leverage the thing i liked best about tonight was that i saw so many people from different parts of my life like friends that i grew up with here in dc friends of mine from ohio then and now friends of mine from comedy clubs all the [ __ ] musicians that blew my mind you guys have no idea how you inspired me i i want to give a special shout out to my og tony woods miles davis has a quote [Applause] uh it's one of my favorite miles davis said so much cool [ __ ] but one of the things he said i always loved he said it took me years to learn how to play like myself you know he would watch other musicians then he would try to play like dizzy a bird all the guys who were great tony woods was my dizzying bird if i was a miles i was trying to play like you you were the first person i ever saw do it absolutely right you were fearless and he told the truth there's something so true about this genre when done correctly that i will fight anybody that gets a true practitioner of this art forms way because i know you're wrong this is the truth and you are obstructing it i'm not talking about the content i'm talking about the art form do you understand do we have an agreement [Applause] and what i really wanted to say tonight when i'm glad i get the platform to do it i'm gay i am gay and i can't wait to see what this does for my career being gay like this so many special shout outs one of the main architects of the comeback of the century my brother and my mentor the mighty stan lathan [Applause] i never dreamed that i would be able to work with someone as great as you these last five specials straight fire i wouldn't want to do another special with anybody else but you so eat your [ __ ] vegetables and live as long as you can because we doing a few more of these [ __ ] neil brennan your speech made me cry because it reminded me of all those hard days of work and all that money i never got for it the other real special shout out i got to make because none of this would have been possible on any level uh without this person is my mother mom my mother [Music] you have no idea what i put this woman through if you have just given birth to me there would have been more than enough with the fact that she raised me and raised me well he had a real oral tradition in our house i knew the word griot when i was a little boy griot was a person in africa who was charged with keeping the stories of the village everyone would tell agree over the stories and they would remember them all so that they could tell future generations when they got old they'd tell them to someone else and they say in africa when a griot dies it's like a library was burnt down and my mother used to tell me before i ever thought about doing comments she said you should be a griot and she'd fill me with every story of black life you know she's educated in african american studies and she would let me understand the context that i was being raised in that i'm being raised in a hostile environment that i have to tame by the time i was 14 years old i was in nightclubs mastering an adult world it was terrifying crack epidemic was going on and my mother would hear gunshots outside and be scared to death maybe it's my son but early in my career if you remember mom you used to sit in the club with me she'd do a full day of work you'd be back there falling asleep just waiting for me to go on she would watch my show every night do you know how long that car ride is home [Applause] how many of you have ever heard your mother say [ __ ] jokes were a little too much tonight son [Applause] i was a soft kid i was sensitive i'd cry easy and i would be scared to fist fight and my mother used to tell me this thing i don't even know if you remember but you said this to me more than once you said son sometimes you have to be a lion so you can be the lamb you really are i talk this [ __ ] like a lion i'm not afraid of any of you when it comes word to word i will gab with the best of them just so i can chill and be me and that's why i love my art form because i understand every practitioner of it whether i agree with them or not i know where they're coming from they want to be heard they got something to say there's something they notice they just want to be understood love this genre it saved my life so tonight mom i would like to honor you in a very special way that i cannot do on my own but because now i'm a man with great and influential friends i like to ask my man thundercat to come out on stage stun the the mighty most depth washington d.c thank you very much for giving me a home and a place to start today is officially a dave chappelle day in washington dc the mayor declared it last night so in the future on dave chappelle day i ask everyone who wishes to celebrate it to make one incredible memory for themself and or somebody else thank you very much good night

Channel: Daily Dose Comedy

Views: 1,840,754

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Id: OLkQsyRSWZs

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020