Dave Chappelle brings out Twitter’s Elon Musk at Chase Center, chaos ensues
Dave Chappelle #DaveChappelle
Comedian Dave Chappelle speaks at the dedication of the theater at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2022.
Dave Chappelle prides himself on meeting controversy head on, but even he seemed taken aback at the crowd’s reaction when he introduced Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk to the Chase Center stage on Sunday night. A stunned silence and then an avalanche of boos greeted Musk as he sauntered up to the stage.
“It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” said Chappelle, who was in San Francisco co-headlining a seven-city tour with Chris Rock.
“All the people booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, they have terrible seats,” Chappelle said. The fact that the cheapest seats had the loudest boos, as Chappelle noted, speaks volumes about Musk’s reputation in the Bay Area from the general public.
While there certainly were many cheers among the boos, it was nowhere near the 90% that Musk claimed on Twitter.
“Dave, what should I say?” asked Musk, who appeared thrown off by the response.
“Don’t say nothing,” replied Chappelle.
Musk took the advice, standing around awkwardly onstage for the next 5 to 10 minutes, occasionally trying to get a word in edgewise but either getting drowned out by boos or spoken over by Chappelle. Musk did try to join in the comedy fun, making a tech-y joke about how it felt like a “simulation” to be sharing a stage with Chappelle. It did about as well as you think it might.
The evening got even stranger when Chris Rock and openers, including comedian and “Chappelle’s Show” cast member Donnell Rawlings and rappers Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli, came back out to end the night. On stage were five legends of Black pop culture. And Elon Musk.
For the honor of bringing him on stage, Chappelle did ask the Tesla co-founder for a favor, to unban his friend Kweli from Twitter. Kweli was standing five feet away from Musk during the request so the Twitter CEO didn’t have much choice but to agree.
As Chappelle attempted to end the show on a high note, a difficult task given the chaos he had just unleashed, another distraction erupted.
A fight in the stands in the lower bowl broke out, which Chappelle pointed to and the stadium jumbo screen inexplicably cut to on camera. Trying to salvage the show from getting completely out of hand, Chappelle quipped that the fighters must be antifa protesters. “Antifa” stands for “antifascist,” an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups who protest against white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Clearly annoyed at the mayhem taking place, Chappelle told the audience, in a joking manner, “Everything wrong with this show is y’alls fault.”
And with that, Chappelle, Rock, the openers and Musk exited the stage. A stunned Chase Center crowd filed out, trying but failing to understand what it had just witnessed.