The Billiken's Bluff

Last Summer, Dave Chappelle stopped filming the 3rd season of his show, in part because he started to feel that the material he was producing seemed racist:

According to Time, Chappelle became unsure about his material for the new season when a white visitor at a taping laughed especially hard and long over a sketch Chappelle performed in blackface. "When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable," Time quotes Chappelle as saying. His longtime writing partner is quoted as confirming that Chappelle had decided some of his material was not funny but "racist."

Dave Chappelle's Block Party was good, except for the times it wasn't. Chappelle does comedy, he doesn't do Inside the Actor's Studio as well.



Soon they forget where they plucked they whole style from, they try to reverse the outcome. I'm like - TOUGH!

Last month, Free Darko wrote:

What these young ballers fail to understand is that Jordan's participation in the Dunk Contest played a large part in creating his legacy - indeed, it literally made him an icon - and it was only after repeated battles with Dominique that he moved on. Therefore, this is a case of players emulating #23, but not understanding the reasons behind the action. It wasn't the contest itself, but the fact that he had done all he could in that venue. After all, only the most reactionary red-stater could be offended by a Bron/Wade dunk off, and those guys don't buy hundred dollar basketball shoes anyway.

Dave Chappelle doesn't want to do sketch comedy anymore. He doesn't want to do racial hyperbole. He wants to do Lauryn Hill, or rather be her, maybe. Or maybe he wishes he could be more militant, more like Dead Prez who he featured at his block party and who he praised from the rooftops, literally, (via megaphone) during the film:

So are you guys going around hugging trees?

Dead Prez: A tree hugger? sh!t, I'll give a tree a hug. To me that's a given. First you have to get rid of this bastard system for you to be focusing in the ozone. The way the system is set up is why the ozone is so f#@$ed up. I don't want the atmosphere to burn up... that's gonna f#@$ the game up. I don't know if I gotta start with that first. When we get rid of these crackers off my back we gonna fix the ozone.

Dead Prez: Hey I got a tangent question for you. What's worse a cracker or crack?

Well, crackers put crack in our community.

Dead Prez: OK. What's worse... whitey or the White House?

Chappelle asked Luz, the woman who runs the nursery school that they filmed the concert from, what type of people live in Bed-Stuy. Luz told Chappelle that it is a multi-cultural neighborhood... Blacks, Latinos, and some Caucasians. Chappelle chuckled and replied, doing his best Joe Scarborough, said that it's funny that you call Bed-Stuy multi-cultural when it is, in fact, Black and Latino.

Luz, not angry at Chappelle for twisting her words and not missing a beat, responded, "And I said there are some Caucasians moving in."

You only hear what you want to hear. I only hear what I want to hear.

Chappelle is best at pulling the knife out, not twisting it in deeper. On stage Dead Prez talks about running up on the crackers in city hall, the camera cuts to a scene backstage with Chappelle on the couch with Dead Prez.



He pulls up his jeans and shows a unity fist on the tongue of his sneaker.



He laughs and says something to the effect of this is how I show I'm down for the cause. That is what he is good at. Undercutting tension, not stabbing.




Chappelle, The Roots, and Lauryn Hill appear uncomfortable with the demographics of their fan base...



A scene from Block Party of particular interest to me...

Dead Prez and Fred Hampton Jr. on stage inciting the crowd to run up on those crackers in City Hall, all while the backup band on stage, composed of a white guitarist and a white saxaphonist, nod along in complicit agreement.



Whether on the basketball court, subway, or back in junior high....



this is an interesting dynamic that never ceases to shock and awe me.



!Ya Basta!