Dave Chappelle Has the Best Kanye West Story

A new addition to the running for best video you'll see all day: On last night's episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, guest Dave Chappelle summarized his first encounter with Kanye West to Fallon and the audience in the best way possible. Furthermore, not only was it hilarious, but his story about meeting 'Ye for the first time, pretty much describes West the way many of us likely view him.

“First of all, you know Kanye,” Chappelle said. “You could tell that he was gona be a star. I didn’t know him until he did [Chappelle’s Show] and then my friend was telling me, ‘You gotta book this guy Kanye.’ I said, ‘Okay I’ll book the guy,’ and it was like Muhammad Ali in Olympic Village. He just knew he was going to get the gold.”

So either he’s saying that this was a guy who was so focused and motivated that he just knew he was going places, or that West has a big ego and thinks everything will go his way. Either way...fortunately for him, everything did go his way.

“It was the day that Jay Z’s Black Album came out,” Chappelle said. “And it was me and Common and Kweli and Kanye, this guy that nobody knew. And you know the record starts and Jay Z says on one record, ‘Kanyeezy, you’s a genius, you did it again,’ and Kanye stood up — first time he spoke all day. He goes, ‘Stop the record. And rewind that.’”

It’s quite clear that West realized his own talent, which is good, because confidence is key to success — and, also, I'm not surprised that he stopped everything just to hear his own name.

Chappelle continued his story by discussing how he knew West was ultimately going to rise to fame: “We go to the edit and this is when everyone knew Kanye was going to be a star,” Chappelle said. “And we were watching sketches. We show him the Rick James sketch and all these great sketches and in the middle of it, Kanye’s phone rings and he’s like ‘Hello? No, no I can’t. I’m at the edit for the Dave Chappelle show watching sketches that no one’s seen before.’ And then he goes like this: ‘Cause my life is dope and I do dope shit.’"

It all makes sense now.