‘True friend’ Dave Chappelle jets to Wyoming to visit Kanye West
Kanye West, the self-proclaimed presidential candidate who had a troubling, now-deleted flurry of activity Monday night on Twitter, thanked comic Dave Chappelle on Tuesday morning for “hopping on a jet to see me doing well.â€
The rapper posted a video of himself with Chappelle and others in Wyoming in which he challenged the comic to tell a joke, on the spot, to lift their spirits.
“Uplifting joke?,†Chappelle said in the nearly two-minute clip. “You know I don’t write them.†(He never told a joke, by the way.)
Chappelle, who West tweeted was “a God send and a true friend,†has known West since before the rapper appeared on “The Chappelle Show†in 2003. He, like West, had to deal with rumors about his mental health after he walked away in 2004 from his hit Comedy Central series — and the $50-million deal that came with it — and disappeared to South Africa.
Kanye West riffed on abortion, religion, international trade and licensing deals as he brought his offbeat presidential bid to South Carolina Sunday.
The comedian later told Oprah Winfrey that stress and pressure from network execs caused him to bolt, nothing more. He left the “circumstances,†he said.
“The worst thing to call somebody is crazy. It’s dismissive. I don’t understand this person, so they’re crazy. That’s [BS],†Chappelle said on “Inside the Actors Studio†in 2006. “People are not crazy. They’re strong people. Maybe their environment is a little sick.â€
That clip was circulating Tuesday on Twitter, along with a #prayforye hashtag.
West, who in recent years has talked openly about struggling with his mental health, has raised renewed concerns since announcing on July 4 that he was running for president.
On Monday, West tweeted that he has a 10th studio album, “Donda,†coming out Friday. The album is named after his late mother, with whom he was close before she died in 2007 after complications from plastic surgery.
The rapper, who revealed in 2019 that he was a newly born-again Christian, included a photo of 12 tracks with a handful of titles referencing God. It was unclear whether those were the songs coming on the album.
In late June, West dropped the Travis Scott collaboration “Wash Us in the Blood,†which he said was from his upcoming album, then tentatively titled “God’s Country.†“Wash Us†did not appear in the track list posted Monday night.
The album announcement came at the end of West’s burst of tweets Monday night, during which the 43-year-old accused wife Kim Kardashian West of “trying to fly to Wyoming with a doctor to lock me up like on the movie Get Out because I cried about saving my daughters life yesterday.†He also addressed mother-in-law Kris Jenner, saying she wasn’t returning his calls, and declared that none of his children would ever work with Playboy, which featured Kardashian as its cover model in 2007.
On Sunday, West held a small campaign rally in South Carolina, a state where he failed to submit the signatures required to get on the 2020 presidential ballot. The deadline had been extended five days, to Sunday night, because of COVID-19. He has qualified for the ballot in Oklahoma but missed the deadline for many other key states, including Florida.
At his rally, where he spoke without a microphone and wore a bullet-proof vest, he claimed in part that Harriet Tubman did not actually free any slaves. He also said that he initially wanted Kardashian, then his girlfriend, to get an abortion when she told him she was pregnant with their first daughter, North.
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
