Another Stunner from Dave Chappelle

Yep , he pulled another stunner.. It was reported that he's in South Africa
not because he checked into the mental facility, instead he got there
to consult with his close Moslem friend named Salim ...and yes, he's
a MOSLEM since 1998..considering the kind of jokes he usually
came up with, that's a shocker to me.

On the Beach With Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle shows up to our interview in a red t-shirt, blue jeans
and shiny white sneakers. He lopes around in his usual style, pacing a
lot, but does not seem like a man struggling to speak or to order his
thoughts at all. He's lucid and thoughtful and a couple of times asks
me to give him some time to think about answers. He concedes that he is
dealing with a lot of issues and mentions that he had consulted a
psychiatrist about a week ago for a forty minute session. He is also
quite fastidious about keeping his new sneakers clean and stops at
least twice to wipe smudges off their toes.

The first thing Chappelle wants is to dispel rumors—that he's got a
drug problem, that he's checked into a mental institution in
Durban—that have been flying around the U.S. for the past week. He says
he is staying with a friend, Salim Domar, and not in a mental
institution, as has been widely reported in America. Chappelle says he
is in South Africa to find "a quiet place" for a while. "Let me tell
you the things I can do here which I can't at home: think, eat, sleep,
laugh. I'm an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.
And I've been doing a lot of thinking here."

The picture he paints—and it seems a fairly honest and frank
assessment— is of someone struggling to come to terms with a new
position and power who's still figuring out how to come to grips with
how people around him are reacting to the $50 million deal he signed
last year with Comedy Central. Without naming specific characters, he
seems to blame both some of his inner circle (not his family) and
himself for the stresses created by last year's deal.

"There were things that overwhelmed me," he says. "But not in the way
that people are saying. I haven't spent any of the money. All that
stuff about partying and taking crack is not true. Why do I live on a
farm in Ohio? To support my partying lifestyle?"

The problems, he says, started with his inner circle."If you don't have
the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an
hour you can lose yourself," he says. "Everyone around me says, 'You're
a genius!'; 'You're great!'; 'That's your voice!' But I'm not sure that
they're right." And he stresses that Comedy Central was not part of the
problem and put no more than normal television restrictions on what he
could do.

"You got to be careful of the company you keep," Chappelle says. "It's
hard to know how much to say. One of the things that happens when
people make the leap from a certain amount of money to tens of millions
of dollars is that the people around you dramatically change.

"During my ascent, I've seen other people go through that wall to
become really big. They always said that fame didn't change them but
that it changes the people around them. You always hear that but you
never really understand it. But now that I'm there that makes a lot of
sense and I'm learning what that means. You have to have people around
you that you can trust and aren't just out for a meal ticket."

The breakdown in trust within his inner circle seems to have led him to
question the material they were producing. He seems obsessed with
making sure the material is good and honest and something that he will
be proud. "I want to make sure I'm dancing and not shuffling," he says.
"What ever decisions I make right now I'm going to have live with. Your
soul is priceless." The first two seasons of his show "had a real
spirit to them," he says. "I want to make sure whatever I do has
spirit."

But Chappelle also says that he must share the blame for the stalled
third season. "I'm admittedly a human being," he says. "I'm a difficult
kind of dude." His earlier walkout during shooting "had a little
psychological element to it. I have trust issues, things like that. I
saw some stuff in myself that I just didn't dig. It's like when I
brought a girl home to my mom and it looked as if my mom really didn't
like this girl. And she told me, 'I like her just fine. I just don't
like you around her.' That's how I feel in this situation. There were
some things about myself that I didn't like. People got to take
inventory from time to time. That's what this [coming to South Africa]
is for."

This is Chappelle's second trip to South Africa. He first came to
Durban, and visited Salim, in 2000. Chappelle won't tell me exactly how
he met Salim but describes him as a family friend. A soft-spoken
Muslim, Salim seems also to be something of a sounding board to
Chappelle, who converted to Islam several years ago. While Chappelle is
not doing a formal religious course in Durban, says Salim, who wore a
simple cotton robe and hung back through the interview and photo shoot
and only spoke when I asked him a question, "if he wants to talk
religion then I'm there as someone to talk to." Says Chappelle: "This
is kind of my spot where I can come to fill my spirit back up.
Sometimes you neglect these things if you are running on a corporate
schedule." The crux of his crisis seems to boil down to his almost
obsessive need to "check my intentions." He uses the phrase a few times
during the interview and explains that it means really making sure that
he's doing what he's doing for the right reasons.

His family, he says, has been a huge support over the past eight
months. "They've been phenomenal really, just incredible. What
beautiful people. Everyone loves their family but it's good if you can
like them too."

His religion is also crucial. "I don't normally talk about my religion
publicly because I don't want people to associate me and my flaws with
this beautiful thing. And I believe it is a beautiful religion if you
learn it the right way. It's a lifelong effort. Your religion is your
standard. Coming here I don't have the distractions of fame. It quiets
the ego down. I'm interested in the kind of person I've got to become.
I want to be well rounded and the industry is a place of extremes. I
want to be well balanced. I've got to check my intentions, man."

That includes planning for the future. When I ask him if he would ever
buy a place of his own in South Africa, Chappelle replies, "First of
all I've got to make sure I've got a job."

He says that he's only been recognized five or six times in the two
weeks he's been here. "It happens so sporadically that when it does it
freaks me out because I have to remember, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous.'" At
the end of our interview/photo shoot an American woman does recognize
him. "Number seven," he cries. "Wow, I'm not that big in Africa. I've
got to do an action film here."

During most of the hour and a half that we talk, Chappelle is serious
and introspective. But he still has his sense of humor, which comes out
as we near the end of our conversation: "Is that enough to prove I'm
not smoking crack or hanging out in a mental institution?"