Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special Has His Most Ambitious Closer Yet

You likely won't see the full title of Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special—which he surprise-dropped in the wee hours of this Saturday morning—printed anywhere in full except when you press play; it appears on the streamer as The Unstoppable…, but the full name is, naturally, The Unstoppable N*gger Act. These are shenanigans only Dave Chappelle can get away with, at least this level; lately it seems like a lot of the broader frustration from comedy fans and pop culture commentators (or, as he puts it simply here, “white people”) with him stems from the fact that most of his stunts have an air of being deployed simply because he knows he can get away with them.

Blessedly, that isn't the case here. After about a half hour of a pretty good round robin on current events, touching on everything from Trump's National Guard chaos, the Riyadh comedy festival to Puff Daddy—for those wondering, he makes it a whole beautiful 15 minutes before referencing The Inevitable Chappelle Subject—with jokes that span light chuckle, laugh out loud, all the way up to oh my God. Then he literally tells the crowd that he's going into his closer and dramatically prepares the audience and himself to settle in for it, and it's shortly after that point that the meaning behind this special's title reveals itself.

No spoilers, but what follows is a wild odyssey spanning 1910 to 2024 that manages to fold in American history, legendary zeitgeist moments and his own lore. It's a winding tale that starts with Jack Johnson and features the late, great Nipsey Hussle prominently…but also John McCain—while deepening the contexts of some of Dave's own personal relationships with his famous peers like Stevie Wonder and T.I. with unexpected moments of pathos. And right as the fear that it's going off the rails begins to set in, he lands it impeccably with a great punchline.

It's funny, it's a mighty flex of storytelling prowess and pacing, and it says enough about the danger of the misinformation age that we're living in without saying too much. Your mileage on the rest of the special may vary; there will surely be headlines about his more pearl-clutching bits, which he is probably baiting at this point, as a lot of his comedian peers do. But only Dave Chappelle can tell a 30-minute, century-spanning history lesson slash diary entry and make it sing.