Dave Chappelle Shuts Down in Hartford at Oddball Festival After Crowd Boos and Heckles, Plays Kanye West's "New Slaves"

Dave Chappelle's first full-fledged tour in nearly a decade is off to a rough start. As a headliner for Funny or Die's Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, he seemed to have shut down 10 minutes into the set on the fourth stop, Hartford, Conn. Fans were booing and heckling him, and he decided he wasn't going to take it.

YouTube footage shows Chappelle spending the majority of his set reading a book, chatting with a few audience members and lighting up a cigarette.

Chappelle tells the crowd members booing him, "You are booing yourself. You're going to go home and look in the mirror and say, 'boo.'"

The heckling continues, and Chappelle replies, "Ah, f***k you. I'm the one who has to get the review in the paper tomorrow. I'll have to read about this s**t for months. And the next time I'm on television, and they interview me and say, 'Why did you go back to Africa?' I'm gonna say Hartford did it."

Twitter began to blow up with tweets from audience members.

Comments on YouTube suggest that most audience members agree with his decision to stop telling jokes, and that it was the crowd's fault for being disrespectful.

User Eric Morgan writes: "Right or wrong, I applaud him for not taking the bulls**t from the crowd. IT'S SO FUNNY TO YELL CHAPPELLE QUOTES AT HIM WHILE HE'S DOING STANDUP. Even great standup comedy can be ruined by s***heads in the crowd. If you go to a show to yell played out quotes from 10 years ago while the dude is trying to perform new material than expect to be disappointed."

User Jamaal K Speights has a similar reaction, saying "Dave Chappelle isnt bombing, the audience just wont shut the f**** up. When did comedy become an interactive event? Seriously, put yourself in Chappelles shoes for a moment.  He knows what he's doing up there. He's been doing standup for years. When you're watching an artist perform live whether it be music or comedy there is one simple rule. SHUT... UP AND ENJOY THE SHOW."

Hopefully the rest of his tour goes more smoothly with mutual respect between Chappelle and his audiences.

What do you think of the ordeal?

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Kanye West