Few musical debates are more contentious than who deserves and doesn’t deserve to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Toad the Wet Sprocket was a band that caused a miniscule ripple in the space time continuum in the early nineties. I saw them perform at Lollapalooza, overshadowed on a bill that included Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Ice Cube, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But what if this earnest band, named after a Monty Python punchline, had a passionate following that insisted it belonged among our great rock and roll heroes? And what if one of those champions was comedian Dave Chappelle?
—Ryan
An on-stage rant in which very angry Dave Chappelle demands that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induct Toad the Wet Sprocket.
The speech is in response to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's refusal to induct hip-hop group N.W.A., which Chappelle believes was an injustice.
Dave Chappelle: I'm not even going to be mad at you guys, I just want you to know that I'm disappointed. This is my big night and I really wanted N.W.A in here tonight, it would have been great for me and them because we're both under-represented in the Hall of Fame.
MTV News: We tried Dave, they refused us.
Dave Chappelle: But there's no way they wouldn't let you put on a suit and walk onstage right now if it meant getting them into the Hall of Fame!
MTV News: They said no.
Dave Chappelle: You need Toad The Wet Sprocket then! You need 'em! They're just as good as N.W.A!
ANALYSIS
In our reality, N.W.A. was deservedly inducted into the venerable pop culture institution in 2016. Dave Chappelle’s rant either seems to occur before their induction, or on some strange plane of existence where MTV News has been given the authority to adjudicate these sorts of decisions.
The expository sentence immediately following the prompt had me initially thinking that even GPT-3 found the notion of Chappelle fanboying on Toad the Wet Sprocket too ridiculous to indulge. Spending most of the completion focused on N.W.A., this vignette waits until the punchline (for lack of a better word) to deliver.
I’m impressed by how well the AI replicated Chappelle’s voice. “I’m not even going to be mad at you guys…” sounds like the wind-up to any number of Chappelle’s bits. His riff about formal wear gets a bit confusing, as does the question of why N.W.A refused induction, or why he would be disappointed at being under-represented at an institution that isn’t for comedians anyway.