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Dave Chappelle is now a Grammy Award winning artist.
Tonight during the live telecast he took home the Grammy for Best Comedy Album, beating out the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Siverman, Jim Gaffigan, and Kevin Hart. After they all slugged it out, presenter Trevor Noah awarded Chappelle the statue for his double special Age of Spin / Deep In The Heart of Texas. If judging by sheer amount of hours of new material released this year, Chappelle would've won by that metric as well.
"I am honored to win an award, finally. And I wanted to thank everybody at Netflix, everyone at Saturday Night Live and everyone at Chappelle Show," he began, and also thanked his family. "See you on Monday," he ended his short speech.
For the first time ever, the Grammys decided to televise the Best Comedy Album award and their reason for doing so was extremely simple... star power. With literally the biggest names in the game having nominations, the decision to air the award gave them a chance to have someone like Chappelle (who appeared at the top of the night in Kendrick Lamar's incredible opening performance) on stage while cutting away to others like Seinfeld, Silverman, Gaffigan, and Hart.
While 4 out of the 5 noms were Netflix releases, a reflection of the streaming giant's hold on stand-up right now, many wondered how these specials would be eligible. According to a Wall Street Journal article last month, Netflix went analog and released a lot of its high-profile released on vinyl to make them eligible. A trick other comedians have done in the past, providing a blueprint for Netflix.