Dave Chappelle didn't quit Comedy Central's "Chappelle's Show," he just slept through the snooze alarm.

On Tuesday night, Dave Chappelle made his first appearance on "The Late Show With David Letterman: in ten years.

About the same time that Chappelle shook up TV Comedy by walking away from a $50 million contract to do "Chappelle's Show" without leaving a forwarding address.

But Chappelle explained that, in spite of what people may think "Technically, I never quit. I'm seven years late for work."

"Boy, are you going to be in trouble when you go back," Letterman said.

The Late Show talk was also Chappelle's first late-night appearance since 2008, when he gave an interview on Late Night With Conan O'Brien in 2008. Chappell hit The Late Show to promote his Radio City Music Hall shows, which are almost all already sold out. One of the shows will feature his wife Nas.

The comedian says sometimes he misses the big Comedy Central contract but says "I made a series of decisions. Look, Dave, it's very hard to go through something like this because no one has really done it before. So there's not too many people that don't think I'm crazy."

"I look at it like this: I'm at a restaurant with my wife," he says, "it's a nice restaurant and we're eating dinner. I look across the room and see this guy eating dinner and I say, 'You see this guy across the room? He has $100 million, and we're eating the same entree.' Ok, fine, I don't have $50 million or whatever it was. Let's say I have $10 million in the bank - the difference in lifestyle is miniscule. The only difference between having $10 million and $50 million is an astounding $40 million. Of course I would like to have that money."

"You know, it's like getting divorced in the '50s. People didn't go to divorce court. They looked at their wife like, 'Baby, I'm going to get a pack of cigarettes. I'll be right back.' And they just leave with the clothes on their back and make a go of it. There wasn't even internet back then. You could move 11 miles away and have a whole new life," Chappelle said, to change the subject.

Letterman asked "You lived in South Africa for an extended period of time."

"Well, no, I was there for two weeks," Chappelle explained. There's not too many good hiding places left in America."

Well, not when you're hiding on Late Night