Chance the Rapper, as the world knows him, almost had a completely different identity.
In a recent conversation with Ebro Darden on Apple Music 1, the 30-year-old Chicago rapper reflected on the 10th anniversary of his hallmark mixtape Acid Rap and being catapulted into the limelight.
"The year Acid Rap dropped, I started out and went on tour with Mac Miller," said Chance. "My mixtape dropped while I was on tour, and I literally watched people go from yawning and looking at their clocks while I was on stage to singing along to jumping along. I watched that."
However, long before Acid Rap and before Chance, born Chancelor Johnathan Bennett, went by "Chance the Rapper," he used a completely different stage name back in the day. "My original name for a short period of time was Tony Jizzle. It would've been a whole different trajectory," he mused. "Still in the same space I'm in, but just a different path to getting right back here."
He continued, "I could rhyme a lot of things with Jizzle and it was just like I always wanted the name Tony. Tony or Max when I was a kid. I wanted to be white when I was little, man, I wanted a name like Tony or Max or I don't know, some cool Scott."
Although the Chicago artist admitted that name was right for him at the time, "Chance" was ultimately the right choice. "I feel like Chance the Rapper is also a cool name. You don't know that many people named Chance and then it's like you could just be like it's Chance," he said. "I'd be like Chance who? You know in Chicago they call me Chance da Rapper. Really they say Chandler rapper."
This isn't the first time the "Cocoa Butter Kisses" artist talked about how his rap name could have been different. During an interview on Late Night With Seth Myers in May 2023, he revealed that he went by Tony Jizzle in middle school. “When I was in eighth grade, I went by Tony Jizzle… I’m glad that that part of my life is over with," he told Myers. "Very much so an eighth grade kind of name."
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