chance-the-rapper
When he broke out with 2013’s Acid Rap, Chance the Rapper introduced himself as an artist who can sharply illustrate the joys and pains of being from Chicago, who isn’t afraid to take experimental risks, and who can rap with the best of them. The mixtape was also the makings of a star—nevermind that it landed on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart despite being a free digital mixtape.
In 2015, Chance teamed up with the Social Experiment to drop Surf, showing that you can drop a free album on iTunes while having fun with your friends. The next year, he stole the show with a breathtaking verse on The Life of Pablo’s opener “Ultralight Beam” and re-introduced many to gospel rap with his long-awaited third solo mixtape Coloring Book. The latter became the first streaming-only project to win Best Rap Album at the Grammys, made him the rare hip-hop artist to win the ceremony’s Best New Artist category, earned 2 Chainz his Grammy thanks to his feature on “No Problem,” and solidified his claim as Kanye West’s true successor. Chance has suggested that his next project will be his first album (all of his prior solo projects are considered mixtapes), and he’s definitely still an ascending star since he just turned 25 earlier this April.
Chano definitely had plenty of exposure—he’s hit the Saturday Night Live stage four times and starred in a Kit Kat commercial—but what don’t you know about him? Well, we’ve got you covered. Here are 15 Things You Didn't Know About Chance the Rapper, including what’s up with the hats, and just why is he smiling on Coloring Book’s cover.
He won a Michael Jackson talent show in fourth grade.
Chance spoke about the prestigious honor in a 2013 conversation with Interview. He also said that Jackson influences his live performances. “It taught me about stage presence, and how to keep people’s attention on you for a certain amount of time, and saving the most impressive stuff for last,” he told the magazine.
Chance the Rapper interned for Barack Obama
Chance and Obama actually go way back, since his father served as state director when Obama was an Illinois state senator, and was head of personnel during Obama's first term as President. The former president told radio host Sway that he’s known Chano since he was 8. Given his family ties, it's no surprise that he clinched an internship for Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign— the campaign even gave him a 1997 laptop for his work.
Chance’s smile on the Coloring Book cover is for his daughter.
Chano said in a discussion at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics that his daughter Kensli is the unseen reason he’s looking down smiling. "I thought, my best smile is probably when I'm holding my daughter," he told the audience.
Chance is the first independent artist to perform on Saturday Night Live.
He earned the distinction as the featured musical guest on a December 2015 episode. He’d return to perform his “Ultralight Beam” verse during Kanye West’s episode in February 2016, the following December as the featured performer, and again last November as a host with Eminem as the featured artist.
His great-grandmother marched with Martin Luther King Jr.
Chance is also known for his activism, as seen through his outspokenness against Chicago’s gun violence and advocacy for Chicago’s Public School students.
He has a specific reason why he doesn’t sell his music.
He told Vanity Fair that he thought that “putting a price on it put a limit on it and inhibited [him] from making a connection.”
“After I made my second mixtape and gave it away online,” he said, “my plan was to sign with a label and figure out my music from there. But after meeting with the three major labels, I realized my strength was being able to offer my best work to people without any limit on it.”
His love of hats is a lifelong one.
Chance used to always get his hats taken away in high school. “It was an excessive amount,” he told GQ in 2017. “Like, so often that at the end of each school year, there would be a box of all the confiscated caps. After they gave back a few caps to other kids, they would just give me the box because the rest were all my hats.” Now, a cap is his signature.
He’s the only Chicago rapper not named Kanye West to win a Grammy for Best Rap Album.
Common was nominated for the golden gramophone four times. Unfortunately for him, Eminem and West were also in the running those years.
Frank Ocean helped him out on a date.
Chance told GQ that Ocean was chilling downstairs in Chano’s mansion when he brought a girl over. “Frank just comes up and starts playing the piano and lightly singing in the background of our date. Obviously, that scored me a lot of points with this female,” he recalled. Note that this happened while we were still waiting for Blonde.
Kirk Franklin is his favorite composer.
“One of my favorite—if not my favorite artists, definitely my favorite composer—is Kirk Franklin,” he said at a Harvard lecture. Of course, Chance’s relationship with Franklin is tighter than distant admiration: They’d link up on Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” and Coloring Book’s "Finish Line / Drown."
He shares a birthday with Akon.
There’s no word on whether a collaboration between the two is finally dropping, but they have at least been in the studio together.
He voiced Bob Marley on Black Dynamite.
Yes, Chance threw on a Jamaican accent for the excellent but canceled Adult Swim series. But this isn’t even his most bizarre role.
Chance the Rapper owns tobacco farmlands in North Carolina.
“My family on my mom’s side has mad farmland out there and I own some tobacco fields,” he explained to Nardwuar. “I don’t work for a tobacco company, though.”
He made his first mixtape while suspended from high school.
The title of 10 Day refers to the 10-day suspension he got from possessing marijuana on his high school campus. He’d return to school with a project that would jumpstart his career.
He went broke making Surf and Coloring Book.
Trying to make a masterpiece is not cheap. Chance told GQ he emptied his account trying to make the two beloved projects: “I was fucking around in this studio—like this studio is stupid expensive.”