Chance the Rapper and Collaborators on the Legacy of Coloring Book: "None of Us Knew Anything"

By the time Chance the Rapper released Coloring Book on May 13, 2016, he had grown from an internet darling to a mold-breaking mainstream star.

He turned down $10 million advances to stay independent and followed one of the 2010’s best projects, Acid Rap, with a genuine blockbuster—one of the most significant mixtapes in the history of rap. He used his success to not only maintain his independence, but to lambast the exploitative label system. “If one more label try to stop me / It’s gon' be some dreadhead n****s in your lobby,” he rapped on “No Problem.” In the process, Chance redefined what mixtapes could be in a moment when the medium—and music in general—were changing forever.

“I always want to be a decider of the access point for [my] music and where it can be sold and where it can be distributed,” Chance told Complex just days before celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the album’s release. “I think that's what I did with Coloring Book.”

The 2013 release of Acid Rap helped usher in a renaissance of warmer, non-drill Chicago hip-hop and provided crucial early opportunities for MCs like Noname, Saba, and Vic Mensa, as well as his close cohort of producers and instrumentalists including Nico Segal, Peter CottonTale, and Nate Fox. Coloring Book provided a similar platform for artists like Knox Fortune, Jamila Woods, and Eryn Allen Kane.

The public was hungry for more Chance, as proven by the commercial and critical success of 2015’s Surf from Nico Segal and The Social Experiment. That record featured similarly rich instrumentation, vocal harmonies, and a collaborative philosophy akin to Coloring Book. Both projects paired mainstream stars with rising Chicago talent, leading to thrilling, unexpected tandems like Migos and King Louie on “Familiar” or Chance’s cousin Nicole with Jay Electronica on “How Great.”

“Through the course of making Surf into the making of Coloring Book, there was a lot of baton passing,” Segal told Complex. Segal had only contributed trumpet to Acid Rap’s outro, but became a key part of Chance’s production cohort for Coloring Book. Chance also stresses the shared DNA of the two projects, explaining that working on Surf opened his mind to how he could use collaborators in more untraditional ways. The idea first began to click on Acid Rap’s “That’s Love,” which featured uncredited vocals from Childish Gambino, but on Coloring Book he brought together Ty Dolla Sign, Raury, and Anderson .Paak to sing backup on “Blessings,” deployed Justin Bieber’s tender tenor sparingly on “Juke Jam,” and secured Future’s “Smoke Break” feature the night he uploaded the album.

“Even if somebody's not credited, even if you're not getting all the clout of saying this person's one of the lead feature artists on my song, the talent will come through,” Chance told Complex. “People will appreciate the song regardless.”

Within a few years, artists charting solely off streams became the norm, but it was a massive paradigm shift when Chance did it.

“My start, even before Acid Rap and 10 Day, was passing out free music in Chicago,” Chance said. “I think that having the ability to choose the value of my music and the point of sale for myself, that comes strictly out of independence.”

Chance and his team made the prescient decision to focus on partnering with streamers instead of traditional institutions. Along with his Apple Music exclusive, Chance’s Magnificent Coloring Day Festival, held on September 24, was presented by Jay-Z’s streaming service Tidal and saw performances from Lil Wayne, Tyler, the Creator, and Alicia Keys at the White Sox stadium.

And the jubilant moments remain just as thrilling today. “No Problem,” his posse cut with 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, is a rebuke of the major label system atop a triumphant beat from producers Cam O’bi and Brasstracks. “Angels” is similarly ebullient, though with Chance and Saba showing Chicago pride. While “All We Got” might not have the universal cache of Kanye West’s Life of Pablo classic “Ultralight Beam,” it affirmed Chance’s stature as a scalding hot MC who could get even the biggest names on his songs.

In a lot of ways, the joy featured on the standouts from the album conflicts with some of the in real life struggles Chance was going through. Following the success of Acid Rap, Chance spent a fraught year in L.A. marked by Xanax abuse and creative malaise. Chance addresses those struggles directly on “Angels” and “Finish Line,” and calls that challenging year in L.A. the key experience that informed Coloring Book.

“After Acid Rap was the first time I had money, the first time I really lived apart from my parents, and I was just kind of wilin’,” he said. “I remember when I finally kind of came to my senses and said, ‘All right, I'm finna slow down a little bit.’”

Once he moved back to Chicago, he reconnected with childhood friend Kirsten Corley, his eventual wife and mother of his two daughters. Living in his beloved hometown and becoming a parent renewed Chance’s musical motivation and led to Coloring Book’s gospel influence in the keyboard chords of “Blessings” and the warm choir vocals on “How Great.”

Fatherhood and faith became the two primary themes while recording Coloring Book— though he freely acknowledges he was no expert on either topic when writing his third mixtape. (Chance’s first daughter was born just seven months before the tape’s May 2016 release.)

He describes that immediacy as a creative theme, whether with psychedelic experimentation on Acid Rap or married later life on The Big Day. Exploring these major life moments on wax so close to when they happened allowed for a “first thought, best thought” candor and creative freedom.

“Historically when I'm making a project, it's usually because I've just found some new information or something that's transformed me at the time,” Chance said. “I delve really deep into writing about it and my experiences and my perspective from that space, but it's also typically early into that new experience.”

The title itself was a late decision, with the MC spending most of the run-up promoting it simply as “Chance 3.”

The 3 hats he wore to promote the record became ubiquitous to the point that Chance told Joe Budden he made $6 million off of them in a single year. He says the meaning of Coloring Book is multi-layered, but at its core it’s about growing up and establishing the right guidelines for the next generation.

“It’s a deep thing that's hard for me to articulate, but I thought of the Coloring Book as: you're as a parent, you're teaching these lessons, but you're also setting up certain boundaries and outlines for the kids to work within,” he said. “And I thought Coloring Book kind of gave off that same idea of ‘I'm giving you the means to create, but I'm also giving you certain parameters to work with.’”

That adoring smile and downward gaze on the Brandon Breaux-painted cover art? He was holding his daughter just below the frame. The expression of mid-trip paranoia from Acid Rap had been replaced by one of pride and paternal purpose. He describes it best on “Blessings,” capturing the dizzying pace with which his life changed.

“Ain't no blood on my money, ain't no Twitter in Heaven / I know them drugs isn't close, ain't no visitin' Heaven / I know the difference in blessings and worldly possessions / Like my ex-girl getting pregnant / And her becoming my everything.”

Segal is one of Chance’s closest friends and primary producers. He says incorporating the gospel sound was the biggest sonic challenge. With most of the musicians around him coming from jazz or hip-hop backgrounds, they needed to adjust their approaches on the more exultant songs like “Blessings,” “How Great,” and “Finish Line/Drown.”

“I don't come from playing gospel music as a background at all, but I can say when we were on the Social Experiment tour–really every tour we've ever been on together–the most prevalent music in green rooms or on the bus is always gospel music,” Segal said. “Gospel music heavily, heavily influenced Chance and the way he thinks about arrangement, the way he hears instruments, the way he hears vocals.”

Chance grew up with gospel music, singing in church and at the vacation bible school run by his aunt. For Coloring Book, he drew on longtime favorites like Kirk Franklin, Norman Hutchins, and Byron Cage. He credits Kanye with helping open him up to bringing his faith more overtly into his songwriting. The first “Blessings,” featuring Jamila Woods and based around a sample of Norman Hutchins’ track of the same name, was the proof-of-concept moment for him creatively.

“I'd been [using] wordplay that referenced my biblical level of understanding, but not really exalting God. That was the first time that I was rapping about my circumstances and proximity to God,” he said. “When I made that it was just so different from anything that I was making or anything that I was hearing out in the market that I knew that that was where I wanted to go with the project as a whole.”

Chance and his closest collaborators recall a generally frenzied atmosphere around him at the time, between constant shows and Coloring Book’s relatively tight recording window. Inspired by Kanye’s maximalist approach to recording, Chance rented increasingly larger sections of Chicago’s CRC Studio, eventually bringing in mattresses and outfitting the space for day-and-night sessions. It wasn’t a new approach for him, but it came with a new motivation.

“There was a time when I was literally a studio rat. I didn't want to be anywhere but the studio and I could just make song after song and not even really think about where that song's going to [live],” he said. “[My] responsibilities altered once my first daughter was born, but it also made me want to work harder because I got to get breaded.”

On the pensive “Summer Friends,” he likens his workaholic tendencies to his father, Ken Bennett, a major fixture in Chicago Democratic politics. “Dad was workin’ late, he’d treat the crib like it’s a timeshare,” he raps. “Now I’m the same way, overtime all the time, every night, hey…Never let a friendship get in my way.”

Segal and CottonTale were on the road with Chance for a seemingly unending run of shows. Nico explains both Surf and many of Coloring Book’s initial ideas came together in whatever moments they could steal. “When we were on tour, if we had a second to breathe, we were in the studio or we were making a beat on the bus or in a hotel room. It was just nonstop music 24/7.”

Producer Cam O’bi was nervous about how the final product would be received. He says they had spent eight months recording Acid Rap, but Coloring Book really came together in a matter of weeks. Chance’s recollection is a bit different, noting that tracks like “Same Drugs” and “Finish Line” had been worked on for more than a year. “For ‘Same Drugs’ there were, no exaggeration, at least 200 versions of that song,” Chance said.

There were also sample clearance obstacles leaving fan favorites like “Grown Ass Kid” and “Livin’ Single” on the cutting room floor. The former borrowed from Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson’s “If Only for One Night” and couldn’t be cleared in time, while the latter interpolated the beloved ‘90s sitcom theme, but had its usage denied due to concerns over the explicit language. O’bi recalls Chance even calling on Kanye to throw some weight around on the “Grown Ass Kid” clearance front. Despite his gargantuan success, Chance and his team were still independent, and kept that by-any-means ingenuity.

“We ended up almost reverse-engineering the idea of sampling,” Segal said.“Creating something and then sampling rather than sampling a classic song, incorporating aspects of classic songwriting and

then sampling that and bringing that into the hip-hop ecosphere.”

Even after Coloring Book proved itself a critical and commercial hit, the musicians involved say there wasn’t yet a sense of the magnitude of what they had accomplished. Winning Grammys the next winter, headlining festivals like Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, and making the top 10 with an independent, streaming-only mixtape was a completely new notion in the industry.

“None of us knew anything,” CottonTale said. “But I will say we weren't blindsided by the amount of work we put in and the value of it for sure.”

Beyond its twin pillars of newfound parenthood and religious devotion, Chance notes a third theme on Coloring Book: nostalgia. It’s the throughline of “Summer Friends,” which starts with Chance reflecting on childhood friendships and the young men in Chicago who were deprived of the opportunity to reach adulthood. It gives him a sense of purpose on “Angel,” where he raps about helping clean up his hometown “so my daughter can have somewhere to play” and provides the coming-of-age framework for the flirtatious “Juke Jam.” CottonTale calls Chance’s “power to wield nostalgia” one of his best artistic gifts, and he was a marksman with it on Coloring Book.

In the wrong hands, nostalgia can be a cheap tool for emotional impact, but Chance and his team imbued Coloring Book with such a genuine joy and earnestness that its transportational power has grown undeniable in the decade since its release. Lyrically and musically it captures a singular artist in a major moment of personal and professional growth.

“There's something to me that's just beautiful about art in that it documents life. It's proof of life and life comes with mistakes,” Chance said. “That's why we like real shit, we don't like shit that feels too scripted or produced. We want to see the flubs. We want to see somebody still figuring something out.”