Chance The Rapper
Chance The Rapper
Chancelor Bennett, known professionally as Chance the Rapper or Chance The Rapper, is an American hip hop recording artist from the West Chatham neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. In 2013, he began to gain major recognition following the release of his second mixtape, Acid Rap. Apart from his solo career, he is also a member of the Chicago collective Save Money, alongside frequent collaborator Vic Mensa, and has experimented as the lead vocalist for the band The Social Experiment. In May...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth16 April 1993
CountryUnited States of America
I think it's so dope that I'm here in Chicago and contributing to the music scene that's thriving. People are so happy Chicago's shining that everyone is willing to say 'I represent Chicago.' That wasn't always the case.
Jeremih has been my favorite artist to collab with.
Both of my parents graduated from high school, both attended college, both have government jobs now. They've always been very adamant about me finishing high school and finishing college.
People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie!
My come-out record, '10 Day,' was the thing people were supposed to hear and figure out 'he's good' or 'he's not good.' 'Acid Rap' is the comeback tape, and it asks way bigger and better questions than, 'Is he good at rapping?
I think even before I knew I wanted to be a rapper, I wanted to be an entertainer. I was really into Michael Jackson as a kid.
I don't know where people think I'm from, but I'm from Chicago. It's really just that. People wanna romanticize it and say, 'There's two sides to it, and it's a beautiful love/hate story of violence and music.' But it's really just a very scummy place where people don't have respect for other people's lives.
One of the first times I ever performed in front of a big group of people was at my kindergarten graduation. I did, like, a Michael Jackson impersonation as, like, a five year old. I had the suit and blazer, the glove and the fedora, and I just performed a whole Michael Jackson song. I'm sure it was 'Smooth Criminal.
Chance the Rapper' is many things. I'm constantly evolving.
Music can kind of make you one-dimensional. People see what's on the surface and what you rap about, and they make their decision on who you are from there.
I don't really have control over my direct impression on people anymore. I used to be the person putting my CD in people's hands. But I'm kind of a mainstream artist now. Not by choice.
I've never met Eminem; you don't meet Eminem. He has his own secret service.
The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?
I'm light skinned, and I used to lean on that because that's something a lot of black people pride themselves on, and it's weird.