There’s a storm coming- and it goes by the name of Chance the Rapper.
Born Chancelor Bennett on April 16th, 1993 in the South Side of Chicago, the Rapper began his music career performing in talent shows and participating in the hip hop duo Instrumentality at Chicago’s esteemed Jones College Prep High School.
In his senior year, Bennett was caught in possession of marijuana on campus, thereby sentencing him to a 10-day suspension from school, but a concurrent kickstart to his music career. With the production of his first full-length mixtape #10Day in 2012, Chancelor Bennett became Chance the Rapper: the unstoppable cultural phenomenon that is changing the course of music, one free mixtape at a time.
Flash forward four years, and the Rapper has ascended hip-hop’s ranks faster than he can yell out his signature scream. Somewhere in the midst of establishing charities to raise money for Chicago’s homeless population, taking children on field trips to museums, hosting “Open Mike” events in order to give aspiring Chicago artists the chance to perform, and starting the social media campaign #SaveChicago in an attempt to combat the escalating murder rate in Chicago, Chance has been working on his first solo project since 2013’s Acid Rap, to be titled Coloring Book.
With the release date teasing at any day now, Chano fans can’t help but feel irrationally enthusiastic for what could without exaggeration end up as album of the year. And I’m fully aware of just how many streams Views from the 6 has already received.
So last Saturday, when Chance took the liberty of adding fuel to the fire and releasing the cover artwork to his highly-anticipated mixtape on social media, it’s no surprise that fans had a free-for-all. Not longer after Chance had posted the link to purchase blown-up prints of the artwork, the posters began to cover the streets of major cities.
While the new mixtape is long-awaited, Chance hasn’t been one to hold off at the opportunity to hype up his fans for the project. Much of the talk surrounding the 23-year-old rapper has been in regards to his recent New York City Saturday Night Live performances, one in which he premiered his song “Somewhere in Paradise,” and the other in which he performed his powerful verse on “Ultralight Beam” alongside longtime idol Kanye West.
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chance addressed his unorthodox refusal to charge for any of his past music- which not only can be evidenced in his past two mixtapes, but in his singles “Angels” and “Somewhere in Paradise,” as well as in his group project Surf- leading fans to believe that Coloring Book will be treated the same.
“Why charge a dollar for a song, when that’s not doing anything but making people undervalue music?” he had asked during the interview.
Because an exact date has yet to be announced for the Coloring Book release, fans are speculating about whether or not the new mixtape will be one without warning, just as Surf was in May of 2015. However, with Chance’s recent announcement on Twitter of his impending appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon tonight, some wonder if maybe- possibly- tonight could be the night.
So prepare yourselves people, our long awaited follow-up to Acid Rap is almost here: and it’s gonna be awesome.
To hear Chance’s #10Day, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJPtq3laocU
To hear Chance’s Acid Rap, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e67Q-sTHVhc
To hear Surf, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEn88dweZkc
