“The problem is that my generation was pacified into believing that racism existed only in our history books.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I hate eating vegetables. The only vegetables I eat are lettuce on a burger.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m a good man, and I’m gonna become a better man.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Something I try to instill in others is to just be a good person. It’s a decision you make a million times a day. But if you just keep trying, good stuff comes to you in an ordained way.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’ve come to understand that art is awesome and beautiful because it’s a reflection of life – but it’s just a reflection, and the real thing is my daughter.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When you make stuff from the ‘you’ point of view, you really can’t go wrong.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I feel like LeBron James is an amazing basketball player, but he’s also a community person.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m lucky to be in a space where I’ve been accepted for who I am and celebrated for who I am.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Depending on the story that you’re telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody’s story.”
― Chance The Rapper
“One of my biggest fears with ‘Coloring Book’ was that it would be labeled. I hate labels. I never sought out for people to recognize it as a gospel album.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I had already been making music for my whole high school life, and ’10 Day,’ which took me a whole year to finish, was about working with a lot of different producers and learning all of the aspects about being a rapper, from shows to recording to studio etiquette to marketing.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When I write, I work off of a theme, an emotion, a narrative – thinking of it and then expounding on it.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m definitely tired of playing ‘Acid Rap.’ I’m definitely tired of playing ‘Juice.’”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Taylor Swift is just dope. She is an ill songwriter.”
― Chance The Rapper
“With ‘Acid Rap,’ I allowed myself to be really open-minded and free with who I allowed into my musical space. I wanted to make a cohesive product, but I also just want to make a bunch of dope songs inspired by whatever sounds I liked.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I make my money off of touring and merchandise. And I’m lucky I have really loyal fans that understand how it works and support.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think that’s always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.”
― Chance The Rapper
“My grandmother is a huge part of my life. She’s just a great woman: a woman of the church.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m a big R&B guy. I’m a huge R. Kelly fan.”
― Chance The Rapper
“God and my dad gave me the gift of gab. I know how to finagle.”
― Chance The Rapper
“My daughter, when she was still in utero, she had, they call it atrial flutters. It’s kind of like an irregular heartbeat. But when you’re in utero, it’s real hard to detect and also to treat.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When you become a parent, you start loving diapers.”
― Chance The Rapper
“We’ve been conditioned to understand music as a field where you get discovered, and you’re always trying to find that end. So ‘my shot’ is speaking of a variety of shots. When you’re a rapper, you look at every shot as the one you’re supposed to take.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Fame or perceived success – it all comes from groupthink.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“My favorite artist in the world is Michael Jackson, and he revolutionized the music video aspect of music.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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?’”
― Chance The Rapper
“I would say almost 60 percent of working with Kanye – let’s say 53 percent of working with Kanye – is speeches.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There’s a larger conversation we need to have about the role of police officers, their relationship to the people as enemy or executioner, when they’re not supposed to be either.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I like the fact that some of your favorite Broadway musicals are not made into movies.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t consider being a musician the same thing as being a celebrity.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I feel like, at a certain point in life, I’d like to be the type of man that gets married and has more serious relationships.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I was a mad, impressionable kid, and every skit from ‘The College Dropout’ was telling me how I didn’t need school.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Everything you write as an artist is about your legacy and your catalog and how you would look in a museum.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I can’t gain anything off of anyone else not succeeding.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There’s so much positivity in the world and your day-to-day life that to go as far as to say that you hate something or you wish it didn’t exist and all the bad things in the world happen to you and only you, it’s a joke. It’s not real to have that much hate in your heart.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When I was working on ‘Coloring Book,’ I knew that I wanted it to be a beacon for independent artists and music makers with their own agenda.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I still think that God means everything to everyone, whether they understand it or not or can see for themselves.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When you’re a Chicago artist, to play Lollapalooza, that’s not a normal thing. It’s artists on a path to a certain place that do that. Chief Keef did it; Kids These Days did it; Cool Kids did it. And I’m the next Cool-Kids-Chief, if you will.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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?”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’ve never met Eminem; you don’t meet Eminem. He has his own secret service.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I made the decision that I was going to make rap music in, like, fourth grade, so it’s been something I was saying for a long time.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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
“Jeremih has been my favorite artist to collab with.”
― Chance The Rapper
“It wasn’t until I left that I realised it’s not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn’t.”
― Chance The Rapper
“The weird thing about rap is that you don’t get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it’s probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: ‘This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.’ But in rap it’s not until you’re dead or retired that people think about it like that.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There’s a hunger in me that always wants to be creating and orating, telling people something and giving them information and getting feedback. There are so many questions that I’m trying to ask, and I’m still so far from being done saying what I gotta say.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“For me, performing is the biggest part of being a rapper. There’s nothing like the feeling of screaming your story to people.”
― Chance The Rapper
“’Chance the Rapper’ is many things. I’m constantly evolving.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Kanye took me from a kid who listened to music to a kid who lived music.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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!”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“The idea of ‘talking white,’ a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it’s not black and that it’s actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.”
― Chance The Rapper
“People always tell me I’m the complete opposite of Chief Keef and act like I’m supposed to stop him from making his music. But I like Chief Keef, so it’s always super awkward. I just make music I like.”
― Chance The Rapper
“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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There’s nothing like doing a show at home. When you do a show in Chicago, there’s just a certain love that you don’t feel anywhere else; it’s like home base.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t see myself ever being in a position where I need to sign to a label.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Every song on ’10 Day’ is a completely different sound – the cadence, the flow, even the production – because I like so many different types of music and because my taste is so refined. ‘Acid Rap’ is another tape where every song sounds different.”
― Chance The Rapper
“My parents are super cheap.”
― Chance The Rapper
“My parents always wanted me to go to college.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’ve always been able to defend Kanye.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I always wanted to be more of a person that people enjoy. Somebody that will make you laugh. I’m talking about just my personality, not necessarily how my music sounds.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I go broke a lot… I go broke a lot because I have this understanding that whatever I put out there, if I really am doing what’s right, it’s going to be rewarding, you know?”
― Chance The Rapper
“I remember sitting on the back of the bus on the first day of the Social Experiment tour with my face in my hands. I emptied out my bank account, and before I did that tour, that was the number one thing I said I’d never do. I’ll never empty out my savings.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t think I ever wanted to be like Kanye in personality. I think I definitely want to, have always wanted to, have his boldness or assurance in myself.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I just need to take better care of myself. I try to push it as far as I can.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I just get sick very easily.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I know for a fact that we’re not pushed or promoted to speak about God with fervor.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I didn’t know love until I had my daughter. I didn’t know its bounds.”
― Chance The Rapper
“You can love somebody through anything when they’re your child, and now that I understand that, it makes me work better with people; it makes me more understanding of how much dedication and love I can put into each line. There’s no throwaway lines.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I want to be more involved outside just my community of Chicago.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I want to travel overseas and help out people all over the world.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I would largely attribute my identity – as it relates to music labels and corporate music giants – to Dave Chappelle and his relationship to and firm standing in Hollywood.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t want to say this in a lame way, but D. Rose is one of my heroes. His whole story and background and what he’s done for communities in Chicago is super inspiring.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I love theater, and I’ve always been a huge movie buff.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m a big Rick Ross fan, and I think everybody knows I’m a big Kanye fan.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Colorism and racism don’t stop when you’re a musician or when you have wealth or when you’re in any given position.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I can’t really speak on her policies, but I feel a certain connection to Hillary Clinton that’s just not there with Donald Trump.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Where he tells you exactly how he views the world – just very straight Kanye, honesty that definitely gets your creativity and strong opinions out on the floor. I think it helped me find myself.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m a young dude from Chicago who grew up with Kanye as my image of hip-hop. Finding your voice in a room where you have to challenge Kanye is scary – but it’s also life-affirming.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There’s always been a quiet conversation and joke that if you’re not hard, if you’re not from impoverished neighborhoods, if you’re not certain constructs of a black stereotype, then you not black.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I would never run for any office or government position. I’m not into it.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think politics is a reason why a lot of stuff doesn’t get done. There’s a lot of favors, and a lot of people are held back by their intentions of being re-elected or the things that they owe their party or constituents.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think when you’re in my position as an artist, I can say what I want and talk about the issues that matter.”
― Chance The Rapper
“That’s what I’ve always wanted to do – work with my favorite writers and make something from scratch with them that we can feel like didn’t exist before we came in the room.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There are cases where you can say a lot more in a hook than you can by making things more complex in a verse.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Being in the space that I am as a writer, and just as a black dude in America, there’s this push to be cool or be what you’re expected to be. There’s a need for a song that puts that in perspective. I think that’s an important thing for young children to hear growing up.”
― Chance The Rapper
“People don’t want rap to be anything other than it is. But genres expand. My contributions, no matter how they sound, will always be rap, because they’ll always be black.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Mixtapes have always been a guerrilla-style means of moving music.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t have to carry myself as anybody that I’m not, and people picked up on it.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There is a multitude of experiences that make up the black experience.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I hate that when you introduce yourself, and you’re a rapper, sometimes you gotta say, ‘I’m a musician.’ Or, ‘I’m an artist.’ ‘I’m a recording artist.’ ‘I’m a vocalist.’”
― Chance The Rapper
“I used to always rock a cap when I was in high school and get them taken away. It was an excessive amount. 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.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t necessarily think, as a person of influence, that it’s always my job to influence people regarding my opinion.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think, as a black man, I have a responsibility to have knowledge and have an opinion.”
― Chance The Rapper
“There was a point where I just did not care about my body.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When I found Freestyle Fellowship, I started getting into the construction of rap. You get better at it the more you do it; you figure out the science and the math behind it.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m very into film and strengthening what it means to be a rapper and to be a black dude from Chicago.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t make Christian rap, but I am a Christian rapper.”
― Chance The Rapper
“When I was going out and trying to fully give glory to God, in my setting, I feared that people would be dismissive of it, like, ‘This is Christian rap. I’m not trying to hear it.’ But it’s the total opposite: People were very accepting of it.”
― Chance The Rapper
“’Hamilton’ is revolutionary in terms of writing.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think it’s very important for America that we’re represented as promoters of peace, love, and understanding.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I never really liked the idea of rap being a competitive thing. It’s not.”
― Chance The Rapper
“If you can give away free music, you can give away free electricity, free water. Those tiny jabs at a larger infrastructure are what make revolutions.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think #BlackLivesMatter is a huge campaign that is important and integral to our advancement as a people.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think the only thing that’s really going to make a change in terms of how we feel as citizens in terms of safety and our relationship with the police is if we start seeing more federal indictments, arrests, and convictions of police officers.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I want my music to be beautiful.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Anything is respectable in its own realm.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I want to tell people to read ‘The Prince’ by Machiavelli – check that one out. It’s just changed my attack so – I think so much more inwardly.”
― Chance The Rapper
“If I was to buy a suit, I’d probably go to Men’s Wearhouse – because you’re going to like the way you look; they guarantee it.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I have a bigger voice than Donald Trump, you know what I’m saying? Than literally anybody that works in politics.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m just trying to be an example for all the young artists that are becoming artists every day and working on their craft and trying to help them avoid the pitfalls of the upper management in music and the non-music side of music.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I am scared of death.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t think I really knew I was going to be a rapper until sixth grade. Even then, it was still kind of – I was in sixth grade. I was always saying I was going to become a rapper.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I used to be the class clown. I was the funny kid. That’s why it was so hard for people to understand that I rap, because for a long time, they didn’t take me seriously for who I was. By, like, eighth grade, I was really rapping.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think I always knew I wasn’t gonna have a regular job.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m a patriarch now. I’ve got to go get the bread.”
― Chance The Rapper
“Selling music doesn’t make that much money.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think there’s a lot of taboos in hip-hop that people try and stay away from. I think a big one is, people are afraid to speak about God to a certain extent, and I think if you’re not free to speak about God, then you’re not free.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I think the music industry is something that’s very separate from music. So, by always staying on the music side of it, I’ve found success.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I’m still a very frugal person. But everything that does get spent is a reinvestment into my own music.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I don’t agree with the way labels are set up. I don’t agree that anyone should sign 360 deals or sign away their publishing or take most of the infrastructure that’s included in a formal deal.”
― Chance The Rapper
“I can’t see myself ever having somebody say something about me on a song and me being like, ‘All right, now I’m about to say something about them on a song.’”
― Chance The Rapper
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