Chance the Rapper comes to Hawaii this weekend at that stage of his career when each year is bigger than the last — and even by that standard, 2016 was an especially big year for the Chicago-based performer.
Last January, Chance was coming off his first appearance on “Saturday Night Live” as musical guest. The 23-year-old ended the year with a return to Studio 8H and even appeared in some skits. What came in between was enough to propel him from Next Big Thing status to something much larger.
In May, Chance — whose given name is Chancelor Bennett — released “Coloring Book,” his third mixtape, which reinforced his standing as a singular performer while taking him in a more spiritual direction that opens the possibility that he could be a generational hip-hop talent. With the new material, he makes it clear that “Chance the Rapper” is not a full description of his persona, expanding his use of spoken word and showing more confidence as a singer, ably moving among the three deliveries.
Like all of Chance’s music, “Coloring Book” is available only as a download, with no physical CD. Also, it’s free.
Chance has rebuffed all overtures from record labels, choosing instead to make all his mixtapes available for free on streaming services such as Soundcloud and as a download on sites such as DatPiff. The latest is a Christmas collaboration with Jeremih titled “Merry Christmas Lil Mama.”
Instead of making money from album sales, which have declined severely anyway in the Digital Age, Chance has embraced a 21st-century model, earning a living through live shows, merchandise sales and marketing deals.
“It’s not about the music being free. It’s about how it is displayed and made accessible and about artistic power,” Chance told Billboard magazine in August. (The Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s requests to his management for an interview went unanswered.)
Or, as he put it on the “Coloring Book” track “Blessings,” “I don’t make songs for free, I make ’em for freedom.”
He’s stayed away from (and spoken out against) deals that give record companies control over an artist’s production and marketing.
The next line of “Blessings” is, “Don’t believe in kings, believe in the kingdom,” which speaks to a major change from his first two releases in the musical themes Chance explores.
After making a name for himself by dropping two mixtapes with drug-related titles — “10 Day” was named for his school suspension for marijuana possession, and “Acid Rap” for the LSD involved in its recording — Chance put his Christianity front and center on “Coloring Book.”
He foreshadowed this move to spirituality over the previous year in his work with Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment (“Sunday Candy”) and Kanye West (the Grammy-nominated “Ultralight Beam”). With “Coloring Book,” Chance made it clear how important God is to him, both with subject matter and with the change in his sound, incorporating a choir and a sermon-like, spoken-word delivery.
With that emphasis on his religion, Chance has also downplayed his drug use.
“Kids would tell me they tried acid for the first time listening to ‘Acid Rap,’ asking me if I wanted some. I realized the responsibility of being a popular artist,” he told Billboard.
That self-awareness and conscientiousness are consistent with Chance’s activist nature.
He got his start in high school in an open-mic program and started an open-mic series of his own to give Windy City high-schoolers the chance to express themselves.
“The gratification of being donned a great rapper isn’t as important as giving people the resources they need in order to make the statements they want to make,” he told Complex magazine in 2015.
He also met with President Barack Obama regarding Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper program, which aims to help young men of color focus on their future as well as break down racial barriers to success. His other causes include efforts to reduce gun violence in Chicago, help the homeless and encourage voter participation.
Though Chance was raised to be socially conscious (his father, Ken Bennett, is an adviser to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel), he says making the world a better place became even more important to him with the birth of his daughter in September 2015.
“A lot of my stuff is about my ideal world and how I want things to function,” he told Complex last summer in a joint interview with “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. “I have a daughter who’s going to be raised in this world, and my music and my art are powerful tools in getting that to be formed the way I want it to.”
