Chance The Rapper, Changing the Independent Hiphop Game

Chance the Rapper, whose real name is Chancellor Johnathan Bennett was born on April 16 1993, in Chicago, Illinois. He is an independent hiphop recording artist who has taken the world by storm with hit mixtape ‘Acid Rap’ & his latest project, ‘Coloring Book’.

 

Chance the Rapper

 Chance started his career when he was suspended for 10 days from school, for possessing marijuana on campus. Instead of moping around for the 10 days at home, he started working on producing his first mixtape, which he titled “10 Day” and uploaded the 10 tracks of his mixtape onto Soundcloud in December 2011, where it was widely received by the independent community there. This venture led him to appear on American rapper Childish Gambino’s sixth mixtape, ‘Royalty’ on the track “They Don’t Like Me” and later Chance joined Gambino on tour in North America as an opening act in 2012. Around this time, Sony Music and a few other prominent music labels offered him record deals, but he would soon turn them down due to his views on creative control that did not flow well with the music labels.

He then release “Acid Rap” independently, his second mixtape on music sites DatPiff and Soundcloud in 2013. This mixtape when on to put Chance as on of the biggest rappers in our modern era, and he wasn’t even signed to any labels! ‘Acid Rap’ was then nominated as Best Mixtape at the BET Hip Hop Awards as one of its biggest highlights. His record collaboration with Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment in 2014 was a huge success with songs like “Sunday Candy” topping charts across America. His latest endeavour, his 2016 “Colouring Book” mixtape has over 36 million plays on Spotify, which also features big-hit rappers and producers like Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. The most impressive thing about Chance is that he has accomplished all this without the help and power of a major music label.

Coloring Book Mixtape

When someone listens to Chance The Rapper, he resonates so much to a generation looking for positivity in an already negative world. He not only acknowledges how run down the world is today, but chooses to respond to adversary with positivity and honesty. His gospel influence added with his brilliant producer mind, incorporates sounds that would keep you humming along to his tunes and feeling assured that everything is going to be all right. Stand out singles from his latest record will be “Blessings” and “No Problem”.

Rappers used to look to music labels as the Holy Grail to making it in the scene. Sign a multi-million dollar deal, cash in and make records by selling of the rights to their songs. Chance The Rapper, on the other hand has done it his way, without selling away his creative rights to his songs and earns every single penny earned. He has definitely announced his arrival as a big player in the international music scene, and he is changing the hiphop game.