Teen Vogue/Petra Collins
Chance the Rapper Talks Challenging Kanye West
Chance the Rapper gets candid about Kanye West.
During an interview with Get Out director Jordan Peele for Teen Vogue, the Chicago MC, who grew up idolizing Yeezy, explained what it was like to work with his hero.
“Insanity,” he said. “He’s very big on multitasking. We’ll have a studio rented out, and he’ll bounce between rooms working on different songs, writing for a second or adding or subtracting productions. He’ll also put a bunch of people in a room that he thinks might have good ideas and try to see what they come up with. I remember one night we had a lady who produced the Lego film, a bunch of coding people, and a magician all in a room together trying to figure out how they could make him disappear onstage. I don’t know if he ever figured that shit out!”
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During this time, Chance — who appears on the magazine’s cover in his signature “3” hat and a shirt with a globe in flames — said he realized what it felt like to challenge the G.O.O.D. Music boss.
“Twenty-five percent of it is productive ideas flowing and then 75 percent is lectures from Kanye, 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,” he added. “I think it helped me find myself. 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.”
According to him, ‘Ye respected Chano for coming in with his own ideas. “I think it made him respect me to a certain extent in a different way,” he said. “When I stepped in there, I was Kanye’s prodigy, not necessarily his protégé because everyone else in the room had been working with him for years. Me, I was just a kid who’d already honed his own thing. I was there on my own dollar in this room with these juggernauts. He knew I am somebody who has some answers of my own.”
The Kanye and Chance collaborations led to songs like “Ultralight Beam” and “All We Got.” But it also allowed the Chi-town duo to begin work on their joint project Good Ass Job, as Chano revealed in September of last year. “We definitely have at least two songs I can say I know would definitely be on Good Ass Job,” Chance said at the time. “But to be back in the bunker and be at the spot and have that time to sit and make stuff every day is my dream.”