Chance the Rapper

Chance the Rapper Artistfacts

  • April 16, 1993
  • Chancelor Bennett, better known as Chance the Rapper, grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of West Chatham in Chicago's South Side. He's one of the most successful independent artists in history, rising to great heights without backing from a label.
  • He's usually seen wearing a baseball cap. After releasing Coloring Book in 2016, he started wearing hats with the number 3 because it's his third mixtape (he's wearing a 3 hat on the cover). This was a shrewd more for marketing and merchandising - the 3 hat became his signature and a very popular piece of merch.
  • His father Ken Williams-Benne served as an aide to former Chicago mayor Harold Washington and then worked for Barack Obama, who was a senator at the time. Chance himself interned for Barack Obama's during his presidential campaign. He recalled to The Chicago Reader: "I was kind of, 'I'm not just gonna do a one-party type thing,' but then I got to thinkin' about it. I mean, I really value our president because I know him personally, he's just like, literally, a genuine nice guy."

    "But beyond just the election itself, I've thought about the value of my family and my dad, cause a lot of people would've lost their jobs - that's obvious, once that administration was gone. So like, just valuing my dad to a certain extent I had to do something for him."
  • Chance was originally more into soul and jazz. The first hip-hop album that he ever purchased and listened to was fellow Chicago native Kanye West's 2004 debut LP The College Dropout.
  • His first full-length project, the 2012 mixtape 10 Day, was conceived while he was serving out a 10-day suspension from school for possessing marijuana on campus - hence the name. It made the rounds as a free download and earned him recognition in the Chicago scene.
  • Chance followed 10 Day in 2013 with another free mixtape called Acid Rap, which he made available on Soundcloud as well. It wasn't available for purchase but was downloaded over a million times, raising his profile considerably. He wasn't making any money directly from his music but was selling lots of tickets to his shows and moving plenty of merch. He was also starting to get sponsorships around this time, which became a major source of his revenue.
  • Chance made his first appearance on the pop charts in 2013 by contributing featured raps to Justin Bieber's final Music Mondays single "Confident."
  • The mainstream press took notice of Chance in 2013. Rolling Stone named him the year's "Hot MC" and put Acid Rap at #5 on their Best Hip-Hop Albums Of 2013 list. Spin magazine named him Rapper of the Year.
  • Chance throws his weight into making Chicago a better place. In May 2014 he and his father promoted the #SaveChicago campaign to help reduce homicides in the city; this earned him Chicago's "Outstanding Youth of the Year Award" from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In 2017, he announced a $1 million donation to Chicago schools.
  • Chance The Rapper is also lead vocalist for the band The Social Experiment. They began as his backup band on his 2013 Social Experiment tour.
  • He made history as the first unsigned artist to perform on Saturday Night Live when he was the musical guest on the December 12, 2015 episode.
  • Coloring Book was available exclusively on Apple Music the first two weeks it was released as part of a $500,000 deal Chance cut with the streaming service.
  • Chance's daughter, Kinsley, was born with a frightening condition and the health scare made the Chicago musician turn to God. "I think it was the baby that, you know, brought my faith back," he told GQ.

    "My daughter, when she was still in utero, she had, they call it atrial flutters," he explained. "It's kind of an irregular heartbeat. But when you're in utero, it's real hard to detect and also to treat. Sometimes you have to get a C-section so they can operate on the baby."

    "And it made my pray a whole lot, you know, and need a lot of angels and just see s--t in a very, like, direct way," Chance continued. "God bless everything, it worked out well."
  • He won Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards in 2017, beating out The Chainsmokers and Kelsea Ballerini.
  • Chance The Rapper first saw Kirsten Corley when he was nine years old. He was at a Christmas party for his mom's real estate company when he was lovestruck by the young Kirsten, who did a flawlessly choreographed lip-synch performance of a Destiny's Child song with two friends. Though he was too shy to introduce himself, Chance knew she was the girl he as going to marry.

    Chance and Kirsten began dating in 2013 and they welcomed their daughter Kensli two years later. They formally got married at The Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, California on March 9, 2019, two months after taking part in a civil ceremony in Chicago, Illinois.
  • He called himself "Chano" before taking the name Chance The Rapper. That stage name has an uneventful origin; it comes from his Twitter handle @chancetherapper.
  • Dionne Warwick seems confused by Chance's moniker. "Hi, Chance the Rapper," she tweeted him in 2020. "If you are very obviously a rapper why did you put it in your stage name? I cannot stop thinking about this."

    "I am now Dionne the Singer," she added.

    Chance didn't take offense at the legendary singer questioning the obviousness of his rap alias: "Sorry I'm still freaking out that you know who I am. This is amazing!" before adding: "I will be whatever you wanna call me Ms Warwick. God bless you."
  • His first three mixtapes weren't available on vinyl until 2019, when he issued the physical copies alongside the release of his first full-length album, The Big Day.

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