Chance on change The rapper talks about nonprofits, politics and his new journalism venture ‘Y
esterday, I left my wallet at home,” says Chancelor Bennett, aka Chance the Rapper. It's 9 p.m. on a fall evening at a Chicago recording studio, and he and his bandmates are packing up for the night. Four days from now, they will put on their biggest show of the year, at the United Center.
Bennett admits to feeling a little overwhelmed by having a new baby at home and a new tour to prepare for, and yesterday was proof. He had taken his 4-yearold daughter, Kensli, to Dunkin' for a rare treat before school. It was the first day all week that he had been able to do morning drop-off, and he'd wanted it to feel special. She picked out a sprinkle-topped chocolate doughnut, and he realized his pocket was empty.
“It's just a crazy letdown for a child,” he says, shaking his head, clearly still unable to forgive himself. Luckily, another customer was more than happy to pick up the tab — in exchange for a photo with Chance the Rapper.
All of 2019, in fact, has been rather frenzied for the 26-year-old, who made the unthinkable choice several years ago to eschew record deals and give his music away for free. He's garnered more than 1.5 billion streams on SoundCloud since 2012, and he's earned millions of dollars in revenue, through live shows, merchandise and endorsements. Last winter, he filmed six episodes of “Rhythm and Flow,” a Netflix talent competition that he hosts alongside Cardi B, T.I., and a slew of R&B royalty, which debuted in October.
In March, he celebrated his wedding to longtime girlfriend Kirsten Corley, a childhood behavioral therapist and Kensli's mother. In July, he released “The Big Day,” his first official full “album” (previously, he had released three “mixtapes” — the last of which nabbed three Grammys), which became a Billboard No. 2 hit. He made his feature-film debut in July with a cameo in “The Lion King” remake. In October, he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the second time, also serving as musical guest.
During all of this, he was also helping to run SocialWorks, the nonprofit he founded in 2016 that works to improve the lives of youth in Chicago through arts education, mental health services, clothing drives and more. Bennett has donated $2 million to SocialWorks' efforts, including $1 million to Chicago Public Schools and $1 million to Chicago mental health initiatives.
In late August, Corley gave birth to the couple's second daughter, Marli. It |
was this development that caused Bennett's already packed schedule to melt down — he felt he couldn't be a new father and go on tour at the same time. Eleven days after Marli was born, he announced, via Instagram (and a photo of himself with his girls), that he'd be postponing his heavily anticipated, 31stop North American tour until January.
Yet he kept his promise to Chicago. On Sept. 28, he performed for a crowd of tens of thousands, which featured his brother, Taylor, and Kanye West. The decibel level in the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls, reached levels that rivaled the Michael Jordan era. Chicago was simply another loved one whom Bennett couldn't disappoint. As he says himself on his 2018 track “I Might Need Security”: “I'm a sign to my city like the Bat-Signal.”
Bennett says that the urge to give back to the community didn't come upon him suddenly; he had always felt a certain “weight” of responsibility. “It's just how I was raised and my faith. It's the exact opposite of impostor syndrome. It's like, I walk outside sometimes and I feel like I have an abundance, and so I feel like I need to share it and serve in all the ways that I can find,” he says. “It just feels like that's who I am — and not in a way that's cocky (but just that) I'm supposed to share things.”
In addition to Bennett's $2 million, SocialWorks has been funded by $6 million from corporations that include Google, Lyft, and Champion (none of which sponsor Bennett directly), and the organization forges other kinds of affiliations when appropriate. Bennett is highly disciplined with his music — he makes decisive edits to the tracks during rehearsals to get them just right — but with SocialWorks, he's accommodating.
“I really like to help people, and I really like to feel happy,” he says with a slight smile. “So, in a certain context I'm the best at saying no, but in other cases, yeah, I'm not the ‘no' guy.”
There's more to come. For years, Bennett has teased the idea of running for office (in a 2015 track, he said: “They screaming Chano for mayor / I'm thinking maybe I should”), and after his donation to Chicago Public Schools in 2017, his fans started a petition for him to run.
“I don't know,” he says. Running for office is one thing, but when it comes to actual governing, “the decisions are always either reformist at the most, or maybe conservative, but they're never radical. And I feel like if I was in that position, I'd just lose my mind understanding how many things are wrong and being a part of that.” Not only does he agree with the sentiment that governing is like trying to turn a very big ship, but “the ship itself is flawed,” he says.
If Bennett's future isn't in politics, it could be in news. In the track “I Might Need Security,” released before his latest album, Bennett revealed that he had purchased the 15-year-old city blog The Chicagoist for an undisclosed amount in 2018.
To many, this was a shock. Not just that he'd purchased a news site, but that he was claiming he'd control its voice. “A lot of people . . . thought that I was saying, ‘I'm a tyrant.' ” That's not the case, he promises. The Chicagoist will relaunch as an app he's helping to design. It will be a utility, he says, focused less on crime reports or news from City Hall and more on food and culture.
“Just creating a city-level directory for everything, and making it more interactive, is my main goal,” he says. Once the platform is built, Bennett plans to bow out, giving an editor complete independence. But Bennett bristles at the way people reacted, pointing out how common it is for successful black entertainers to receive criticism when they try to change lanes (witness Jay-Z's purchase of the Brooklyn Nets or just about every business Oprah Winfrey has pursued).
Indeed, publishing may seem like a surprising turn for Chance the Rapper, but he's beginning to look at his career in the longer term and embrace the amorphous archetype of his own future.
“I made a lot of decisions around the ages of 17 and 18 that impacted me for the rest of my life.” He hit his milestones early. “I wanted to be on ‘SNL,' I wanted to go to the MTV Video Music Awards. I wanted to meet Kanye West,” he says. “But then it's like, life goes on, and you have to form new goals.”