-My first guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated
and three-time Grammy-winning artist.
He's also the founder of the non-profit SocialWorks.
Here is Chance the Rapper. Yeah!
That's what I'm talking about. -Hey.
-You look good, bud. You look good. I missed you, man.
-Oh, thanks, man. You look good too.
-I appreciate it. -It's awesome to be back
with you. -Where are you calling us from?
Looks like you're in a recording studio?
-Yeah, I'm at the studio, just chilling.
-Is this the studio where you recorded all your stuff or no?
-Yeah, this is CRC in Chicago.
This is where I have been recording here since 2014.
I made "Coloring Book" here. Most of my projects,
my Christmas projects, "Surf" this is the spot yeah.
-When you first started out, how did you afford studio time?
-I was in high school when I found this after school program.
Or it found me, kinda. I was walking down the street.
And this guy came out and told me about a free studio
inside the library.
And I came in and checked it out and it was a really cool
after school learning center called Umedia,
and the guy who brought me in was called Brother Mike.
He became my mentor.
A lot of kids in Chicago, a lot of people --
well, they're adults now.
but a lot of the people that I work with
all came out of that same program.
Yeah, they had a free studio. So I just -- yeah, right.
-Have you always gone by Chance the Rapper?
-No. So, well, it was --
It actually, when I was in high school,
I used to go by Chano. It was a terrible name.
And when Twitter first game out,
this girl that was a friend of mine,
made a twitter for me and made me Chance the Rapper
and I was like, okay, I will just go with that.
-No way, I love hearing that. -Yeah.
-Do you remember when you wrote your first rap?
-Well, when I first started out, I started making poetry first.
Really I first started as a dancer, right?
And then fourth grade, we did this thing called
The Young Author's Project.
But we did it every year, and this year,
I decided to do a book of poems,
and I liked it and I had never written poetry before.
But I just -- out of nowhere, I just decided to start doing it,
and then soon after that I fell in love with hip-hop.
And then I started recording and when I was probably 14,
My cousin had his own studio that I got to go to
once or twice and I recorded two songs there.
And I just always loved it and always was like,
this is going to be my thing.
But the first rap I wrote was probably -- I know what it was.
It was a song called the Black Definition.
And I do not want to rap it right now.
But yeah I remember, I've been writing songs for a long time,
since I was a kid. -Yeah, was everyone supportive
of you growing up, wanting to be a rapper?
-Uh, I don't know if they were supportive of it.
But it was understand.
It was a thing that people knew that I rapped.
Like, since I was a kid. And that was just a thing
I was into and I moved my hands and stuff.
I don't know. It was weird. Yeah, my dad actually really --
right when I got out of high school, we kind of --
you know, as parents do when their kids graduate
from high school and they don't go to college or get a job,
it's kind of like a friction thing.
-Sure. -Yeah, but after we separated
for a while, he came -- we got back together
and he really helped, you know, just guide me in terms of
the amount of work and focus that I needed to work on it
from a business side.
And he still is doing that to this day.
But yeah, the beginning, my dad did not want me to be a rapper.
-It's like telling your parents you want to be a comedian.
They're like, no. Anything but that.
No, you can't do that. But -- looking at you now, man.
You have been crushing it.
I got to say, you never stopped working
since I first was introduced to you.
You have a top-ten song with Justin Bieber.
You have done three virtual concerts.
The virtual concert, this is amazing.
It's cool that you're doing these things.
And thank you for doing these things.
-Thank you, man. -You did one for --
you said the mix was just for car speakers.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like -- I don't know.
I have been taking this virtual concert thing really seriously.
I put a lot of time into -- not just writing the story
Around it or shooting it but also in the mix.
Just in the audio, spending days and days
trying to make it sound, you know, robust
And like a studio album versus a big room or something.
And so we mixed the last one for the ride there,
the one that's in the car. Yeah, it's a mix, to be --
you know, listened to in the car.
It sounds good. Try it. -I love that, man.
That's taking it to the next level.
No I want it to sound great if you're in a car.
This is perfect for this.
I want to talk about some of the other cool things you're doing,
in addition to being a talented artist,
you're also a very good activist.
You were named to billboard's 2020 R&B Hip-Hop Power Players,
in the year of activism, congratulations on that.
Your organization, SocialWorks recently launched its
Warmest Winter initiative. What is that?
-Yeah, so Warmest Winter is actually something we have been
doing for, this is I think our fifth year,
and it's basically a series of events
that start around November, around right now,
and go through the beginning of March.
And it's just a series of events and initiatives that we do
that target the homeless and sometimes specifically
the homeless youth in Chicago.
And it's -- you know, we do warming centers.
There is always a big thing, which we're pivoting this year,
called the Night at the Museum.
Where we have, like a huge -- we take over the
Museum of Science and Industry, and this year specifically,
we added a couple events and kind of pivoted away from
some of the -- you know, big person events.
And we're doing actually a Turkey give away.
I think it's next weekend, and yeah,
we have a bunch of different spots around the city
that we're starting to do -- we've actually never taken
part in the Turkey giveaways.
We do a lot of other kind of events.
But we're trying to like start it to it early
and just give back, because of the climate
with the pandemic and everything.
-Dude, never stop, man. I think it's so cool.
You always, since day once, you always give back.
The Turkey give away, if you want information on that go to
socialworkschi.org.
It is very, very cool what you're doing. I love that.
Give away those Turkeys. -Thanks, man.