Chance the Rapper quotes

Chance the Rapper is an American musician, rapper, and songwriter known for his independent approach and unique style. His mixtape "Coloring Book" gained widespread acclaim and made history by winning a Grammy without a major label release. He continues to influence hip-hop with his socially conscious lyrics and community involvement. Here are 27 of his quotes:

Depending on the story that you're telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody's story.

Chance the Rapper

It wasn't until I left that I realised it's not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn't.

Chance the Rapper

Kanye took me from a kid who listened to music to a kid who lived music.

Chance the Rapper

Fame or perceived success - it all comes from groupthink.

Chance the Rapper

Music can kind of make you one-dimensional. People see what's on the surface and what you rap about, and they make their decision on who you are from there.

Chance the Rapper

For me, performing is the biggest part of being a rapper. There's nothing like the feeling of screaming your story to people.

Chance the Rapper

I'm light skinned, and I used to lean on that because that's something a lot of black people pride themselves on, and it's weird.

Chance the Rapper

I made the decision that I was going to make rap music in, like, fourth grade, so it's been something I was saying for a long time.

Chance the Rapper

Chance the Rapper' is many things. I'm constantly evolving.

Chance the Rapper

My favorite artist in the world is Michael Jackson, and he revolutionized the music video aspect of music.

Chance the Rapper

I don't really have control over my direct impression on people anymore. I used to be the person putting my CD in people's hands. But I'm kind of a mainstream artist now. Not by choice.

Chance the Rapper

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

Chance the Rapper

I don't know where people think I'm from, but I'm from Chicago. It's really just that. People wanna romanticize it and say, 'There's two sides to it, and it's a beautiful love/hate story of violence and music.' But it's really just a very scummy place where people don't have respect for other people's lives.

Chance the Rapper

I've never met Eminem; you don't meet Eminem. He has his own secret service.

Chance the Rapper

People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie!

Chance the Rapper

I dont really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.

Chance the Rapper

Jeremih has been my favorite artist to collab with.

Chance the Rapper

When you're a Chicago artist, to play Lollapalooza, that's not a normal thing. It's artists on a path to a certain place that do that. Chief Keef did it; Kids These Days did it; Cool Kids did it. And I'm the next Cool-Kids-Chief, if you will.

Chance the Rapper

The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?

Chance the Rapper

One of the first times I ever performed in front of a big group of people was at my kindergarten graduation. I did, like, a Michael Jackson impersonation as, like, a five year old. I had the suit and blazer, the glove and the fedora, and I just performed a whole Michael Jackson song. I'm sure it was 'Smooth Criminal.'

Chance the Rapper

My come-out record, '10 Day,' was the thing people were supposed to hear and figure out 'he's good' or 'he's not good.' 'Acid Rap' is the comeback tape, and it asks way bigger and better questions than, 'Is he good at rapping?'

Chance the Rapper

The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.

Chance the Rapper