Who is

my cousin Nicole? It's my cousin Nicole.

Okay, all right.

Your cousin Nicole.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shout-out to Nicole, Nicole Steen.

Shout-out D, my cousin D.

The cover art, by the way, has just become an iconic image.

I thought you'd never grow up I thought you'd never window closed Wendy got old.

I was too late, I was too late.

A shadow of what I once was.

Because we don't do the same drugs no more.

We don't do the same, do the same.

It's not the same anymore.

Yeah.

Uh, uh, but I think the...

There's always like certain things that are just, um, I guess paramount to...

They're like the simple ingredients to every Chance project.

Like I'm always, whether it's on Acid Rap or The Big Day, both of them I'm talking about family, I'm talking about my relationship with God, I'm talking about growing pains, I'm talking about Chicago.

Like, I think no matter what, I'm kinda talking about the same things, I just have different perspectives on them and different tools or resources to, uh, get those thoughts off, um, at different points in my life.

But it's always just very true and always there...

Mm.

We talked during that time.

But it had like J. Cole on it and Big Sean and Erykah Badu and like all these artists that, to your point, found me off of A$AP Rap that was down there.

But they thought it was going to be my first solo project, like official album.

And it wasn't.

So I feel like some people fell away a little bit but like you know rightfully so because maybe they just thought it was something different but then when it was time for me to make my new project I kind of had to go to other people and you know and not just those favors yeah I use those favors you know to a certain extent so I had to but but a lot of those people I also met during that time so like I did Confident with Justin Bieber.

He reached out to me to be on Confident, and I think that was like 2014.

That's so crazy.

Oh,

The listeners

... who grew up on it.

And I think this is like a opportunity for us to check in with each other and just like, you know, reach back to this nostalgic moment, but also, you know, sing about all the changes.

There's so much music and, and so many, you know, songs that I've created that, that speak to this, or songs that were released around the time of Coloring Book that speak to it.

And so we've just been like really carefully putting together a set that like speaks to all the major themes of the project.

Like, did you write that years ago?

I wrote, I wrote it actually, yeah, I wrote it three years before Coloring Book came out.

I wrote it right around the time I released Acid Rap when I was living in Atlanta.

But as you've been in rehearsals for the tour, I assume, do the lyrics hit you differently now than they did when you wrote them a decade ago?

Absolutely.

I mean, a lot of it is like, I think when I'm rapping on stage, that's my best talent, right? I'm a really, really good writer, and I'm an even better performer.

Recording music is not really my strong suit, but those two steps before and after it, writing it and actually getting on stage and doing it, those are my best.

And when I'm on stage, I kind of feel like... an actor in a movie that he wrote.

I get to perform it and speak it with all the fervor and action that I want to put into it, or dynamically make it softer.

And I get to reinterpret the lines for what they mean in that moment.

Tell me about that.

... that, how people look at it

...

I don't, I don't see it that...

I feel like it's important to have spaces where people could just share information like that.

Uh, every, every time there's, like, a advancement in thought in any of the artistic spaces or just spaces where we share stuff, like business is slowly catching up to it, or capitalism, however you wanna look at it.

There's always, like, a catch-up thing where they're trying to figure out ways to monetize this s- shared expression that's going on, and I feel like at one point, you know, not to say that it was healthy for artists, but like even Napster, like, got a lot of people on.

Right.

Like, I have to sign for myself.

But Coloring Book was another level as far as the impact, too, that it had on the industry.

It changed a lot of things and it made, I think, a lot of people have more belief in themselves as, like, individuals or individuals with teams, as opposed to thinking of it how, like, you gotta get signed and you gotta do it this way and you gotta do it that way.

And I feel like it's a beautiful thing that it was able to, to come together the way that it did, 'cause it was really a lot of, like, high-level artists.

Like-

[laughs]

Like, we just had the studio [laughs] running 24 hours and everybody sleeping on mattresses.

And my kid's mother and Kensli as a baby were, like, in the studio sleeping basically on the floor to be with me as I finished this project, and, like, that was, like, one of the most, like ...

I don't know, it just gave me a crazy feeling on both sides.

Very kind.

No, I've been coming here since I was young.

So what did you learn about that? I learned a lot.

I learned a lot.

I learned, you know, really about sticking to my guns.

You know, I had put out, you know, projects that were streaming only before that.

But a lot of artists did at the time.

What's the inspiration for this album title?

Did you even anticipate it was going to take you?

Not at all.

I would have had it out way sooner if I could.

I'm glad for the journey that it took because I got so much knowledge and I think also like my personal life changed over and over and over and over again.

I'll have a song that I'm working on and then I feel like it's done and then something happens and I'll be like, man, I knew I was supposed to talk about that.

Now I definitely got to talk about that.

And I'll go back and like add something or change something or pull something.

You know, one of the standout tracks is No More Old Men.

Yeah.

And so, you know Chicago's a super politically active space.

This is where Fred Hampton is, is organizing the Black Panthers, where Stokely Carmichael and, and all these people are, are gathering and having ...

So she was, like, really swept up into that stuff.

And so she would volunteer her kids for certain things.

And then Harold Washington, first Black mayor of Chicago, and, like, I think the first ...

It might have been the first Black mayor of, of a major, of a metropolitan city.

Future's like a-Was it, do you think that people are so wrapped up in, in your shit because they thought of you as like, he's the good, happy-go-go-lucky guy? I think-

I wonder what your life would be like if you didn't have the humbling tour in Europe in that moment and it was just all hype.

Yeah, I think it'd be way different.

But I think also like...

That's really the job of music post creating it, is performing it and presenting it to new crowds.

I used to go to this after school program at the library, it was like an open mic for poetry kids.

Vic Mensa was in the program, No Name, Saba, Mick Jenkins, Lucky, John Doe, a bunch of artists that made it big out of Chicago that are my age group.

We all were in the same program and there was this open mic every Thursday called Lyricist Loft.

How does it all fit together and what are you like as a leader?

Tell us about this project, uh, the title, I read about what that all means.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the project comes out tonight.

It's called Starline.

Uh, it's a beautiful, beautiful journey through these past six years, um, my travels to Accra, Ghana and West Africa, um, learning so much about my history, not, uh, you know, just here, but globally, all of the communities that we're connected to.

And it really shines through on the music, and I, uh, I named it Starline after Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line, which was a Black, uh, shipping and trading company started in the '20s that was owned and operated by Black folks in the US.

And they charted their own path.

Mm-hmm.