00:00This is Rolling Stone. We're here at Lollapalooza with...
00:03Chance the Rapper!
00:10How are we doing? It's great to see you.
00:11Pretty good. Good to see you.
00:12You just caught Doji's set, The Last of It.
00:15Insane.
00:15Tell me a little bit about how that was.
00:17It was incredible. She has a really good eye for set pieces and for choreo,
00:24because I think she comes from a musical theater and dance background.
00:27The really cool thing that I've seen, I've seen people do this move before.
00:30They left stage, you know, and they brought the IMAG cameras with them.
00:33So we're still watching what she did when she left stage.
00:35Yeah, I love that, yeah.
00:36And she takes a car off the lot to the riverfront right next to Lollapalooza, where the lake is.
00:42And I'm talking about riverfront, to the lakefront.
00:44And fucking started twerking on a car that was painted and said,
00:49Doji Tour. So now I know Doji's going to go on tour. It was low-key incredible.
00:52Like a week ago, Houston and some of my friends that do Lollap asked me to come
00:59and do a surprise set, a 15-minute set, which I've never done.
01:02I've played this festival a lot of times.
01:05Chicagoans know that. Maybe everybody doesn't know that.
01:06But I've headlined quite a few times.
01:09And then I've also, I have a knack for coming out during people's set, people call me.
01:12And so it's like a tradition.
01:14And they were like, we should formalize it.
01:16You got the album coming out.
01:17You should come out and do like a, you know, instead of coming out and doing one song,
01:20you can come out and do like however many you want, 15 minutes.
01:22But it was a lot, a lot of people.
01:23I'm sure.
01:24It was insane.
01:24Yeah.
01:25You're a Chicago legend.
01:26Yeah.
01:26Well, thank you.
01:27Yeah, you're welcome.
01:29Speaking of the new album you just announced,
01:32tell me a little bit about how that came together.
01:33Maybe the timeline in which it was written and produced.
01:36It's hard to say exactly when I started on it,
01:38because it was a project that takes a lot of pieces from things that I wanted to do
01:45earlier in my career in terms of like collaborating with visual artists in terms of creating a visual
01:54language in terms of like film or just how my fans get to hear and see my words.
02:03All of those things I started incorporating around 2021 was when I got into it.
02:07And over time, some of the things that I learned and things I experienced like going to Ghana,
02:14you know, reconnecting with a lot of my family, you know, going through relationship changes,
02:20getting divorced, you know, it's a lot of things that happened in between my last project and this
02:29day because it was six years ago throughout this whole process.
02:32I've also learned ways of being more in touch with my fans. So I've just invited secretly like
02:39fans and like different cities to come out and listen to the works as it went on.
02:43And I think all that time being with them really informed the project also.
02:48You spoke a little bit about going through a lot of personal transformation very publicly.
02:54I'm curious, I mean, you've gone from being a young student to a father,
02:58to being someone very open about your faith.
03:00How has sort of the public perception of those changes affected the way that you write music?
03:05That's a good question. As an artist, you're you're creating for others in a sense, like
03:12we can create for ourselves and sing in the shower.
03:15But part of what makes you an artist is publishing your work across any medium is like putting your stuff
03:20out there. I kind of came from the open mic world where it was like since high school,
03:25every week I was trying to come up with new pieces to interact with the same community of
03:30fans that I built as a fucking 15 year old. I think as I've grown, I have learned more about like
03:37how much you should let in and how much you should let the amount of weight or
03:44credence that you give to outsiders opinions. But I think it will always be a part of the works because
03:50like I do care. I do like just as much as like, you know, somebody's having a negative opinion can
03:56affect you. It's also like the love that I've received or like the things that people say sometimes
04:01to me that's really specifically dealing with like something that I said and published is like it's
04:07unmatched feeling, you know, so you got to care what people say.
04:10Yeah. And it has been six years since your last formal body of work has come out. How about your
04:16personal perception of yourself? What has changed in that time for you?
04:20That's a good question, too. I guess a lot has been six years. I think my perception of myself changes
04:26a lot every hour. You know what I mean? And I think that's OK, because I think like one of my favorite quotes
04:33I got, Dave Chappelle told me that, you know, albums and he was talking about in the context of specials
04:40for comedians, specials, comedy albums, rap albums. They're like yearbook photos. And so it's like
04:47it's not the full story of who you are. It's just who you are in that moment. And it's important to
04:52take that snapshot and put it out there so that you have documentation of what that moment felt like.
04:57And I think, you know, throughout this process, it's been a very cyclical thing of like, you know,
05:04how I felt. But today, I feel very good. I'm glad to hear it. How much were you thinking
05:11about legacy while creating this specific album, Starlin? I think to a certain extent, it creeps in,
05:19just like with every project. I think no artist sits down and is like, I hope, you know, I want to
05:25I just want to write something that's OK. I don't want it to be too good. For sure.
05:27You know, so every time there's this pressure of like, does this fully cover the topic that I'm
05:33trying to talk about? You know, does it cover all the things that I like in music? Does it cover all
05:37the things other people want in music? Right. That's important to a certain extent. But like,
05:42there's a lot of self discovery in the album, a lot of
05:48critique and commentary on where we are socially and and a lot of history in it. So just a couple ranks
05:56higher than like my legacy. I think I was thinking a lot about how this can affect or inform, you know,
06:04or empower people. That's really cool. So you just released The Single Tree featuring Lil Wayne.
06:11Tell me a little bit about that collaboration. It's a song that samples NDRE video.
06:17NDRE is like, like a large part of my musical DNA. And, and probably a lot of artists musical DNA,
06:25just like a lot of the samples on the album. It comes from, like, the things that I grew up
06:31that I got from my mother. My mom was very, very musical, very like smart, like, just like,
06:37cool person. So a lot of my like, introduction to hip hop or R&B came from just riding with my
06:44moms. And so that song was always something that I wanted to flip and figure out a way to like,
06:48do the right way. Yeah. Um, and when it came to me, uh, in this project, I knew that I wanted to
06:56dedicate it to my mother. And within the context of the album, it's really like
07:03a really, really important song, because obviously on surface is a weed song, but it's really
07:09about the inequities in the cannabis industry and kind of using that as a metaphor overall for the
07:15inequities and agriculture at large. And black folks don't really own any like means of, of,
07:29of like production and a lot of industries, but black farmers have always had it the toughest in
07:34America. That's immediately linked to the fact that we used to be slaves and then we were share
07:40croppers. And by the time that we got to be legally farm owners, uh, they had already put a lot of
07:48systems in place to make it harder for us to get government loans, make it harder for us to,
07:53to get places in market. And my family is from North Carolina. So we know a lot about agriculture
07:58and used to be sharecroppers. And so, uh, that song was dedicated to pilot mountain where my family is
08:05from, it was dedicated to my mother. We and hip hop are very intertwined, right? Yeah. But the way that
08:10we associate, especially in movies, rappers and weed is with a negative connotation. And, and it's kind of
08:19like the same way that, you know, it's in jail while legal cannabis is a billion dollar industry.
08:28The best thing I can say is, is it's cool when you do it, it's a problem when I do it. Right.
08:32You know what I'm saying? Right. And I think that's the song for me was like a very expressive,
08:39very like uncensored, but still fun and still inclusive, like just record about my love for,
08:47for the dope. Yeah. And even sound wise, like it carries a sense of defiance, but it's also quite
08:52bouncy. Um, I'm wondering if the sound that we're hearing in this first single is something that we
08:57can expect throughout the album or is it, are we going to be surprised with the track list?
09:02I think you guys will be surprised in terms of like production is very wide range. And like all
09:07my projects, like, I don't think there's any project where there's a lot of beats that you could say
09:11sound the same stylistically. I think I would say lyrically, there's a lot of the motifs from the
09:17album are in that song. So like, uh, fire or purging through fire, reclamation, um, resistance,
09:26uh, you know, all of that also being kind of coded and not being super in your face and still being
09:32fun. I think it's a good preview of, I think lyrically or content wise, what the album feels
09:37like. Last question I want to ask you is obviously we're in Chicago, your hometown,
09:42curious how Chicago itself specifically shaped the writing of this album. That's a good question. Uh,
09:50Chicago is like, I think just an intrinsic thing. Like, and I think when I made acid rap,
09:59I was very, very focused on including, uh, and promoting or platform at different parts of Chicago
10:08music historically. So there's, you know, uh, gospel, a little bit of blues and jazz samples.
10:15There's the Kanye intro sample. There's the, you know, the common samples. There's so many different
10:21parts of it, little juke sections and shit. Like I was very intent on like showing the parts of Chicago
10:27that I didn't see represented now. And I think this one has like, you know, there's some juke drums
10:33on speed of light towards the end, but it's not as like, you know, intentionally. And then there's
10:40obviously a bunch of Chicago artists on it too. But I would say it's a little bit more,
10:44I think a little wider. There's a lot of other regional sounds that, you know, through my travels,
10:49I spent a lot of time in New Orleans. I spent a lot of time in DC, spent a lot of time in New York,
10:53a lot of time in Ghana and Jamaica. Um, I don't know if I already said Atlanta,
10:57but I love Atlanta and Houston. And so I think the sounds production wise, if they're not,
11:05you know, super experimental, they're kind of like, uh, based in some sort of like
11:14black music that was influential to me that through childhood or through my travels,
11:18this is actually the hour right here. You saw it here. Yeah. Folks. This is actually the first
11:23NFC CD. So it's, it's got this technology in it where if you're, uh, if you got the CD on you
11:31and you don't got a CD player, you could just tap your phone to the CD and it'll Bluetooth it.
11:38So try and like, you know what I'm saying? Scan it until you find the NFC. Let's see. There you go.
11:43And then you tap that, tap that up. I'll try not to memorize your password. It's okay. And then,
11:51yeah, and just scroll down. It's only right up. It's eight bucks. You feel me? And then now,
11:57once this comes to you, you can just leave it in the car and whenever you want to play,
11:59you can just tap. Love that. Very cool. Very cool. Thank you, man.
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