The New Yorker Radio Hour - Chance the Rapper’s Art and Activism

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

My generation was taught that the civil-rights movement ended in the sixties, and that the Civil Rights Act put things as they should be,” Chance the Rapper tells David Remnick. “That belief was reinforced with the election of Barack Obama”—who loomed especially large to a boy from the South Side of Chicago. One of the biggest stars in hip-hop, Chance is also one of the most politically committed, and his art has always been closely tied to his commitment to lift up his community. Quite early in his career, he founded a nonprofit, SocialWorks, that invests in education in Chicago, and he has advocated for progressive candidates in city politics. But as politically aware as he is, Chance says that the protests following the death of George Floyd have given him a new consciousness of the struggle for racial justice. “This movement has shown us that we are very far from an equitable or an equal society. And that we will be the generation that fixes it.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Chance the rapper was 20 years old when he started getting attention for his mixtapes and at 27, he's one of the biggest stars in music. He's collaborated with Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, and he's hosted Saturday Night Live twice. Hey, this ain't no intro, it's the Andre. Hit that intro with Kanye and sound like Andre. Trying to turn my baby, mama. But Chance is also one of the most political musicians working today, and that's more or less in his blood.

He's the son of a political organizer from the south side of Chicago, who later worked in the Obama administration. Chance has helped to finance a progressive candidate for mayor, and he runs a nonprofit focusing on education. Recently, Chance was on the streets of, of Chicago among those protesting for racial justice. I think a lot of people look at me as a person that has money, that has influence, that has power, that doesn't deal with a lot of issues.

But I still have PTSD from my run is where officers. I've had knees in my back. Wow. You know what I'm saying? I talked with Chance the rapper earlier this month. Tell me a little bit about what your life has been like for the last couple of weeks. He's past several weeks, actually. I would say the past couple of weeks have been, what's a good word for it, jarring.

It's been like I think everybody's kind of probably been struggling with the information that they're gaining and finding out how we've all been either affected by or complicit in the white male patriarchy that this nation is built on. and our society is built on. And so for me, it's been a big learning experience, and I've been trying to utilize it as that. And yeah, it's been crazy, I guess is the shortest answer. As a black man, though, what have you learned? It's obvious that so many white people have, if they're not lying about it, being awakened to some degree, I hope, to so many things.

And what is it that you didn't know? So many things. I guess one would be starting to understand within my faith the separation of the black church from white evangelism. And how different the views on equality, kindness, compassion, and neighborly love, and how intentional some white evangelists are about either not speaking on white supremacy and the kind of. and even within the church, but also are combative when it's addressed. You know, I was raising the black church, so I don't have too many memories of what it's like going to a church that doesn't speak on racism, that doesn't speak of God as liberating God

and as a God of justice. In this time, I've been reading a little bit more. I've been reading. James Cohn, who was a theologist that was kind of one of the pioneers. Black Liberation Theology. And in my first read, I didn't think that he was saying anything that was too outlandish. When I went out and, you know, just amongst my friends or even on the internet, kind of spoke on things that I was learning from it. The combativeness that it was met with was just surprising for me.

Understanding just the difference in the support and attention. And I want to make sure that I say rightfully so, the amount of attention that the violence that black males are met with in the country is way more highlighted than the injustices that black women have had to deal with, even in the recent weeks. And it's just, it's a lot of, like, just learning experiences. Well, you mentioned James Cohn, the great theologian and scholar who wrote a terrific book about the ways that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King converge, not diverge, but converge. And we now have a movement Black Lives Matter that's not led by a Malcolm X or Martin Luther King.

In fact, it's very distinctly and deliberately leaderless. What's your experience of a movement that's quite different than the one of your parents and grandparents? I don't see, I think I guess the best answer is that I don't see a difference between the two movements. They're both fighting for the exact same things. I feel like a lot of us were taught my age group. I'm 27. I just turned 27 in April. And my generation was taught that the civil rights movement ended in the 60s.

And that the Civil Rights Act kind of put things as they should be. And if anything, that belief was reinforced with the election of Barack Obama. and we kind of just believe that the injustices of America were a thing of the past. And I think what this movement has shown us and teaches is that we're very far from an equitable or equal society and that we will be the generation that fixes it. You in a sense grew up into this. Your father worked for Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, and also for a, at that time, little known Illinois State Senator and then Senator named Barack Obama. Yeah. I wonder how you thought about the importance of the Obama presidency then, and maybe it's changed.

Yeah, I mean, well, for one, like you said, when I first met him, he wasn't president. I mean, he wasn't even a senator. He had just lost an election for Congress. And I just thought he was the coolest dude in the world just because, and I still think he's just an incredibly wise and smooth dude. That's just who he is. Like in every sentence, like, that's just how he is. You know, I think I'm instinctively protective about black men, especially once that I know. and know the character of. And I don't think I really was ever critical of the progress of Black America during his presidency.

Probably because, one, I was a fucking kid. I was in high school. That's fair. But I think what I really learned after, you know, in retrospect, is that systemic racism can get to you in any kind of. class. And I think Barack, regardless of how popular he became or how well-spoken he was, I think he was stifled. And I think... Are you critical of him at all? I think I am. I just don't think I am in white spaces. I think like he's, you know, I feel like it's always a conversation that has to be looked at with nuance. And yeah,

I think there's definitely things that he could have done better. I think there's things that he could do better now in terms of the planning for his library in Chicago, how it has already caused displacement of some black folks that live out south. They're not down to do a community benefits agreement to get jobs for people that live there in the space. I think that's like a thing with being black is like you have to look out for each other. And at a certain point, I think sometimes that weighs on people because we're still just individuals. What do you think now about how Lori Lightfoot, the pretty new mayor of Chicago, has been responding to the protest. You didn't support her initially. First, you backed a progressive candidate named Amar Anya,

and she dropped out of the race. And then you backed Tony Preckwinkle, who was, as I remember, was a kind of opponent of Barack Obama back in the day. They had a kind of a prickly relationship, as I remember. What were you looking for in a Chicago mayor? And how has Lori Lightfoot come through or not in your view? I mean, the story of how I ended up working with Amara Enya is so layered and crazy. But I'll say in short, I don't think I ever told anybody this, but I found out about Amara Enya through Kanye West. Kanye called me right before he was about to move back to Chicago.

And he told me that he was thinking about running from mayor of Chicago. and that Kanye was thinking about running for mayor yeah would you have gotten behind Kanye West running for for mayor yeah I don't think so to be honest to me honest I don't think so because at the time I think our views were a little bit divergent yeah at the time yeah I don't I don't think so but I think both of us grew a lot since then But he called me back the next day and said he could not run for mayor because you have to live in the state of Illinois for a certain amount of time. He was like, I'm looking into other people. Have you ever heard of Amara Inya? Amara, she had some extremely progressive, almost radical ideas about governing Chicago.

And that included defunding police. It included co-op, grocery stores and gas stations, getting tax breaks. And I met with her and I just fell in love with her ideas. And I completely and totally put everything I could into backing her campaign. And that shit didn't work out. She, you know, the Chicago politics game is a dirty game. and she ended up having to drop out. And basically, I chose Tony because at the time, I believed that because of Lori's history and law enforcement,

I didn't really believe that she could govern a city with so many policemen misconduct records and, you know, corruption all around. Well, how do you think she's performed through this crisis in the last several weeks? You know, it's like, and I hate going back to this, but it's such a nuanced thing, man. Like, she's a black woman that is governing the third largest city in America and has a tremendous amount of pressure and a tremendous amount of mistakes to correct from her predecessors in. But with respect, Chance, I understand what you're saying, but with respect, really, isn't, you know, constructive criticism from constituents like yourself or anybody else who's engaged the best way to go? whether it's in front of a white interviewer or a black interviewer in white spaces or otherwise. I totally respect whatever decision you make, of course, but I've just...

Just with respect to what you're saying, the way that publications work is that sentences out of this are going to become the headline and not necessarily the context or what the entire conversation surrounding it is. I will say that I am sadden that Chicago is one of the few recent cities that did, decide to end the police contract with the public schools. You know, saddened that she decided not to make Juneteenth a paid holiday. I'm saddened that I think over 70% of the arrests last year in the city were black folks. But she's making decisions that align with what she's represented for a long time. You know, I wish that she saw it the same way that I do, but I don't necessarily, I don't want to bash her and I don't want to take an opportunity to say, you know, she's doing a shitty job or we need to, you know, she needs to, you know, I just, I've seen.

I think you're giving her a nuanced critique. I mean, I think that's completely fair. Yeah. Look, I've had really, really bad mayors in Chicago. Like, really bad. I've noticed. I've noticed. Chance the rapper. Our conversation can. continues in a moment. Now, I want to ask you about what you can do as an artist. I was thinking about your activism in this moment, and it got me thinking about your track from 2018, I might need security. We could spend a lot of time unpacking that song in about four minutes, though. You sound off about the former mayor, Rahm Emanuel. You talk about Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, the tabloid, and about cranes and many other things.

The track starts with something really interesting, and the audience is going to absolutely love me for reading these, not having you read it, but I ain't know... I ain't no activist. I'm the protagonist. Yeah, I ain't no activist. I'm the protagonist.

I don't co-captain it. I fly solo like one cup in the cabinet. Right. So are you an activist, or are you something different than that as an artist? Man, I think when I said that, I think I am an activist at this point. I think that we should all be activist.

I think that we should all be active in the dismantling of white supremacy and in creating a real heaven on earth. But I think how I was perceiving it at the time was that an activist was a person that was absolute in their intentions and in their actions, and that they were streamlined in their pursuit of justice and equality. that they couldn't really be pushed left or right. And that I as the protagonist of my story will have missteps and faulty judgment in places. And I think it goes hand in hand with being the good guy. There's always the fall in the hero's journey

where you have to recalculate. Chance, one of the steps on your journey early in your career was to establish a nonprofit called social works focused on education in many forms. It's donated, you said, almost $7 million to Chicago public schools. And one of the first programs that social works put together, and it's still going on, was called Open Mic. It gives any young kid who wants it three minutes of stage time to do whatever they want. So what's been the result? What's exciting to you about that? So it was the first program because it was basically, I knew I wanted to rap since I was.

was in fifth grade when I first got my Kanye West album. But I didn't know what steps it took to become that or how to perform or galvanize an audience or, you know, create a buzz until I started going to this open mic night that they had at the library when I was in high school. I was put on by this guy named Brother Mike Hawkins, who was an activist and poet in Chicago. And he took a bunch of...

bunch of kids, including me and No Name and Vic Mensa and Saba and Nico Saganz, all these dope artists that of my contemporaries, we all kind of grew up together going to this library program and the program itself had an open mic night every Wednesday and like 200 plus kids would file in. And I would go there. I was really good. I'm really good at performing now, but I've always been pretty good at performing. And they had a song that I actually released on my first mixtape called Brain Cells, about smoking weed, you know, regular high school content. And they loved it.

I performed it probably like six weeks in a row. Then one week I tried a new piece and I couldn't remember the lyrics to and I've loved it. And so the next week I came back and I performed brain cells again. And the crowd went wild. And afterwards, Brother Mike pulled me to the side and he said, if you perform that song next week, I'm not letting you perform it anymore. I thought at first it was about the content, but what he told me and what really stuck with me

was I wasn't growing as an artist performing the same songs. I was living within this comfort zone. So you've got to take a chance. You've got to push yourself. Yeah. You've got to learn something new. You can't come in there and try and be the best. You've got to come in there and become better.

And so, yeah. Now, 10 years later, with so much on your plate, the expectations for you, whether it has to do with nonprofits or the press or all the many aspects of your life, how much time do you carve out for yourself to write new music? So I just recently got back into the studio mode. I actually went crazy last night, and it's been awesome.

For a long time, my heart wasn't telling me to go to the studio and record. This is prior to the death of George Floyd. This is prior to the pandemic. didn't really feel like I had much to say. Like the second week after like shut down and, you know, quarantine, I had a ton of Zoom calls, which I'm sure everybody did. And I don't know if everybody had the same feeling, but I started feeling like these calls don't fucking matter.

Like the world is ending. And you guys want to talk to me about possible tour dates at the end of the year? Like, fuck that. like I need to be praying. You know what I'm saying? You still feel that way? I still feel like I need to pray, but I also feel like faith without works is dead.

So I feel like I also need to put my body into it and my capital into it and my name into it and my just intention behind it all. And so like I want to make music, but I don't want to force myself to make music. I like making music when I'm inspired. You're talking about a lot of, of things at once, obviously, but one thing that's, we're heading toward it is an election in

November. How much hope do you invest in somebody like Joe Biden? Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's like, like a fork in the road, like a black hole. I feel like I could like change the course of history right now with a certain answer. I just feel like, I'm going to just be honest. I don't think that Joe Biden will win in November. I felt like Trump was going to have two terms since the beginning of his first term. And even though his numbers are bad now, you're- weren't his numbers bad the first time he got elected? I knew he's going to get elected the first time. But nevertheless, so when you're saying that Trump will win, are you saying this because you don't want to tempt fate or you're convinced that he will win? I'm convinced that he will. I'm convinced

that he will win. I think there's so many different things. Like, there's so many different. It's not like any one reason, you know. It's not because he's some super genius, and it's not because America is overwhelmingly racist, and it's not because Joe Biden's the worst candidate that the DNC could have picked.

It's a lot of reasons all combined, I think. But I think a big part of it is we don't feel represented as the folks who are the most disenfranchised, I just feel like we're not represented by the DNC, and we haven't been for a while. And I think we get shamed in a voting for people sometimes by the DNC. And it's, and I think that like the people that are mad on that share a lot of the views that I have, have, don't have a choice. in the two people being presented to us, if that makes sense. Chance, I thank you so much, and I hope we'll meet when there's a normal time.

I hope so, too, man. It was awesome. Chance, the rapper. I spoke to him from his home in Chicago, and by the way, we talked shortly before Kanye West announced that once again, he's running for precedent. And I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for. for today. Hope you enjoyed the program, and I hope you'll join us next time. I don't make songs for free. I make them for freedom. Don't believe in kings, believe in the kingdom. Chisel me into stone prayer, whistle me into song air, dying laughing with crillings saying something about blonde hair. Jesus' black life ain't matter. I know I talk to his daddy. Say you

the man of the house now. Look out for your family. He has ordered my steps, gave me a sword with The New Yorker Trouperts in case I get shortness of breath. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garvis of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Rianan and Corby, Cala Leah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam,

Morgan Flannery, Meng Fei-Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.