“Chance the Rapper Lectures at Harvard”
On April 30th, Harvard University's Hiphop Archive & Research Institute welcomed Chance the Rapper for a little Q&A with students. During this Q&A session, Chance gave insight on everything from the formula behind Jay-Z’s Tidal streaming app and how it felt to meet Kanye West for the first time, to the popular violent and exploitative content in today’s music and police brutality:
On Jay Z's Tidal and other streaming services:
"So the Tidal formula is awesome if it actually works out. It's a direct fan-to-artist or fan-to-supplier type of connection, but it's not really working that way yet. Everybody that was on the stagewas like signed to a label and shit. At the end of the day, all these streaming services are whack as fuck."
On today’s musical content:
I've been working on lot music since I dropped Acid Rap two years ago. I wrote this whole verse, a very disrespectful verse for [J.] Cole's use or for my use. A little less than a week later I was at my friend Peter's house working on another record, and this record is called "Goofy." The hook is this bitch a goofy over and over and over. It's super, it's terrible, but it's a very catchy song. A few days after I wrote that record and recorded a scratch for it, I recorded another song called "Regular" for the Surfproject. I don't know where this came from, where this angst was coming from, where this disassociation with women or with black women specifically—because that's my closer relationship to women—was coming from, but in a short period of time I was writing a lot of records that just seem to have just a lot of ill will. I premiered one of the records on the radio and it wasn't until I heard that record played back after somebody ripped it that I realized I couldn't associate with it. I listened back to these other two records and I couldn't really associate with either of them. I just had this just short but important moment of reflection. I felt really responsible so I dug this deep hole and I threw "This Bitch Is Goofy" in there. "Regulars" is still going to be on Surf. That one's just too good. That's my roundabout answer to why I still use the word 'bitch.'"
On police brutality and Baltimore:
"I think it's really most important for everybody to be informed, to be connected to the situation. I always say like there's an act—when to be a hand or to be a voice. You gotta know when your Twitter is stronger or your body actually marches. Sometimes it's either/or, you know? But I don't want to dance around saying this shit is wrong. I think we all know that. It's very hard to watch it happening on a loop."
On meeting Kanye West:
"Every time he speaks, it's all on purpose. I'm very selective about words when I'm writing music, but when I'm just talking, I might say some outlandish shit. Everything he says is on purpose and very calculated, and he feels exactly how he feels. I played like seven shows with him last year but didn't meet him at any of the shows. That shit gets locked down after the show because he's married to the president or something. This one time, Jaden Smith hooked me up and introduced me to Kanye. He's never speaking for someone else. He's just giving you his straight up ideas and his feelings on how the world works and how it should work. I just respect the fuck out of him, and I respect him much more after sitting with him in a room with no one watching and no cameras on and him being like, 'I care this much about how the world works and how your shit goes and I'm going to give you a full blown lecture, really loud, about how this shit works.' And I was like 'yeah, for sure.'"
You can find more highlights from the lecture at thefader.com
Chance is projected to release his album, Spring, very soon.
