Chance the Rapper has delivered an in-depth interview with BBC Radio 1Extra, which followed a Live Lounge performance of his Kanye West collaboration All We Got, and a cover of Drake‘s Feel No Ways.
During the half hour interview, he speaks at length about the importance and influence of Kanye for him growing up in Chicago. “I cannot attribute [my career] to any single other person than Kanye West,” he said. “Hearing those high pitch samples and hearing that 404… the kick and everything was something new for me. Finding out he was from Chicago was definitely encouraging but I think if I had been from anywhere in the world if I heard that song, I’d be who I am today.”
“I think every rapper from Chicago at some point thought about what Kanye West thought of their music. I was the same way. I was very open about how I felt about wanting to meet Kanye West.”
Speaking about their stand-out The Life of Pablo collaboration Ultralight Beam, on which Chance arguably drops the album’s best verse, he revealed that it was never meant to show up on TLOP, but on the beloved G.O.O.D. Music initiative Good Fridays, which gave fans a new song every week, not tied to any other project.
“That song wasn’t even a thing. When I came to meet up with ‘Ye there were ten songs exactly on the album, that was like the thesis of it,” he said. “Songs like Waves and Highlights and stuff like that were on it. It felt like a very complete project when he brought me in. He kind of was just like, ‘I want to accent certain things… but the album is finished.'”
Kanye then told him that wanted to start working on the Good Fridays series again now that the album was done, so they set to work in the studio.
Chance mentioned that he finds inspiration for creating music by listening to it. So he put on some gospel music – and they played it loud. “I don’t remember what song it was, but Kanye likes dissonance – you know, minor chords and stff that has a little pain behind it… Before we knew it, we had a beat.
“There were like three or four months between the original idea of the track and me actually becoming a writer and a person who was gonna rap on the track. It was just a thing. We had Justin Bieber come in and record over it, a lot of people came through the studio to record Ultralight Beam.”
It turns out that the track gave off a feeling that eventually changed the course of the entire album. “It was just this one thing, but because of that beat by itself, just listening to that beat and having that feeling of exalting and of praise and worship, that was not there previously, it opened up the album to be everything else that it could be. It energised a lot of people and made a lot of people feel excited to work.”
Watch the full interview here and enjoy the song below:
Image: MTV