Beats 1
On Tuesday Chance The Rapper appeared on Beats 1 Radio for an interview with Zane Lowe. They touched on everything from God to the gutter, but the highlights and full audio are below.
1. Kanye volunteered his services on Coloring Book...
"Kanye had called me while I was in Chicago and said 'I wanna help you in whatever way I can. This was two months ago, my work on Pablo is done, I'm working on my project now... He said 'I want you to come out for four days."
2. ...and his studio demeanour is one-of-a-kind.
"We all went over to Kanye's spot and within a few hours of sitting around and having all these deep conversations—because that's what Kanye does, he does lectures and shit—they're all very insightful and important and they helped me out a lot. He accesses the track, he starts doing his Kanye dance to it, and he's like 'OK I fuck with it, take off all the drums.'... He records drums in a way that I've never seen before. He does everything live off the MPC [and] he does it literally in one take."
3. Coloring Book was inspired by Chance "losing his God," but he got back in touch thanks to a huge speaker system.
"All of this music came from me moving to Los Angeles. I moved out here at the beginning of 2014 and stayed here only about 4 or 5 months. But in that time I felt like I was losing my God a little bit... I got rid of that feeling by filling literally my whole neighbourhood with this Kirk Franklin sound... Every morning starting at 6AM we'd get up and crank Kirk Franklin... it let me know that my next project would be founded in God and founded in my faith."
9. Kanye really did offer him a deal:
“Everybody has had that conversation, we’ve had all the conversations. And what’s funny is some of those conversations still keep coming back but with Kanye it was cool because he did offer me a deal but still worked with me diligently after knowing that wasn’t what I wanted to do. And I use the word prodigy because I wouldn’t go as far as got call myself Kanye’s protege because I didn't have that experience that some of my best friends got working right underneath him. I think the word prodigy is cool because its just like I was just a kid he knows and I am still a kid and still growing and still don't fully understand how everything works or what I’m going to do but I had the insight of Ye being around me at a point where I had already kind of decided a path to be like ‘yo you should sign, you’re not gonna sign, ok cool, let’s get this money.”
10. He lost a dance-off to Justin Bieber they day they first met at Coachella.
“Me and Justin met actually after we made ‘Confident’ so I won’t say we were friends when we made ‘Confident’ but I was a fan. We met at Coachella and hung out all day that day before I went on stage. And it wasn’t until right before I went on stage that he was like you want me to come out for a song and I said yeah that’s have a dance battle and we did it and he crushed me but only because I was so tired. I had been performing all day.”
12. He thinks "All Night" is the best song he's ever written.
“That song to me is the best song I’ve ever written because it’s such an awesome concept. The idea behind it is that I’m at this party and there’s women all over me and there’s professionals in suits around me and in my mind all everybody wants from me is a ride home. I think that’s such a funny, stupid concept because I do get f****d up at parties and get paranoid.”
13. He's making a movie that he wrote.
“I really like screenwriting that’s not something I’m foreign to at all. [How many have you attempted] Two. There’s one about a halloween party and I don't wanna talk about the second one because I’m actually making that one.”
14. He's going on tour internationally.
“So we’ll be in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, definitely gotta go back to Europe and I think a very important thing we are trying to work out right now is being in Africa outside of being in South Africa. And then maybe we’ll do something in America. Starts in September.”
15. He wants to build a Broadway-like experience.
“What I'm trying to do is build a bigger expanse we’re woking on something in Chicago this weekend for a live interactional experience with the album. Very much build on color, and on faith, and on family and nostalgic things and interactional pieces that are both for play like swing sets and jumping jacks and also just for the aesthetic purposes for it. But creating those environment and moving that city to city is a big plan for me. And also the inverse of it, I’ve always wanted to bring a bigger theater feeling to Chicago. Like a Broadway sense. I want to build a building that people come in to come see. “
16. Kirk Frankin's influence on this record is unparalleled.
“All of this music kinda came from me moving to Los Angeles as a catalyst. I moved here in the beginning of 2014 and stayed here only for four or five months but in that time I felt I was kinda losing my God a little bit. I got rid of that feeling by filling every morning, literally filling my whole neighborhood with this Kirk Franklin sound. We use to have this giant house in LA we used to call Coy Castle. We had the craziest speaker system so every morning starting at six am cause I’d be on Chicago time and we’d crank Kirk Franklin through the whole fucking neighborhood. That was the time I started making a lot of this music, two years ago. It carried through and led me to understand and know that my next project was going to be founded in God and founded in my faith. But I never really set out to make anything that could pretend to be new gospel or pretend to be the gospel. It’s just music from me as a Christian man. Before I was making music as a Christian child. In both cases I have imperfections but I think there was a declaration that could be made out of all the s**t I went thought ion the past two years.”
