30 Incredible Things Every Fan Should Know About Chance The Rapper

Chancellor Johnathan Bennett, famous by his professional name Chance the Rapper, is a winner of three Grammy awards, including for Best Rap Album. He was born on April 16, 1993 in Chicago, Illinois. Here are some really interesting facts about this American recording artist, record producer, and philanthropist:

1. Chance is the first artist in the history of Grammy’s to have been nominated with a streaming-only album.
2. He was honored with Chicago’s “Outstanding Youth of the Year Award” by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in November 2014.
3. He was listed as one among the most popular “30 Under 30,” at #7 on the Forbes music list in January 2015.
4. His second mixtape “Acid Rape,” was ranked in many publications in their lists of “50 Best Albums of 2013,” including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Complex, at #26, #12, and #4 respectively.
5. His third mixtape “Coloring Book,” which was released exclusively for streaming on Apple Music, debuted at #8 on the US Billboard 200 chart, making it the first release to chat solely based on streams in the Billboard history.
6. He has a closer connection to the former President of the United States - Barack Obama, as his father Ken Williams-Bennett, was the state director to Obama, when the former President served as a Senator in Illinois. The Former President, once in an interview, claimed Chance to have been family for while, as they have known each other since when Chance was only eight years old.
7. Chance has worked as the lead vocalist for The Social Experiment, which is often described as “a self-described group of bohemian musicians.” The band’s first album “Surf,” was released in May 2015, and was downloaded 618,000 times via iTunes in its first week, with more than 10 million individual track downloads.
8. Following the release of his debut mixtape “10 Day,” he was highlighted as one among the top “10 New Chicago Rappers to Watch Out For,” by the Complex magazine in February 2012.
9. In July 2012, he appeared on the track “They Don’t Like Me,” from the mixtape “Royalty,” by Childish Gambino. Following this, we went on to join the Gambino’s first concert tour of North America, to be his opening act.
10. His famous Magnificent Coloring Day Festival held on September 24, 2016, with the line up including Lil Wayne, Skrillex and Lil Uzi Vert, in Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field, was the first ever music festival at U.S. Cellular Field on Chicago’s South Side.
    
11. He along with other artists like Busta Rhymes, J. Cole, Alicia Keys, Janelle Monae met with the then-President Barack Obama on April 16, 2016 at the White House to discuss the My Brother’s Keeper Challenge initiative, to promote racial justice.
12. He has been featured on various albums from several artists including the hip hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s album, “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made,” and Skrillex’s remix of Hundred Waters’ “Show Me Love.”
13. He is from Chicago, which is also the native for famous rappers like Kanye West and Twista. In fact, once in an interview, he admitted that the first ever hip-hop album he purchased and listened to was the Kanye West’s 2004 debut album “The College Dropout.”
14. Three months after the release of “Acid Rap,” the record went on to debut at #63 on the Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums with the downloads on Amazon and iTunes.
15. Chance rented out an entire theater - Chatham Theater in Chicago, to offer free screening of the movie “Get Out,” for the three shows - 5.30, 8.00 and 10.30 pm on February 26, 2017, in an effort to give people a chance to see it at no charge.
16. His famous debut mixtape “10 Day,” was written during a 10-day suspension for possessing marijuana on his high school campus, while he was at the Jones College Prep High School in 2011.
17. He donated 1 million dollars to Chicago’s public school system and also helped raise 2.2 million dollars.
18. He merited a place in the TIME magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People” issue with an homage written by Common.
19. He has a younger brother Taylor Bennett, a hip hop recording artist famous for his free album “Broad Shoulder,” which features Donnie Trumpet, King Louie, and also Chance the Rapper.
20. His father Williams-Bennett, who is currently the deputy chief of staff to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, initially wanted to see his son, Chance to hold office one day and claims it to have been his long-time dream.
    
21. He was featured as a prominent figure on Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo,” co-writing and appearing on several tracks including the opening track “Ultralight Beam.”
22. Chance is also a member of Save Money, a hip hop collective originating in Chicago, with frequent collaborators including Nico Segal, Vic Mensa, Towkio, Kami, and Joey Purp.
23. His second mixtape “Acid Rap,” was released on DatPiff on April 30, 2013. Since it’s release the record has been downloaded over a million times and has also been certified “diamond.”
24. He began his Magnificent Coloring World Tour in San Diego on September 15, 2016 and announced it with an event named Magnificent Coloring Day Festival. However, he had to cancel the shows on the European leg, after November 2016, due to personal reasons.
25. The third mixtape “Coloring Book,” was ranked as the ninth best album of the year in the Christgau ballot for The Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop critics poll.
26. In the year 2014, he started an anti-gun violence Twitter campaign for his hometown of Chicago. It was reported that the campaign stopped gun violence for nearly 42 hours, which is considered to be an incredible feat given the gun violence statistics of Chicago.
27. Chance was appointed as a new board member for Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History in the year 2017.
28. Kanye West, among many other artists, collaborated with him for Chance’s third mixtape “Coloring Book,” which in the opinion of Slate journalist Jack Hamilton, was “the first true gospel-rap masterpiece.”
29. His debut mixtape “10 Day” was featured in the Cheap Tunes Column in the Forbes magazine. The mixtape also gained him the connections with producers like Chuck Inglish, Kenny Jame$ and Blended Babies.
30. Chance performed on “Saturday Night Live” on December 12, 2015, on a new song titled “Somewhere in Paradise.” With this, he became the first independent musical guest to perform on “SNL.”
    
31. Chance The Rapper Net Worth: $9 Million