Towards the end of last month, Chance the Rapper dropped his long-awaited studio album The Big Day. The follow-up to 2016’s Coloring Book mixtape, The Big Day contains 22 new tracks, including collaborations with Nicki Minaj, Gucci Mane, Bon Iver, DaBaby, Lil Durk, Timbaland, John Legend, Randy Newman and more. Now, for the first time, Chance the Rapper is opening up about his recent LP for an expansive, insightful new interview. Sitting down with Zane Lowe for Apple Music’s Beats 1 outlet, Chance tackles topics ranging from Kanye West and Gucci Mane to marriage and mortality.
"I think this was just the time," Chance tells Zane Lowe, explaining his decision to formally release an official full-length studio album instead of a mixtape. "I would write a completely different Coloring Book right now if I could. It would have a lot more information on it. And the same thing for Acid Rap. I know a lot more about everything than I knew when I was 19 or 20 or 23. Like just music is everywhere. So now, it’s like literally just in the air. Like I wanted to give people something that they could have, that they could move around with, that they could take with them for the rest of their lives."
"When I first started working on the album, the concept, the theme, like okay, we have school, we have acid, you have faith and family," Chance adds, running Zane Lowe and listeners through the creative process that birthed his new LP. "And then the fourth one, really the first one is going to be, the concept was best album of all time. And that’s not really a good concept to make music. It gives me no direction. It’s a lot, some of the questions I had to ask myself is like what would make the greatest album. If I was to find the greatest album sitting on the ground outside, and it was actually in fact the greatest album, what would it be? It would be made out of diamonds. It would be a nostalgic but also futuristic."
"You can’t have a greatest album of all time without a shit ton of love songs," he continues. "All the best albums have love songs. It’s not all about me and my journey and how fast I can rap and shit like that. It’s about love. And most of all, you have to be able to dance to it. The best album of all time for me is not something that I need to listen to with reading glasses."
You can check out footage of Chance the Rapper’s entire exchange with Zane Lowe for Beats 1 above.
Later this year, Chance the Rapper is also planning on touring in support of The Big Day.