Chance the Rapper Losing God Helped Him Create Music as ‘Christian Man’

Chance the Rapper was a guest on Beats 1 Radio with Zane Lowe where he broke down his faith, his relationship with Kanye West, and not wanting to redefine gospel.

Chance’s new album Coloring Book is being heralded as a “new wave” of the gospel, and is getting praise from everywhere.

He said the sounds of it “resembles the choir sound of I’ve been trying to get forever.”

Lowe said the record, especially the song “How Great is Our God,” is like “new church.”

Chance replied, “That’s the whole process of this thing, it’s like putting God back in our hands in everyday life.”

Zane then spoke about how religion plays a very strong part in people’s lives. “There’s no mystery that faith in music and faith in God go hand-in-hand a lot of times.”

“The devotion is on display on this record. That’s very unique if you think about it. You’re not hiding anything,” Lowe said. “You’re really serving the purpose.”

The emcee said this concept and idea came to him after moving to Los Angeles.

“In that time I felt like I was kind of losing my God a little bit,” he revealed. “That separation of God, I kinda got rid of that feeling by filling my whole neighborhood with that Kirk Franklin sound.”

He said every morning at 6 a.m., he’d wake up and then crank Franklin through the whole neighborhood. “That was the time I started making a lot of this music, two years ago.”

Chance knew his next project was going to be founded in God and his faith.

“I never really set out to make anything that could pretend to be new gospel or pretend to be the gospel,” he said. “It’s just music from me as a Christian man because I think before I was making music as a Christian child. And in both cases I have imperfections, but there was a declaration that can be made through going all the [stuff] I’ve been through the last few years.”

Zane then asks, “What do you think God means to kids these days from your experience?”

“I still think that God means everything to everyone whether they understand it or not or can really see it for themselves or they find God,” he explained. “I know for a fact we’re not pushed or promoted to speak about God with fervor. I don’t think there’s anything that really allows us to do it as so. But I think the new generation and the forward is all about freedom and all about the ability to do what we want. We’re not free unless we can talk about God.”

“So you’re all in,” said Lowe referring to Chance’s faith before diverting to Kanye’s “gospel record.”

The Chicago-born rapper said when Kanye called The Life of Pablo gospel, he didn’t mean it in the traditional sense. Chance said he meant gospel as far as telling a story like the gospel or “documenting a historic happening.”

“People got lost in the fact that he said it was a gospel album,” Chance said.

Watch the interview here. (Adult Language).

Justin Sarachik
Justin Sarachik
Justin is the Editor-in-Chief of Rapzilla.com. He has been a journalist for over a decade and has written or edited for Relevant, Christian Post, BREATHEcast, CCM, Broken Records Magazine, & more. He's written over 10,000 articles, done over 1,000 interviews, and is in post-production for documentaries on Danny "D-Boy" Rodriguez & Mario "Machete" Perez. He's the project manager of the upcoming video game Run the Court and of the media brand Crimefaces. Justin likes to work with indie artists to develop their brands & marketing strategies. Catch him interviewing artists on Survival of the Artist Podcast & creating videos on his social media channels.
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