Chance The Rapper has done a lot of interviews throughout his career already, but he says his recent sit-down with Pitchfork on the In Sight Out podcast was "prolly my best interview" yet.
Before the podcast episode even came out, people who were in attendance tweeted that he shared an update about his long-rumored collaborative project with Childish Gambino. "The truth is, me and Donald perpetuated the story of a mixtape for a long time without ever working on it or ever looking at each other and saying we should do a mixtape," he laughed. "We did link up in Atlanta not that long ago and started working on some tracks and they’re amazing. They're going to work. They're going to touch people."
Chance explained that he and Donald Glover are more than collaborators—they're friends. And they're not rushing the project. "We have some music. The realest answer is I don't know when it's coming out. I don't know when it's getting worked on, but there's something there to start off with."
That's not where the gems stopped, though. Chance kicked off the interview by revealing that Hannibal Buress will be acting alongside him in the upcoming feature-length film Slice, directed by Austin Vesely. Then he mentioned, "One of my biggest influences right now is Young Thug. He's really masterful."
Asked if he's been working with Kanye West on new music, Chance laughed, "Uhhh, I guess." Then he explained, "I don't know what Kanye is going to do next. I don't think anybody does, even his engineer and family. I don't think anybody knows what's coming next." Later, Chance added that during The Life of Pablo sessions, "He really believed in me and he would do a lot of cool rants to people about how I was the Steph Curry of rap."
Host Adrienne Samuels Gibbs brought up rumors about Chance starring in a reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and he responded, "I'm not going to play the fucking Fresh Prince. I love the Fresh Prince. I love Will Smith. I have so much respect for him. I would never do that. But you know what, I would write on that joint."
As far as writing goes, he said he wrote the Batman Thanksgiving sketch on SNL. The sketch revolved around a subtle political statement about excessive law enforcement in black communities, but he wasn't happy to see another SNL Batman sketch reinforce negative stereotypes a couple weeks later. Chance said, "Kevin Hart had to try and come on two weeks later and reproduce my sketch, but with Batman as a black man in a routine police stop who at the end gets arrested for actually having cocaine. To which I say, 'What's the political statement? What are you saying?'" Chance clarified, "I don't have a problem with K-Hart, but I had to get that off my chest."
Chance also revealed that he made a movie about his Magnificent Coloring World 2 performance with a plan of selling it to Netflix. "Imagine five stages, imagine a concert, imagine filming it, imagine mic'ing up 5,000 fans to sing along to you," he said. "We filmed it and the plan was to sell it to Netflix [...] We made a movie. I don't know what's going to happen to it."
During the conversation, Chance also took time to talk on his comments about Mo'Nique and his tweet that read, "Black women, you deserve better." Chance remarked, "I see how deeply embedded racism and sexism is. I understand that I can't really call myself free or feel that I am liberated unless black women are liberated. I can't say I know my worth or I'm doing something for people if I can't understand how many double standards there are and in how many different dimensions they work. They all thrive off of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and patriarchy. There's a lot of different things that, whether they immediately affect me or not, they won't allow me to be liberated. So I can't feel I'm doing my part or speaking for people if I'm not speaking for black women, because they're getting the short end of the stick."
You can listen to the full interview below.
