Last week, Chance The Rapper spoke at Harvard University for the Hip-Hop Archive and Research Institute, where he talked about different stages of his career, various influences, and much more. Chance also spoke extensively on his love for SoundCloud and just how easy it is for artists to use and get information about the music they release.
SoundCloud is awesome. It’s ill as fuck. Artist’s space, you can upload your music whenever you want. You get the craziest metrics that anybody can offer you: sex, age, region of the world these people live in, a very detailed account of who’s your fan and what they like.
These strong statements from Chance come right on the heels of Sony actually removing some of their artists' music from Soundcloud altogether due to a lack of monetization on the site. Chance also shared his thoughts on streaming services, which are more profitable for labels, saying that they're all "Whack as f**k," but that he likes the formula of Tidal if it actually works out.
Chance didn't just talk business though, but also shared some insightful thoughts on Kanye West, who he actually was just in the studio with the other week. Chance spoke about his admiration for 'Ye and how he loves that Kanye is able to speak his mind and always have a purpose behind what he says. Chance also revealed that even though he did about seven of the same shows with 'Ye, he was never able to meet him until Jaden Smith introduced him.
Every time he speaks, it’s all on purpose. I’m very selective about words when I’m writing music, but when I’m just talking, I might say some outlandish shit. Everything he says is on purpose and very calculated, and he feels exactly how he feels. I played like seven shows with him last year but didn’t meet him at any of the shows. That shit gets locked down after the show because he’s married to the president or something. This one time, Jaden Smith hooked me up and introduced me to Kanye. He’s never speaking for someone else. He’s just giving you his straight up ideas and his feelings on how the world works and how it should work. I just respect the fuck out of him, and I respect him much more after sitting with him in a room with no one watching and no cameras on and him being like, ‘I care this much about how the world works and how your shit goes and I’m going to give you a full blown lecture, really loud, about how this shit works.’ And I was like ‘yeah, for sure.’
The full transcript of Chance's Harvard lecture can be read here courtesy of Fader.
