Chance the Rapper has been playing us for a little while now.
During a June interview with Peter Rosenberg for Open Late, he teased a seven-track album with Kanye as well as the long anticipated Childish Gambino collab project, which Chance said is likely to take the form of a full-length project. A few weeks later, a misunderstanding stemming from a Chicago Tribune story in July led Chance to tweet that there was, indeed, no new album, although he had indeed been in the studio. Just a few days after that, he surprised everyone with four new loosies: “I Might Need Security,” “Wala Cam,” “Work Out,” and “65th & Ingleside.”
Today, Chance discovered that the first of those songs has hit No.60 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. "WOAH WOAH WOAH. This ain’t supposed to be on Billboard. This is ridiculous," he wrote on Instagram. "I understand how badly you guys want new music now, headed to the lab."
Chance seems genuinely surprised by the positive response to the four new tracks. He has been enjoying the attention, though, and has been providing fans with what he can until more music drops. He recently sat down with Genius to provide the backstory to “Wala Cam,” inspired by the Chicago TV show turned YouTube channel of the same name. Like three of the Chicago rapper’s four new tracks, Lido produced the beat to “Wala Cam,” and Chance had to choose between 15 different verses to spotlight.
“I wanted to get the feeling, give people the feeling of Wala Cam without necessarily having to give them a long, drawn out history with narrative,” Chance said of the song’s feel. “Just like the feel of what Wala Cam gave to Chicago.”
Chance’s promise of heading back to the studio fits in with everything else we’ve heard from him in the past few months, even though artists declare they’re in the studio literally every 30 seconds.
Chance told Complex back in June that he was at least at the 30 percent mark of progress on both the Kanye West and the Childish Gambino projects. He also spoke about how Kanye’s ability to work on multiple things at once has inspired him to get “in a mode of understanding just your ability to multitask and work on different things," he said.
Hopefully he keeps that same energy and gets to releasing everything he’s doing in these mysterious studio sessions.
