Chance the Rapper’s delivered a standout performance when he showed up on Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” but Chance says ‘Ye didn’t love every line on his verse.
In an interview with Brenton Blanchet for the Recording Academy, Chance explained how Kanye wasn’t into his Grammy reference on the track. “I met Kanye West, I'm never going to fail/He said, 'Let's do a good-ass job with Chance 3/I hear you gotta sell it to snatch the Grammy," raps Chance on the track.
"I rapped on Kanye's shit right before it came out that I was working on these three Grammys, and I was like, 'If I keep rapping like that, and just saying s***'s gonna happen, that's just gonna happen.' And it started happening," Chance said of why he chose to pen the line. “Kanye didn't want me to say that on that song. And I had to go back and forth with him about keeping my line on there."
Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book made history when it became the first streaming-only album to be nominated for and win a Grammy, taking home Best Rap Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards. That same night, Chance also walked home with Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Rap Performance for his single “No Problem.” Evidently, Chance was able to get his way by keeping the line on the song, which arrived a handful of months before his Grammy-winning project Coloring Book.
Elsewhere in the interview, Chance opened up more about the experience of working with Kanye for the first time around the Life of Pablo era. He indicated that by willing his Kanye collaboration into existence, a Grammy was next on the list of goals to achieve.
“Just being in a position to rap [with] the person who probably is the reason I became a rapper—to be able to produce and write and to be featured on the intro, the first real rap verse you hear on the album, was crazy to me,” he added. “I was, at that time, speaking it into existence like, ‘Kanye gonna hit us up soon. You gonna be working with 'Ye soon.’ And when that happened, I had to keep doing that. I had to keep being like, ‘I'm gonna just say what's gonna happen.’”
Recently, Chance was spotted on Kanye’s countdown to Donda livestream on Apple Music, but he didn’t appear to show up during the second listening event for the album.
For the full oral history, head to Grammy.com.
