The influence Kanye West had on Chance the Rapper is extremely apparent. You can tell just by how passionate his verse was on “Ultralight Beam” in 2016. “I made ‘Sunday Candy’, I’m never going to hell/I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail,” he rapped, referencing Ye’s verse on “Otis”.
However, as informative as Kanye was to Chance’s artistry and journey to rap stardom, it didn’t do him any favors in the school halls. In a 2013 interview with Complex, the Chicago MC recalled how school was the furthest thing from his mind.
Despite his family emphasizing the importance of education, College Dropout made him feel as if none of it mattered. “I was a mad impressionable kid, and every skit from The College Dropout was telling me how I didn’t need school. And I think that had a very big impact on how I treated it,” Chance The Rapper admitted.
Chance the Rapper Makes His ’10 Day’ Mixtape After Kanye West Taught Him to Ditch School and Smoke Weed
This lack of investment in education informed the creation of his debut mixtape, 10 Day. After getting caught smoking weed, the school gave him a 10-day suspension.
Naturally, this infuriated his father. “I was like his bad son,” Chance said. “At one point [my father] was like, ‘I might have to kill this n***a. He is too bad. I put this n***a in the world….’ He used to say that. Only way more violently.”
Eventually, that strained relationship with his father was repaired when Chance The Rapper’s friend Rodney was killed in 2011. “He picked me up from the hospital. It was a really crazy situation that we went through,” he told the publication. “And from then, we just valued each other a lot more. He really started taking my music s*** seriously.”
The first time Chance the Rapper heard Kanye West’s music was on his old Walkman. Hearing “Through The Wire” proved to be a transformative experience. Then, “All Falls Down” came on not too long afterwards. From there, he knew he wanted to be a rapper just like Ye.
“I think I heard ‘Through The Wire’ first, and I was so into the soul sample. Like, the high-pitched—it was just some different s**t that I wasn’t used to. I didn’t even know he was from Chicago. I remember listening for like, the next two hours, trying to find out who it was,” Chance told Interview Magazine in 2013.
He continued, “Then they played ‘All Falls Down’, and the radio station was like, ‘This is Kanye West.’ And I went, ‘Well, I’m into Kanye West.’ A couple of weeks later, I got the album, and then I found out I wanted to be a rapper.”
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