Chance the Rapper has been pondering the possibility of a name change amid his ongoing tour in celebration of Coloring Book’s 10th anniversary.
During a recent interview on the Tea Time podcast hosted by Raven-Symoné and Miranda Maday, Chance spoke on how the meaning of his moniker has evolved over the years, making it clear that he always aims to “carry rap the same way that rap has carried me through life.”
More recently, however, he’s been actively pondering the possibility of amending his stage name to emphasize what he values most about his artistry.
“I’m gonna take off the ‘Chance,’” he said on Tea Time, as seen below. “I just wanna be The Rapper. It’s been something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I just really love the art form. I really love words. I think the greatest rappers like myself are etymologists and linguists at heart, people that really just love language. So, the writing part of it, the performance part of it, is so much of my identity.”
The three-time Grammy winner sees the “Chance” part of his current moniker as being entwined with a raw sense of vulnerability for which he’s come to be known.
“I give a lot of vulnerability and looks into my life, what’s going on in my life, relationships, just my whole self sometimes,” he said. “And I don’t love that as much now as I love just working within the genre and attacking things that aren’t necessarily so close to me sometimes.”
Chance cited André 3000 and the artist formerly known as Kanye West as examples of some of his favorite artists who also placed vulnerability at the center of their work, though he’s just as fond of their forays into less strictly autobiographical subject matter.
These days, Chance added, he’s not personally as interested in offering up details of his life to become “fodder for the masses.”
Next for Chance is the latest stop on his Coloring Book anniversary-focused tour in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The tour continues from there with additional shows in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and elsewhere before wrapping in Pittsburgh on Oct. 11. Star Line, hist most recent studio album as of this writing, arrived in August of last year.
