Chance the Rapper: 'I once wanted Kanye West to be my dad'

Chance the Rapper is the sort of man who finds meaning in life’s simpler moments. “I wanted to come back here,” the wiry musician says on a sweltering summer afternoon, his eyes narrowing as he gazes up at the sun. We’re at Union Park in Chicago, Chance’s hometown, sitting at the exact spot where less than 48 hours earlier he headlined the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Chance’s Pitchfork performance was a spectacle. More fantastical church revival than hip-hop concert, it was a barrage of rapping, singing and dancing, synchronized light show and band orchestration, while Chance – honoring the sanctity of Sunday and his grandmother by bringing out gospel legend Kirk Franklin at one point – repeatedly giving thanks for his blessings before the 20,000 fans gathered at his feet. It was also, as the 22-year-old multi-talent born Chancelor Bennett tells me, a “transitional moment”: a capstone marker signifying the end of his childhood and the start of his embracing a “more adult, patriarchal role”, both in his own life and for his city.

“At this stage in my life I’m just focused on growing,” say Chance, who is expecting a child later this year with his longtime girlfriend.

He takes a drag on one of many Marlboro Blend No 27 cigarettes he’ll smoke this afternoon, removing his signature Chicago White Sox hat to reveal a dishevelled flop of tousled hair. “Something I try to instill in others is to just be a good person. It’s a decision you make a million times a day. But if you just keep trying, good stuff comes to you in an ordained way.”

It’s a simple, idealistic motto – keep working hard, be positive and beneficial things will happen – and one Chance has followed religiously over the past several years. In recent times, he’s reaped its benefits in a major way: with nary a radio single to his name, eschewing a major-label deal and releasing all of his music for free on the internet, Chance has ridden the success of his breakout 2013 mixtape, the genre-squelching Acid Rap. The tape was equal parts juke, bop and socially conscious hip-hop, and has transitioned into an ever-evolving live show that’s been taken to nearly every major music festival and seen him work with everyone from Kanye West to Erykah Badu and Rick Rubin. He’s amassed more than 1 million Twitter followers in the process and his most recent album, Surf – a fantastical blend of freeform jazz, motivational speak and forward-thinking musicianship – officially credited to his longtime friend and trumpet player, Nico Segal aka Donnie Trumpet, and his band, the Social Experiment, was the first to appear for free in the iTunes store.

Still, what continues to define Chance, above all else, is his unrelenting resolve: principally to do things his way, critics be damned. “You can make [music] from a tastemaker’s point of view or from a you point of view,” says the man who spent several months last year working on a cover of the theme song for the children’s cartoon, Arthur. “When you make stuff from the you point of view you really can’t go wrong.”

Pat Corcoran, Chance’s long-time manager, says he and Chance have been able to “create our own destiny and our own niche in the music industry”, and, as Chance told me in mid-2013, playing by the major-label system’s rules has never been of consequence to him. To that end, the man who calls Justin Bieber and Skrillex friends and collaborators has no plans to start charging for his music anytime soon. “If you can give away free music you can give away free electricity, free water,” he says. “Those tiny jabs at a larger infrastructure are what make revolutions. I’m not about to change the way the whole system works, but it’s just that thought that you could.”

The son of a government-employee father who worked for then US senator Barack Obama, Chance has always taken the notion of public service extremely seriously. He’s recently made it a priority to put his newfound fame to good use: in addition to surprising Chicago youth by taking them on impromptu field trips, he’s also been hosting open mic nights for the city’s arts-minded teenager. This May, Chance convinced his childhood idol, West, to join him at an open mic event on Chicago’s South Side, and soon after West invited Chance to perform with him at a concert in Arizona. A video has since gone viral in which Chance is freaking out when West, speaking onstage, refers to him as “one of the most talented young new artists”.

“The kid in me wanted a certain type of approval [from Kanye],” says Chance, who admits he once wanted “Kanye to be my dad”, still beaming at the memory. He and West have recently been working together in the studio on an undisclosed future collaboration, and as Chance reveals for the first time to the Guardian that West, who heard Surf “before anyone else”, was originally slated to appear on the entirety of the album. “Yah, he was going to narrate it at one point,” Chance says. “In the final weeks of getting ready to put it out we had vocal chops that we were using from ’Ye talking about some of the themes of the project. Through just thinking about it, it didn’t end up happening that way. Not to say it wouldn’t have been dope as shit!”

Like West, Chance is continuing to expand the notion of what we can, or rather should expect from a rapper. “He pulled out all the stops and wanted to do it right,” says Pitchfork president Chris Kaskie, referring to Chance’s headlining set. “What he did on that stage was absolutely beyond my expectations.”

Chance says he takes inspiration for his live shows from Broadway plays like The Lion King and “the theatrical aesthetic of big ensemble pieces … creating something out of nothing and trying to find new tools to make something new out of it”. He recently took in a Taylor Swift concert when she played in Chicago, and says he was amazed at both her production and stage presence. “Taylor Swift is just dope,” he says. “She is an ill songwriter. There was no way I was going to miss that.”

There remains something resembling an air of mystery surrounding Chance’s future. Some are speculating he may follow Swift’s route and venture into the pop arena. As he told the Pitchfork crowd during his gig, he views this time as the end of a significant era in his life and career. “I don’t know if it’s really anything that people can expect to see or really have an image of in their head,” he says when pressed about his self-proclaimed impending evolution as an artist.

And yet, when I ask him if indeed we’ve seen the last of the current incarnation of Chance the Rapper, the man who’s kept people guessing until now answers in typically heady and theoretical lingo.

“I’m just figuring out what is the legacy that I want to leave,” Chance says. “Do I mean anything more than just flesh? Sure, I see the same face in the mirror every day. But you have to keep growing. That’s the only thing in life you’re supposed to do until you’re dead.”