While Chance The Rapper had gained the attention of many Hip Hop followers with the 10 Day, Acid Rap, and Surf projects, it was Chance’s verse on Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” that caught the ear of many mainstream music lovers.
“I made ‘Sunday Candy’ – I’m never going to hell. 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,” rapped Chance on The Life of Pablo opening track.
Apparently, Kanye West was not a fan of those specific bars. Chance The Rapper spoke to grammy.com about the five-year anniversary of the Chicago native’s Coloring Book mixtape. He also discussed his “Ultralight Beam” verse and West’s feedback.
“I rapped on Kanye’s s### 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,” said Chance The Rapper.
The 28-year-old entertainer added, “Kanye didn’t want me to say that [line] on that song. And I had to go back and forth with him about keeping my line on there. That whole experience of working on [Pablo] was very transformative for a lot of people around me, because I was 40% of the way done with Coloring Book.”
Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo was released in February 2016. Chance The Rapper’s Coloring Book arrived three months later in May 2016. Additionally, West showed up on Coloring Book‘s opener “All We Got” along with the Chicago Children’s Choir.
Many Hip Hop listeners view The Life of Pablo and Coloring Book as companion pieces because Chance The Rapper was heavily involved in the creation of the two projects. Plus, both bodies of work have elements of Gospel music incorporated into the projects’ sound.
“I do remember being sad in the first couple of nights because I was receiving some negative tweets around it. There were a lot of people saying, ‘Oh my god, it’s a f###### Gospel album,'” admitted Chance The Rapper about the initial reactions to Coloring Book. “That was the main conversation around it, like, ‘This dude tricked us and made a Gospel project.’ That wasn’t really my intention. I never wanted to make a Gospel album.”
The 3-time Grammy winner continued, “I like all my projects to talk about some realistic stuff, whatever I’m going through at the moment. Within 24 or 48 hours—I don’t remember what it was or if it started receiving positive press, or if I started going outside and seeing actual people tell me how they felt about the project, but I remember at a certain point, just getting past that and feeling loved and well-received. A lot of people wrote about how it brought them back to church on Sunday when they were kids, or brought them closer to Jesus or their faith. And I just remember feeling like, ‘Damn.'”