Chancellor Bennett first launched his mixtape discography as Chance The Rapper after facing a 10 day suspension for smoking weed in his high school parking lot, from which his debut, full-length mixtape 10 Day was conceived. Fast forward a year to April 2013 and we were blessed with his incredible follow-up mixtape Acid Rap that had overnight success and skyrocketed the young Chicagoan to the heights of hip-hop.
It’s been a long three years since Acid Rap. In the time since his breakout sophomore project dropped, the 23 year old artist has had 3 birthdays, became a father, was presented with Chicago’s "Outstanding Youth of the Year Award,” made a short film, became the first independent artist to ever perform on SNL, headlined sold-out tours, started a successful charity, and had both writing credits and a feature on Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo among many more outstanding accomplishments.
While we’ve been patiently awaiting his much-anticipated third project, we haven’t been left out to dry on new material from the young artist. In addition to countless impressive guest features, Chance selflessly placed his follow-up to Acid Rap on the back burner to work with his good friend & longtime collaborator Donnie Trumpet alongside Chance’s touring band / production team The Social Experiment on their critically acclaimed album Surf, which was released last May. Although the project wasn’t Chance’s follow-up to Acid Rap, he was actively involved with and had appearances all over Surf as it held us over a bit longer. Chance has recently made comments about Coloring Book stating "this stuff is way better than Surf. I'll say that on record," hyping us up even more than we were already were.
Leading up to Coloring Book’s release, Chance offered bleak details and sparse hints of when we might expect it until announcing its May 13 release on the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. He took this TV performance as an opportunity to debut his new gospel inspired single "Blessings." We heard another glimpse of his new project with his Zane Lowe premiere of "No Problem" on Beats 1 Radio, which features 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne.
Now the day has come as Chance, a man of the people, has gifted fans with his third full-length mixtape Coloring Book. Although he calls these projects mixtapes, they’re more like fully cohesive, free albums. He’s stayed true to himself and his message as he’s become arguably the largest artist to remain independent.
We really can’t wait to see what Chance’s bright future has in store, but for now grab the free download of Coloring Book including 14 tracks with features by Kanye West, Lil Wayne, 2 Chainz, Jeremih, Young Thug, Lil Yachty, Sava, Justin Bieber, Twokio, Jay Electronica, Future, T-Pain, and more! Enjoy!