Vic wears –  Turtleneck: Marcell von Berlin, Scarf: Tom Ford, Suit: Tom Ford, Shoes: Tom Ford, Rings: Tiffany & Co., David Yurman and Opened Jesus. Chance wears – Blazer & Pants: Tom Ford, Ring: David Yurman, Shoes: Tom Ford

Talent: Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa
Photography, Creative Direction, and Production by: Mike Ruiz
Editor-in-Chief: Dimitri Vorontsov

For Vic Mensa

Stylist: Star Burleigh – Celestine Agency @starburleigh
Styling Assistants:
Lilit Shahinyan @lilitshahinyann
Ali Gambino @scounderal_
Kaitlyn McCown @sheisamara_
Amana-Re Brown @amana_re
Make-Up: Tia Dantzler @tiadantzler

For Chance the Rapper

Stylist: Ayoka Lucas @ayokalu
Assistant Stylist: Christina Dang @_dangchristina
Market Editor: Vladimyr Pierre-Louis @mrvladpl
Make-Up: Tia Dantzler @tiadantzler
Barber/Groomer: Youssef Eltoweisy

Location/Studio: Concrete Studios @concretestudiosla Los Angeles, California

Suit: Erdem, Sneakers: MCM, Necklace & Ring: David Yurman

Top: Orttu, Trouser: Orttu, Grillz: Alligator Jesus, Rings: Opened Jesus, David Yurman & Luis Morais

INTERVIEW WITH VIC MENSA

Dimitri: Yes, you guys have been busy with Chance the Rapper. Can you tell us about your recent trip to Ghana?

Vic Mensa: Yes. This most recent trip to Ghana in July was quite a cataclysmic event for me in that really cemented my position as a conduit of energy between Black America and the continent. In recent years, I’ve come to realize that this is a purpose and a path of mine being that I exist at the intersection of African identity and Black American identity. Bringing Chance in January really opened up my possibilities for action in that respect. Then in July, bringing that group of Black Chicago Youth to Ghana catapulted and the momentum started in January and just elevated the whole mission to a new level.

Because it’s like I was given a lot by the men that raised me and leaders in my city. People like Joe Freshgoods and Brian Marriott and the entire leaders’ community. A guy named Brother Mike, who was a mentor to me and Chance. These people that really put a vote of confidence in my ability as a creative and just like, my value and my worth, and now I just see that we’re taking it to a new level.

I was given a lot and a lot of opportunities were given to me and many doors were opened for me. There was not somebody in that group with the ability to take us to Africa. Now that I’m the age that I was, I’m the age that those mentors of mine when I was 17, 16 we’re just paying it forward and really multiplying the impact. This trip was really special for me in that. That’s before even speaking about announcing the festival, which is like a dream of mine that is coming to fruition, and approaching that same ocean of divide, that we just crossed with the kids from a different artistic and cultural direction.

Top: Orttu, Trouser: Orttu, Grillz: Alligator Jesus, Rings: Opened Jesus, David Yurman & Luis Morais

Dimitri: You became a mentor now, you’re mentoring the youth. How does it make you feel becoming a role model for those kids and stuff when you probably needed role models when you were growing up?

Vic Mensa: Yes, it’s complicated, right? Because I’m so far from a perfect person. I at times shy away from the idea of being a role model. Because I’m aware of the many mistakes that I’ve made. At the same time, I don’t think that being a role model means being a perfect person because that would be false. I think maybe the best role models I have were never perfect people. To this day, it’s like I don’t look at them as people without flaws. I don’t expect them to be people without flaws but they are and were people that inspire me to push myself, to believe in myself, to express myself.

In that context then I think that I’m designed to be a role model because I’ve always been a person that attempts to raise those around me and to motivate them to use their gifts or to discover their gifts. I take pride in doing that and I just love to. I guess it feels natural. In that light it feels natural to be a role model to the youth because when I was in that same position, I had people like I said that supported my dreams. If that’s what it means to be a role model is to support their dreams, then that’s what I’m here for.

Dimitri: That’s deep. I was watching the TEDx from last year. It was really informative. I was really impressed with the video and how informative it was.

Vic Mensa: Thank you, man. I had a good time with that. I’m honestly just learning and constantly evolving and growing and looking for ways to express the information that I’m coming into contact with and ways to share the knowledge that I’m digesting. Even since that TEDx, I’ve read some seminal texts about the more modern and more ancient histories of Africa.
The truth of it is that all African history has been withheld from us. Us being the Blacks, the Whites, the Asians. It’s like for there to be a widespread exploitation of the African continent and the African body, there needed to be justification for it. That justification has been fictitiously created from a narrative of African inferiority and knowing the truth about the accomplishments and the history of Africa and African people actively works against the exploitation of the African continent.
Many of us are woefully ignorant about our own history and and so we’re just working to change that within ourselves first and within our world by proxy.

Face Mask: Kozha, Tank: Calvin Klein, Blazer: Kozha, Trouser: Braydon Alexander, Socks: Acne Studios, Shoes: Private Policy

Dimitri: Absolutely. Can you tell us about the Black Star Festival lineup in Ghana on January 6th, is it just you and Chance the Rapper, or did you do any local callouts to any local artists from the continent?

Vic Mensa: We’re definitely bringing more artists. Chance and I are performing, and we’ve been in communication with some really amazing artists on a large scale, on a more underground scale, across the spectrum. The reality of it is that this concert is happening on January 6th and the particulars of the lineup and the staging and the production, all those things are still being worked out because we’re hustling.

It’s like, we’re not C3 or Live Nation, we’re two kids from Chicago with a dream to make some amazing shit happen. That comes along with a certain set of circumstances, which is that we have so much going on in our lives and so many projects that we’re working on and I’m working on releasing my album, Chance is working on finishing and releasing his album.
I just released my Cannabis Adventure, the first Black weed brand in Chicago, 93 Boys and curated an art show this summer. Chance has been doing so many things in art, and it’s like we hustling on so many levels. It’s like many things that we do where it’s like, man, we pull the shit together bringing those kids out there was literally no small feet. Traveling internationally with minors is fucking difficult. Myself, I got like a brand TA with me, a Chicago organization called the Academy Group. We were working on that for over a year for sure. We were working on it for over a year, maybe like, almost a fucking year and a half and even to the day when landed, we were still figuring it out.

We were still figuring it out, we were still figuring out getting the money. It cost a lot of bread. We were still raising the money. We were still scraping together the vendors and the itinerary but we’re scrappy man. As hustlers as kids from Chicago, we’ve always had to learn how to make magic out of dirt, and so that’s what we’re doing in this scenario. It’s going to be beautiful though. When I had the concept to put together a festival or venture of this sort, I was actually in South Africa at the time and I had just left Ghana, this was last year, so coming off the back of 2020.
I had just left Ghana and then I was spending some time in South Africa and I was just realizing that it’s a travesty that we’re not performing in Africa as Black artists. I was thinking about the fact that I’ve performed Europe 10 times over, I’ve been to BNC markets in Europe, and I played not just London, but Leeds and Liverpool and not just Berlin, but Dusseldorf, and not just Amsterdam, but Oslo. Places I never heard of before I got there and I have performed the entire continent of Australia, and I’ve performed in Asia multiple times in multiple countries, but I never have performed before this past year in the continent of my origin.

I just started mentally formulating an idea for an event to bring Black artists to perform and tie it in with some educational experiences for them to understand the culture and just put it on ice in my mind. Then when we got to Ghana in December, I started chopping it up with some of the guys about it and thinking about how Chance would be perfect to help make this a reality but I had no clue he was going to come to Ghana.

Tank: Calvin Klein, Trouser: Alexander McQueen, Boots: Christian Louboutin, Jewelry: Tiffany & Co. and David Yurman

Dimitri: You introduced Chance to Ghana, that’s what he did.

Vic Mensa: Yes. I didn’t know he was going to come, though. I told all my friends that I’m going to Ghana in December and that this is where I sat and we need to be in Africa, but it’s a long flight and nobody really expressed being able to do it. Then it was like near the end of my trip, Chance was like, “Yo, I’m coming.” He was like, I’m coming in like four days. When he came, and he brought one of our closest collaborators and friends, Peter Cotton Tale, and we just made the rounds and building relationships.
I presented this concept to him and it was just fate because he’s really the right guy for this. I think that it’s like he immediately gravitated towards the concept and he has the experience of organizing large-scale events. He’s actually done this shit before. It just lined up. It just made sense. I think it’s given both of us a new lease on life in a way because we’ve always been known in our city and our nation as being leaders of our community in that we dedicate ourselves to doing so many projects for the people, whether it’s work for the homeless or it’s youth programs or work in the schools or registering voters.

That’s just the way that our paths have respectively developed. As Black people, man, it’s important for us to realize, man, that our identity goes beyond our neighborhood, goes beyond our cities. These places are of magnanimous importance to us because it’s all we’ve ever known in this life. Our roots are so much deeper than this life. We’re really not far from that. Even though most Black people in America don’t have that direct connection to their lineage, in all honesty, 500 years is a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

Dimitri: We actually have some friends in common in Ghana. Chief Nana Kweku Dakrabo I (Development Chief), I believe you’ve spoken to him about mutual projects. I know him well.

Vic Mensa: I’m going to have to tell him I’ve been speaking to you.
Yes. Nana has been connecting us with people and just really helping us put together the dots on this festival. When I became aware of the things that Nana is building in the film studio and some of those projects, I immediately reached out to him because they’re just different sizes, same coins with the same intention, the same mission, which is to create on the continent and build infrastructure and attract tourism and collaboration. Above all is to foster collaboration between Black Americans and Black Africans.

Dimitri: When did you start playing around with the beats?

Vic Mensa: Well, I definitely started writing lyrics before I started making beats. I was around age 12, 13, 14, right around there is when I really started writing raps. 14 is when I first started recording them. One of my first studio sessions actually was me and Chance, and I think his dad paid for the studio session.

Dimitri: You guys known each other that long?

Vic Mensa: Yes.

Dimitri: You and Chance, really? Wow, that’s impressive.

Vic Mensa: That was around the time when we both really started taking rap seriously and spending a lot of time writing raps. We did mix tapes in high school and we were featuring on each other’s mixtapes. We started out by building grassroots fan bases out of our school hallways and passing out our mixtapes, selling tickets to our concerts at our schools and each other’s schools and all of those levels. I went to a school called Whitney Young, which was what they call a magnet school in Chicago.
It’s like a public school, but most people test into it. Because of that you got kids from all different areas of the city and they all have friends that go to different schools. This is also the dawn of Twitter. At that time, we were using our network of friends and associates to identify where the demand was highest and to go to those schools and sell posters, T-shirts, concert tickets, do impromptu performances, freestyle with the kids from those schools.

Chance would come perform at the open mic events at my school. I would go perform at the open mic events at his school. We just trapped it out. It was in high school when I started doing this for real and started applying myself to it and creating a business out of it.

Dimitri: Did your family play a big role in your music career? Did you get a lot of support from your family or maybe they wanted you to go more corporate or something?

Vic Mensa: My father drove me to a lot of my studio sessions. He helped me pay for them and was overall just very supportive. Although my father’s path was education, he came from Ghana on scholarship to study in America. Through that opportunity vastly changed the stars of his family in he’s the only person of his family to ever come to America.
Created an entire different set of opportunities for myself and my sisters. All of that was due to education. When I started taking rap so seriously and I’m not keeping up with school and I’m just out smoking weed and getting arrested, doing all the shit that rappers do, he was definitely disturbed and losing sleep but is also just like kind and open-minded and ridiculously intelligent.

He didn’t try to shut me down which was a blessing because it’s like I was never somebody that could be silenced anyway. I think my parents probably realized that, that it’s like if they try to stop me from doing this thing that I’m really passionate about I’m just going to leave. I was blessed in that way man. Even my father’s support, it honestly made me at a certain point in time take things more seriously and change my approach because I was funding all of my first music projects by selling weed out of their house in probably reckless and dangerous ways. My dad was still giving me money to follow my passions.

I was just like, “Man, I need to acknowledge and respect the love and support that my father is showing me and stop disrespecting his home in this way.” Above all, my pops just wanted me to live. He didn’t want me to be incarcerated and he didn’t want me to be killed. The places I was going and the people I was dealing with through all that hustling and all selling drugs like those were the situations that people die and getting caught because of it. I fell back from that. I just put myself completely into the music. I never had a plan B. I never had the intention to pursue higher education. Although I have always prioritized educating myself. I really only ever planned to be a creative.

Dimitri: You have a new album coming up on the Rock Nation. Can you tell me how’s that coming along and when can we expect the big release?

Vic Mensa: Yes. My album is complete. At this point, I’m just waiting on a couple of feature verses and tweaking the mixes, but the creation of the album is complete. This is my second full-length album. My first one being 2017 is the Autobiography. This is my second full-length album and is inspired by everything from African Highlife music to ’90s hip hop and punk, and rock and roll, and all the things that inspire me. I’m like a smorgasbord of influences. They all exist within this album and the conceptual direction is themed around redemption and follows my own personal growth in the last year. I started it about a year ago and I finished writing most of it way earlier this year in about the Spring and it’s following my journey in the last year.
I’ve been sober a year. I’ve been revolutionizing the way that I think, the way that I act in the world. This album explores many of the pieces of that personal journey of growth.

Dimitri: Who inspires you?

Vic Mensa: Yes. Growing up, Common. One of my biggest inspirations. Nirvana, Kanye, Jay Z, Nas, David Bowie, The Clash, UGK, and a lot of different people. I guess right now, if I look at my thing, what I’ve been listening to is Rage Against the Machine, Miles Davis, Lupe Fiasco, Frank Ocean, and a jazz pianist named Errol Garner, one of my favorites.

Dimitri: Nice. You mentioned Miles Davis. I was actually one of the associate producers on Miles Davis’ biopic and I’m a good friend with the nephew of Miles Davis, Vince Wilburn Jr.

Vic Mensa: Yes. That was crazy. That movie was dope. I love Miles Davis, man. I love modal jazz because it’s calming to me, but I also love Bitches Brew. I love the Flamenco sketches. I think that’s a Miles Davis album too, yes. Oh, no, that’s a song on it, but Bitches Brew, I love that music. To some people it sounds like pure noise, and they’ll be not understanding how I could listen to it, and enjoy it, but I guess that’s how some people are about hip hop too, and how other people are about rock and roll or metal.
I guess, in most situations if what you’re doing works for everybody, then it might not be that great.

Dimitri: Exactly. I grew up listening to Japanese Trip-Hop like DJ Krush. Very abstract from the ‘90s.

Vic Mensa: It’s an abstraction. That’s why I love Bitches Brew, because it’s just this glorious abstraction, and I aspire to that. I aspire to the moment when I’m making a more abstract form of music, because I think that in that space is where a lot of the most transformative artistic expression lies.

Dimitri: What kind of message would you really want to give to your fans?

Vic Mensa: I think the message I’m dancing with at this point in time is an understanding of humanity and all life on this planet as being inseparably connected. We’re so much more a part of one grand intelligence than we are led to believe. As I’m just working to shed all of those limitations of division, and race, and religion, and nation, and recognize that to be human is to be one. I guess that’s the message I would share. I actually got a run too, man. I got to go speak on this cannabis conference.

Dimitri: If you could give your younger self an advice, what sort of advice would you give yourself?

Vic Mensa: Do not be consumed by the details, trust the process.

Vic wears – Blazer: Feng Chen Wang, Top: Yeezy x Gap, Trouser: Feng Chen Wang, Shoes: Prada, Rings: David Yurman & Opened Jesus. Chance wears – Top & Pants: Givenchy, Boots: Salvatore Ferragamo, Ring: David Yurman

INTERVIEW WITH CHANCE THE RAPPER

Dimitri: How was your photoshoot with Mike Ruiz?

Chance: It was cool. It was awesome actually. I had never done a cover shoot before with Vic. I don’t think we’ve ever actually done any photo shoots together, so it was cool first-time type thing.
Dimitri: Congratulations on your latest releases. You and Vic have some amazing collaborations too.

Chance: Thanks.

Dimitri: My favorite actually, A Bar About a Bar. That’s actually my favorite.

Chance: Wow, that’s your favorite one? I love to hear that.

Dimitri: It’s such a cool track, man. I just love it. Absolutely love it. When you pick your collaborations, I mean, how do you go about, picking the is it the artistic approach? Is it inspired by art or how do you choose?

Chance: Yes, it’s largely my influences. I always try to work with artists that inspired or influence me, which is artists that are, historically iconic artists, but also like people that are my contemporaries that I just rock with.
Now that I’m in this new phase with this new project that I got going on. I’ve been collaborating way more with visual artists, with painters and sculptors and photographers coming to them with an idea, of what I’m trying to create or whatever conversation or topic that I’m on. We work in tandem till we get to finish piece, mine being auditory and theirs being visual.
It’s so cool that you said you liked A Bar About a Bar that was like, the entire essence of that track was just trying to, make art for art’s sake. Without trying to be heavy, without trying to be– But it is still is heavy. It’s still like radical for me to be, a Black rapper making music just about artistry or just about, the creative processes, something that’s different and not really, as common anymore, in the marketplace.
It was cool to be able to, create for creation’s sake and do that with, the artists who paints. There’s this artist from Chicago, Nico Washington, and to be able to, host something that’s, clearly just about making art for art sake at a museum was very radical too. It was awesome.

Dimitri: When did you, start playing around with the beats? When did you start first?

Chance: I mean, I started rapping when I was probably in fourth grade, probably 9 or 10. I always loved music and I danced since I was a really little kid. I started out, like I said, dancing. I moved into poetry when I was probably really young, seven or eight, and was just writing poems and shit. When Kanye West dropped The College Dropout, that was the first time that I was like, ”Okay, I’m going to start writing my own raps and writing the beats and started to consider the art form, and then that just stuck with me.
Over time I had more and more influences come around. Lil Wayne is one of my biggest influences in terms of writing, Eminem also, and yes. By the time I was 14, I recorded a bunch of songs. I had made my own mix tape and shit like that. I just kept on it from there. I just kept recording until now. Same story, different day.

Dimitri: Do you remember your software or piece of equipment?

Chance: The first beats that I was making was on a old-ass software called Cakewalk. Then I moved to something called Acoustica Beatcraft, which is a low-budget version of Fruity Loops. Then eventually moved to Fruity Loops and then– But I was always very into the musical creative process and I started taking piano lessons when I was a little boy and always stayed, in music through throughout. I think my favorite part of the whole process is definitely writing, is definitely like using language in cool ways that are memorable, easy to relate to, but also still divulged in a way that feels artistic and feels high level. That’s always been my main thing.

Dimitri: Did your family influence you, did they support your music, since you were a kid?

Chance: My mom did. My mom was very– One of my cousins or a play cousin, somebody that was my mom’s friend’s son, he was a bit older than me. He owned a studio and that was the first studio I ever went to. My mom actually took me down when I was probably 10 or 11 years old. I was writing raps and she wanted me to record something. She let me and my cousin Shawn record me and my little 14-year-old raps. I stayed going to his house throughout high school. When I would get kicked off the house, I would go over there just he was heavy so he was still in the streets a bit and selling weed and shit, but when I was around, it was always just music going on.

That was something that I had early on that influenced me seeing him around different rappers, seeing him around King Louis, who was big rapper from Chicago. Still is to this day, but that inspired me a lot. My dad wanted me more so to just get a real job or figure out ways to actually make money because rap didn’t make money for a very, very long time. Then it was around 2011 actually, one of my friends got was killed in a fight that was going on and at the time before that happened me and my dad weren’t really in speaking terms, but after that happened, we got close again.

He became super supportive of what I was trying to do, helped me purchase my first merchandise to sell, stay up late at night with me burning CDs for me to go pass out downtown. From then till through today my dad is probably my– My parents are both the most supportive people in my life when it comes my creative process and what I’m trying to do to get there.

Dimitri: You and Vic went to Ghana recently, was it quite an inspiring experience? I believe you have spoken with Chief Nana Kweku Dakrabo I (Development Chief) about some projects in Ghana, anything that you would like to share with us?

Chance: Yes. Me and Vic came out there in January. Vic had already been out there for a couple of months. He goes there yearly and this was my first time going. I was very, very inspired by the trip and educated while I was on the trip on just our history as a global people.
I think in America we get very caught up in nationalism or the idea that we are from the United States, which is rightfully so. We fought for so long to be considered citizens, and to have basic human rights in the States, but we come from a way larger global network of people, not just from the continent, but also from the islands and folks that live in the UK and in Europe, and Asia, all over. There’s so many Black people and we have a like fractured relationship.

It took me going to Ghana and learning about their first president President Kwame Nkrumah who freed them from British colonialism and they became the first sub-Saharan African country to do so. When that happened, he was very intent on creating that global Black network, and founding the nation in Pan-Africanism. He was very vocal about bringing those of the diaspora back home, and being in connection consistently, and obviously a free Africa.
When I got there and I got this information and, and visited his mausoleum and his museum and just had a lot- a series of really deep conversations with Vic, we realized that we had a greater duty to connect our people all over the world and give them an opportunity to get the same history. We figured the best way that we know how is to create a mass gathering, which we had just did the year prior and we were planning on doing again.

We did the Juneteenth BBQ & Picnic at the Black History Museum in Chicago, and we did it last year. We brought it back again this year, much bigger. It was 15,000 people on the South Side of Chicago, without incident, a free event for the community, for people to come and barbecue and sing and dance and eat and laugh and support local vendors and artists, street art. It was like just basically a mass gathering or a mass demonstration of how peaceful, but also how uniform a strategy we could be as a people.
We decided that we wanted to try and do the same thing in Ghana. We started organizing this event, hitting up artists, hitting up thought leaders and writers and painters and just Black folks that we know from around the globe and inviting them to take part in this concert. Just opening an invitation for more than just those that are from Ghana or even from the continent. Extending that invite to, like I said, the Black people that spend billions of dollars in travel around the world.

So many of whom have never been to the continent. Like I said, it was my first time in Ghana or in West Africa this year. creating the space, creating the event, creating the opportunity for workers and for listeners to be in the space together and enjoy that time together was something that immediately clicked for us back in January. We just been working on it since. Shout out to the people of Ghana, it’s been an awesome thing. Actually, me and Vic are actually going back out there next week to go do some meetings. It’ll be my third time this year and Vic’s I think fourth.

Blazer/Top/Pants: Acne Studio, Hat: Rapper’s own, Socks: Salvatore Ferragamo, Shoes: MCM

Dimitri: How large the festival do you think it’s going to be?

Chance: The idea is going to be a mass gathering. The space holds, I think, 20,000 people. Across the street where they built the monument, The Independence Gate, is another, I think, 10,000 or 15,000. We imagine it being a largely free event to people that just want to come and experience it and be in community with us. the way that I think about it, I think it’s the biggest event for us to happen in many years. The most recent thing I think of is like, the Million Man March. again, the idea is like, us gathering in solidarity, spending time with each other, sharing food, sharing culture. It’s largely focused on the experience of the people and the ability to gather in confidence.

Dimitri: That’s amazing. It’s a really great thing that you guys are doing. Do you get inspired when you travel? Do you get inspired to write music by local artist and stuff? Does it make you want to create a different sound really?

Chance: Yes, I was very inspired while I was out there. I started listening to a lot of Ebo Taylor. Anytime I travel, I get inspired. When I went to Ghana, it was very different. Like I said, my entire album is based now in the visual arts and having conversations through different mediums. That happened because I went to Ghana, because I met Amoako Boafo and Otis Quaicoe and different artists that are at the forefront of the conversation around Blackness and come from different experiences than me or they’d come from, but share in that and in that same space, the need for liberation, the need for free dialogue.

Also just on a sound level, like we recorded, we ended up linking with probably the biggest artist in Ghana, Sarkodie. We ended up working with King Promise. We just released a record with, me and Victor released a record with him last month. He was doing very well on the continent.
Just being free is like a different thing. In America, Black people and the Black experience is very otherized. The idea of it is like a niche thing that only reflects the sun, but not the majority and the truth is, it feels like that in most spacs, wer’e otherized. When you’re in Ghana, being Black is the thing, that’s the main thing, it’s almost a second thought that we just are. Being in a space like that, and trying to create in a space like that, where you don’t have to hold your head down or feel like you’ll only speak in a song, is very radical and very different for somebody from my experience.

Dimitri: Can you tell us about your projects in Chicago?

Chance: I think I’ve always been somebody that’s been about creating experiences for other people, whether it’s been the concerts or a lot of the community work that we’ve done with Social Works that we’ve created. Social Work is my nonprofit in Chicago. What we do is we try and create safe spaces for people, places for people to enjoy and experience something different than they’re used to in their regular Chicago life. We’ve done that for a while.

I would say that it extended out once I got to Ghana, realizing that there’s an opportunity to create these spaces for our people to link and then be in our community, and just realizing that community, at the end of the day, is the strongest thing that you can have and something that holds you up and build you and keeps you in place. I would say, the most rewarding experience this year, one of the most rewarding experiences has been creating that Juneteenth festival with Vic and seeing thousands and thousands of Chicago people in what people consider to be the hood.

Seeing like how people talked about it before the event happened and saying, “This and that’s going to happen and it’s not going to work out. Or it’s going to be violent somehow.” Then, just experiencing it for what it was, is something that I just thrive on. I think, for many Black people in the US, we’re told that Africa is dangerous and somewhere that we don’t want to be in, somewhere that is too expensive to get there, or the shots you’re going to have to get are going to be too much. They just use scare tactics.
I don’t think it’s necessarily everybody just innately is trying to keep us from going to Africa, I think it’s a passed-down thing. Or like I was just talking about being otherized, it makes you feel like it’s something that’s inaccessible or just so far away. I think being able to show everybody that Ghana has one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and it is very developed, and it is still rich in culture and identity of being Ghana. It’s not trying to be a Western country, it’s not trying to be something else. It’s not. It just is what it is.

I think being able to just show people in this mass gathering from so many different cultures and different countries and different beliefs, being in unison and being there to hold each other up, to have fun, to create an experience for the kids there, we all sometimes just have to see it done before we realize how accessible things are.

Dimitri: Do you have a message to your fans around the globe?

Chance: I think the main thing is global connectivity, like you said have a message that speaks to everyone as something that everyone wants, but also being yourself and telling your own story a lot of times is what makes it the most relatable and it being the most truthful. I think when I started this journey of working with visual artists, but also taking the visuals in terms of the music videos closer to heart and doing a lot more film work myself, I started to realize that it helps me get my message across easier. You know what I mean?

I’m a musician and so I react best to music. I feel like I can get a lot out of just hearing what somebody has to say, but adding layers like a video piece that clearly gets across what I’m trying to say and then also having a sculptor or painter or a photographer that adds onto that layer just makes the message even that much easier to get across. I think I’m going to continue to keep my message individual to myself but I think the harder that I go to try and transliterate that message in other mediums, the more people will have access to them.

Dimitri: Absolutely. Your music it’s different. You have an emotional connection in your tracks. Are you an emotional person yourself?

Chance: Yes. I was just saying that to somebody yesterday. I was saying it’s good to be emotional. I think everybody’s emotional. I think having emotions is what makes you human. I think that sometimes we teach ourselves or develop tactics to mask our emotions, but no matter what, we all feel.
I think what I’ve been training myself to do through being a writer and being a person that publishes their work, I’ve taught myself to be more and more vulnerable and more and more open about my emotions. There’s also a fine line that you work as a published as somebody puts stuff out. You still have to save somethings for yourself. You know what I mean? That is the plight of the artist, what to share and what to keep.

Suit: Erdem, Necklace & Ring: David Yurman

Dimitri: Anything that you want to accomplish outside the music? You said you doing the filming as well. Do you see yourself directing?

Chance: Yes. I could definitely see myself doing a feature at some point. I’m probably going to start more in the short film space when it comes to direction. I’ve been really getting into cinematography and I was the director of photography. I’m the director of photography for the last two videos that I did very much so into composition and lighting. I think as I get obviously better with that stuff, I’ll probably try and pick up more projects. After my music project releases and I have finished doing some tours and stuff on it, I think I’ll lean more into that space if I’m still hot on it.

Right now I think I have a little bit more broad goals, like creating more community within my people globally and getting more equity and an agency for my people. I think those are the things that I think about more so on a daily basis now. I think even those kind of goals, whether it be the mass liberation of my people or just working on more films, all of those are going to be accomplished by what I do musically. I’ve always used my music as a means to get to whatever my lofty goals are. I think whatever goals I have, I always remember at the end of the day, like, rap is what’s going to help me get that message across or get to that angle faster.

Dimitri: What advice would you give your younger self?

Chance: I would tell my younger self, keep going, you’re doing everything right.

Dimitri: It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Again, Congrats on your upcoming event in Ghana on January 6th. Hopefully, I will see you there three-dimensionally in Ghana. 

Chance: Absolutely. Shout out to the people of Ghana and tell Chief Nana said, “What up.” You, know what I’m saying? I’m coming down there next week or in two weeks, so if I don’t see you then I’ll see you in January.