Chance the Rapper's upcoming album with his band The Social Experiment, titled Surf, was slated for release in 2014, though it never ended up coming out. Save for a censored tracklist posted to Instagram and an interview with Billboard three months ago, the Chicago rapper has remained mostly silent about the new project until yesterday, when he unveiled a teaser video starring supermodel Cara Delevingne. Now he and his band are featured on the latest cover of The Fader. In their cover story, Chance clarifies that Surf is not a Chance the Rapper album, rather it's a Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment project. Chance is just another member of the four-member group. The rapper also dishes on his come-up, why he hasn't signed with a label, the Chicago hip-hop community, and his band's approach to making music, among other topics. Here some things we learned:
On why he hasn't signed with a label:
"I've met with every A&R, VP of A&R, president of the labels, CEOs. I know all these people. I've had a lot of advice from people [in the industry] who wouldn't give me that same advice today. It's not even that they have any ill will towards me because I didn't take their advice at the time. They're almost like, 'Keep going. You're in uncharted territory, and you're helping to shed light on what [the future of the business] will look like, and we're all curious.'"
On what he did to start gaining recognition in high school:
"I was right on State Street, asking people to listen to my mixtape and promising them that it was hotter than they thought it was. The only time I sold CDs was when I got them to actually put the headphones on."
On fellow Chicago rappers such as Chief Keef and Lil Durk:
"It's all the same sh*t. We got all the same fans in the city. We're playing the same venues. Musically, our sounds are different, but we really need each other in order to exist. We need the idea that rapping is important for people to help us to continue to thrive."
On his communal approach to making music:
"Every record has like 50 people on it. The idea is to make a singular, four-minute-and-30-second song that feels like a year's worth of music."
