Earlier this week, the Chicago Tribune published an interview with Chance the Rapper discussing the concert he's hosting on Saturday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Special Olympics. In the conversation, Chance seemed to reveal that he had completed a new album and planned on releasing it sometime this week, though he quickly walked back those remarks via a tweet that read, "Sorry no album this week, def been in the stu tho."
Last night, Chance didn't release a new album, but he did drop four songs—as usual, you can listen to them for free on platforms like Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube (they're also embedded at the bottom of this post). The tracks mark the rapper's first new material of 2018 and touch on a laundry list of topics, including his recent engagement, his desire for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign and his distaste for product placement in music videos.
The biggest revelation amid the lyrics of a song called “I Might Need Security” comes when Chance states that he recently purchased local news website Chicagoist, taking a shot at Chicago's media industry with the lyric “I bought the Chicagoist just to run you racist bitches out of business.” Chance's newly formed company Social Media LLC purchased Chicagoist's archives, domains and social media channels from New York public radio station WNYC, which took ownership of the publication earlier this year in the wake of billionaire (and Chicago Cubs owner) Joe Ricketts's decision to shut down the DNAInfo and Gothamist sites in late 2017. In a statement, Chance said, “I look forward to re-launching [Chicagoist] and bringing the people of Chicago an independent media outlet focused on amplifying diverse voices and content.
While it's heartening to see a prominent Chicago figure take interest in preserving a local media outlet, Chance's newfound interest in journalism has brought renewed attention to an instance when the rapper managed to suppress a critical concert review that was published by MTV News. According to Vulture's account of the incident, Chance and his manager, Pat Corcoran, threatened to stop working with MTV unless a concert review written by David Turner (which the writer later posted elsewhere) was removed from the publication's website. MTV ultimately decided to delete the piece (Chance's manager claims it was “on their own volition”), but the incident suggests that Chance still has a few things to learn about journalistic objectivity as he begins to run his own outlet.
You can take a listen to all four of Chance the Rapper's new songs below, and you'll probably hear some of them performed live if you attend his headlining set at the Special Olympics 50th Anniversary concert on Northerly Island this Saturday.