Chance the Rapper is the most talented rapper of his generation and a pioneer in the music industry. His latest album, "Coloring Book," won him a 2017 Grammy for best new artist.
In 2017, the Grammys made streaming-only albums available for awards consideration for the first time, which allowed "Coloring Book" to be nominated. Because of the new rule, Chance, whose real name is Chancellor Bennett, made history as the first artist to win a Grammy based on a streaming-only album.
"Coloring Book" is so popular that it's the first streaming-only album to chart on Billboard's ranking.
Miraculously, Chance has done all of this without a label supporting him. He's turned down record deals from numerous labels, and depends on word-of-mouth and his SoundCloud account for distribution.
The fame and success just reached another milestone of recognition: Chance was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time magazine. "Chance upends expectations about what artists, especially hip-hop artists, can do,"the rapper Common wrote in the magazine.
Meet the most successful fully independent musician of our era:
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Chance the Rapper calls his albums "mixtapes." He recorded his first one in his senior year of high school.
He formally kicked off his career with the song "Windows." It got him some attention in Chicago's hip hop scene, and Chance spent another eight months tinkering with the rest of the album.
His first album — "10 Day"— gave Chance a cult following.
The album was released in 2012 and received over 400,000 downloads on the music-sharing site DatPiff and got Chance a cult following.
It's called "10 Day" because he wrote it during a 10-day suspension from high school.
A few months later, Childish Gambino (Donald Glover) featured him on his song "They Don't Like Me."
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