While the older generation seems to harshly critique the upcoming artist of the new generation of music, one artist is solidified as being the head of his class – Chance the Rapper. On Sunday's BET Music Awards Chance took home two awards, one for Best New Artist and more importantly the BET Humanitarian Award. The amazing factor about this is, at the age of only 24 years old in the same year he is being recognized as a new member to the music industry he is also being honored with an award many receive for a lifetime of work.This makes Chance the youngest recipient of the award.
In his very short and emerging career, Chance has donated 1 million dollars to Chicago's Public School system to encourage education and youth engagement. He has started a non-profit organization called Social Works which supports and invests in Chicago arts programs. Chance is also widely recognized for his socially conscious commentary and spiritually inspiring musical lyrics, but his notoriety transcends barriers. Last night, Chance was honored by the iconic First Lady Michelle Obama before accepting his award.
As Chance took to the stage to accept his award, in true Chance fashion, he leads with humility. Nonetheless, the humility was also accompanied by some hardcore calls to actions and moments of pure truth.
“Y’all need to let everybody out of jail for selling weed before y’all start making it legal for people to sell it and make capital off it,” he said. “I was gonna tell the Chicago Public School system not to take out a loan from Chase Bank, when they know that our schools are planning on failing in our district. I was gonna tell those judges that we just need a conviction when we know these ni**as wrong for doing this. But my big homie Reese told me that we gotta work on ourselves before we can work on the world.”
As a Chicago native Chance is showing that creating a pathway to change begins with leveraging your individual platform to affect it however you can. Chance has not shied away from the difficulties of his hometown and he has amplified the city by feeding it resources it needs to flourish. Chance is the prime example that compromising is a choice and change is an option. Not to mention, by Chance entering the mainstream platform with so many notches of activism and humanitarianism under his belt he is ensuring the ability to create streams of longevity for himself whether in music or other endeavors. While great deeds should always be done from the heart without an intent to benefit, it is no secret that doing good work produces good results. Those results will carry Chance into opportunities that music alone is not guaranteed to produce. With the polarity of our political system and devastating injustices for black culture, Chance furthers the ripple of progress by being an avid participant in culture shifting and enhancement.
