Chance the Rapper is back six years after his debut album, The Big Day with his highly anticipated sophomore effort, Star Line, set to release on August 15, per rollingstone.com. The Chicago MC revealed in a recent interview that the project is a deep dive into the profound personal changes and world travels that have shaped his life since his last release.
“Going to Ghana, reconnecting with a lot of my family, going through relationships changing, getting divorced — there’s a lot of things that happened between my last project and this day,” Chance shared.
While the album maintains a strong connection to his hometown of Chicago, it’s also heavily influenced by his journeys to Ghana, Jamaica, and various US cities like New Orleans and New York. Chance explained that the album’s production is either “super experimental” or “based in some of the Black music that was influential to me throughout my childhood or through my travels.”
He also shared sage advice from comedian Dave Chappelle, who compared albums to “yearbook photos”—snapshots of who you are at a particular moment in time. This perspective helped Chance navigate the creative process for Star Line.
He further elaborated on the album’s single, “Tree,” a track that, while seemingly about cannabis, serves as a metaphor for the inequities faced by Black farmers. The song, which samples India.Arie, is a “very expressive and very uncensored” look at these issues, capturing many of the central themes of the new album.
•Featured image: Chance the Rapper/Art Streiber/NBC
