Chance the Rapper has been using his chosen stage for more than 15 years. But in a chat with Raven-Symoné and Miranda Maday on the latest episode of their Tea Time podcast, Maday wondered what his intention was in choosing that nom de rap and whether he considered early on if he would “stretch the idea or the limitations” around the title of MC with his alter ego.
“I think when I first got it, it was just a name that a girl I went to high school with came up with,” Chance (born Chancelor Jonathan Bennett), 33, told the duo. “I think over time, yes, people would tell me, ‘Yo, you should drop the ‘rapper’ part out of your name because you’re more than rap.’” He said he’s hesitated to foreshorten the name in the years since because he always wanted whatever he did to be attributed to hip-hop and to be under the influence of hip-hop.
“I want to carry rap the same way that rap has carried me through life,” he added. But recently, including while thinking in the shower the day of his podcast interview — as well as on his current Coloring Book 10th anniversary tour, which wraps up in Pittsburgh on Oct. 11 — he’s been “thinking about changing my name.”
His thoughts have revolved around losing the “Chance” and just going by “The Rapper,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I just really love the art form. I really love words. I think the greatest rappers, like myself, are etymologists and linguists at heart, people that really just love language. So, the writing part of it, the performance part of it is so much of my identity and I think the ‘Chance’ part … I give a lot of vulnerability and looks into my life and what’s going on in my life, relationships, just my whole self sometimes and I don’t love that as much now as I love just working within the genre.”
As examples of the way he’s opened up in his music from day one, Chance listed songs about his grandmother having surgery (“Sunday Candy”), being a first-time dad (“I Love You So Much”) and traumas he’s experienced, taking up the mantle of his favorite vulnerable MCs, including Outkast’s André 3000, Kanye West, Eminem and Mos Def. But, Chance said rather than stepping away from hip-hop, he wants to dig deeper into it and have his stage name demonstrate his commitment to the genre. “Sometimes it’s good to make a song that’s not about what I did that day,” he explained.
To date, Chance has released three official mixtapes (10 Day in 2012, Acid Rap in 2013 and Coloring Book in 2016) as well as two full-length studio albums, 2019’s The Big Day and 2025’s Star Line.
Watch Chance talk about a possible name change below.
