Chance the Rapper wrote his breakout album during a 10-day suspension from high school
Chance the Rapper is only 23, and he's already tearing apart the hip hop world. He's so young that he wrote his first album while he was still in high school.
The title of "10 Day," his first mixtape, refers to the ten days of suspension he got in his senior year of Jones College Prep in 2011 for smoking weed. During that suspension period, the rapper wrote the first draft of that album, according to Rolling Stone.
He released a few singles after that. "Windows" got some attention in Chicago's music scene. Chance tinkered with the rest of the album for another year, finally releasing it on April 3, 2012. It quickly went viral in the hip hop world, getting over 400,000 downloads on the music-sharing site DatPiff and winning Chance a cult following.
"My parents always wanted me to go to college," Chance told Pitchfork.
As a high-schooler, Chance recorded his music in a studio run by YOUmedia, a space run by the Digital Youth Network and Chicago Public Libraries and available to Chicago high school students. It has computers available to be used by students who don't have one, and a performance space where Chance honed his skills as a rapper.
And after he won a second place prize for a local songwriting contest, he met Chicago's then-mayor Richard Daley. Daley came into the studio and listened to some of his music. By then, Chance was YOUmedia's star artist.
Chance spent the year between his first draft of "10 Day" and its release learning everything about the music industry. He learned how to run concerts, record music, and market his album all on his own. As he told Fader:
In this new digital age, Chance doesn't need record labels. He's striking it out on his own. And it's working.