An Interview with Chance the Rapper

On Parenting in the Apocalypse

Chance the Rapper is my favorite rapper and also one of my favorite people. I am very, very lucky to call him a friend not because he’s famous, but because he’s a deeply thinking and loving person. And because he’s hilarious.

When I met Chance the Rapper I was a senior in high school and he was a chubby, adorable prepubescent 14-year-old freshman. In one of our first interactions, I remember saying to him, “nice muscle shirt,” and him replying with a smirk, “thanks, it’s gonna look great on me when I get some muscles.” We became friends first semester and second semester convinced our school to give us class credit for hanging out every day during last period. I was his “tutor,” which I loved and he says I took “way too seriously.” Chance didn’t give a shit about graduating high school. He told me many times, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to be a famous rapper.”

flip phone pic of baby us ‘08

Chance and I started telling people we were brother and sister. When people looked confused, he would matter-of-factly say, “on my mom’s side.” When I graduated and moved away, he came and stayed with me a few times in New York. Then he didn’t need to because record labels were putting him up in hotels. On one of those visits in 2012, we roamed Times Square in the middle of the night with sidewalk chalk and he wrote “More like New Dork Times” in front of the New York Times building.

Chance and I get into a lot of arguments. We have argued about whether or not politicians should have to disclose their donors (they should), whether or not reading books is important (it is), and, most recently, whether Larry David is supposed to be a relatable or ridiculous character (most relatable of all time).

But ultimately, no matter how much we disagree, I love and deeply admire Chance’s brain and heart. And I’m so excited to share them with y’all in the form of this short but sweet interview. I asked Chance if we could talk about parenting, since he’s a parent to two amazing little girls, and I’ve been thinking constantly about how I’m going to explain this apocalyptic world to the tiny girl in my belly—how I’m going to prepare her to live in it.

Here’s what he had to say: