Chance the Rapper Reveals Crucial Advice This Comedy Legend Gave Him After Brutal Backlash to ‘The Big Day’
· Vice
An album bombing may be absolutely brutal, but it’s not the end of the world. Chance The Rapper had to learn this the hard way after he released his sophomore album The Big Day. Hip-hop fans were especially cold to the record, which meme’d the ‘I love my wife’ sentiment into the ground. It took years for the Chicago MC to get back into the game. He credited a lot of the regaining of his confidence to one comedy legend in particular: Dave Chappelle.
In a conversation on The Vic Mensa Show, Chance The Rapper reflected on the thorny reactions to The Big Day back in 2018. Naturally, it affected him in a visceral way, and he worried the backlash would follow him for the rest of his life. But Chappelle explained that one rough outing doesn’t tell his entire story.
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“He was like, ‘What you have to be proud of is that at least your project is true. Albums are just yearbook photos,'” Chance recalled. “‘They’re not the portrait of your life. They’re not everything that you’ve been through [in your entire life], it’s just who you are in that moment, who you showed up as that day in 7th grade, and we got a snapshot of it. The beauty in it is that it’s true, and no matter what, you can look at it like, that’s who I was in 7th grade.’”
Chance The Rapper Recalls How Dave Chappelle Helped Him Get Through The Backlash of ‘The Big Day’
This outlook helped the Coloring Book rapper significantly when he was making his follow-up record Star Line. “I had to realize that I don’t get to paint the picture. I get to snap the photo, to be the actual subject. And the truth of the time wasn’t what I wanted to write at first,” Chance The Rapper admitted.
“Once I realized the beauty in who I was and who I was becoming… I could just write this out… Once I started to create the Star Line under the understanding that this is who I am right now…It became so much easier,” he added.
Before he took the backlash so gracefully, though, Chance The Rapper nearly quit altogether. He told Cam Newton back in September 2025 that he second-guessed himself so intensely that he didn’t want to get back in the studio again. He only eventually got out of that rut by experimenting with other forms of creativity.
“I think what really helped me get out of that was becoming creative again, but in a different lane. I started working with cameras, I started learning film and learning cinematography…basically putting myself through a fake film school,” Chance The Rapper said.
(Photo by Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)
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