News Round Up • Chance The Rapper Honored By The Soul Train Awards And Rolling Stone, Louder Than A Bomb Announces Mixtape & More
Photo by Michael Salisbury
With one half of the holiday season behind us, the year is quickly coming to a close, but not without plenty of headlines to pay attention to. While most of us were recovering from a turkey assault on our stomachs, the city kept grinding along and TheseDays was there to pick up all the pieces and assemble them here for you in our latest news round up. Scroll down for stories from in and around the city including even more news for Chance The Rapper, a new endeavor for a longtime mainstay and a great opportunity for the next generation of Chicago artists. All that and more below.
Chance The Rapper Takes Home Soul Train Award and "Coloring Book" Ranked Third on Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2016 List
2016 is a year that none of us will soon forget, least of all Chancelor Bennett who has used the last 365 to vault himself to the forefront of music and pop culture in general. While the accolades have been piling up for some time, Chano got added affirmation on Sunday night as he took home the award for 'Best New Artist' at the Soul Train Awards.
The award is one of the first for Chance, who got his first nomination for 'Best Mixtape' at the 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards, a category he lost to Big Sean's 'Detroit'. Since then, he's won an MTV Woody with Austin Vesely, hit the VMA red carpet and stands poised to force the Grammys' hand in nominating independent acts for their iconic gold gramophones. Chance was also nominated for 'Best Collaboration' and 'Rhythm and Bars Award' for "No Problems" featuring 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne.
Just a day later, Rolling Stone released their '50 Best Albums of 2016", of which Chance's "Coloring Day" was ranked third. Beating out Drake's "Views" by nearly 40 spots (Ouch Drake!) and his protege Kanye's "The Life of Pablo", "Coloring Book" only follows David Bowie's "Blackstar" and Auntie Yonce's "Lemonade". Not bad company for just a kid from Chicago.
It's great to see the world finally realizing what many locally have for a long time and its crazy to think there's still much more to come.
Rhymesfest Reportedly Buys Kanye West's Childhood Home
While Kanye continues to fill headlines with reports of him suffering deep depression and paranoia in a California hospital, his counterpart and longtime friend is continuing to do the same, albeit for very different reasons. Since emerging in the wake of 'Ye's enormous success in the early 2000s, Rhymesfest has carved a nice niche for himself in the activism space, using his familiarity via hip-hop to pace his community work. This past week, reports surfaced that Che actually purchased Kanye's childhood home in the South Shore to use as a space for the artist's Donda's House initiative, for which Rhymesfest is the main driving force.
The home will serve as an arts incubator for the Donda's House initiative which was established in the wake of West's mother passing in 2007. While Kanye's name is on the organization, it has often been Rhymesfest who has pushed the initiatives forward, been part of meetings and social gatherings and largely acted as the face of Donda's House as West frolicked across the world with the Kardashians. Speaking on social media, the longtime Chicago mainstay had this to say:
“We want to show bright spots in communities that have been divested from, we know more lights exist here, they just need to be activated. It will be the first of our nationwide Lite-Houses [with] a state of the art recording studio, a curriculum space for Donda’s House and South Side music museum,” Smith said.
OG Brand Preps New 'You Are Special' Line
Recently, we featured local fashion designer and stylist Olivia Goodman of OG Brand as part of our Home Team series and the up and coming talent continued her push forward this week, unveiling a teaser for a new line coming in the next few weeks.
Louder Than A Bomb Announces Mixtape
The hip-hop scene we enjoy here in Chicago would look vastly different if not for the over-arching influence of the local poetry programs from across the city. After-school associations like YouMedia and Young Chicago Authors have become a breeding ground for acts that have increasingly reached the mainstream and those at ground zero are celebrating that lineage with the announcement of an impending mixtape.
The project was announced over the weekend and serves as the follow-up to LTAB's January 2016 effort which featured a sort of looking glass for what was to come the rest of the year. Featuring the likes of Jamila Woods, Kweku Collins, NoName, Ric Wilson, Ravyn Lenae and others, it reads like a map of our favorite releases from this year, and fittingly so. As always, the LTAB team is opening up the project for submissions for those in and around the community to get involved. The link for that is below, plus some words from the organizers themselves. Get your work over there, who knows what kind of company you could end up in.
““The LTAB Mixtape is an annual compilation of music from singers, songwriters, and emcees celebrating the Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Festival. In line with the LTAB 2017 theme — “Our Gwendolyn Brooks” — we ask that all presenting artists are woman-identifying. The deadline for submissions is DECEMBER 19, 2016.
When submitting your track, please be mindful that YCA, LTAB and associated programs are a safe space. NO racist, sexist, homophobic, gender-biased, ableist, ageist, anti-religious, transphobic language allowed””
