Chancelor Bennett, known as Chance the Rapper, is a Black American rapper born in Chicago on April 16, 1993. He grew up in West Chatham, a middle-class neighborhood on the city's South Side. His early projects circulated online, and he described free distribution as a way to connect directly with listeners. In a 2017 interview, he also identified touring and merchandise as sources of income, a model that kept his music free while the career around it stayed his own.
His third mixtape, Coloring Book, became the first mixtape to reach the Billboard 200 based solely on streaming, entering at number eight. At the 2017 Grammy Awards it won Best Rap Album, and Bennett received Best New Artist; "No Problem," with Lil Wayne and Tauheed Epps, won Best Rap Performance. The Recording Academy records him as the first streaming-only artist to win a Grammy, with three wins and nine nominations across the 2017, 2020 and 2022 ceremonies.
That independence was unusual at the time. His records never went on sale in the traditional sense, yet they charted beside major-label releases, and his Grammy wins arrived without a record deal behind them. At the 2017 ceremony, an artist who gave his music away took three awards home.
In March 2017, Bennett announced a $1 million donation to the Chicago Public Schools Foundation for arts and educational programs, telling the crowd at a press conference, "Today, I'm proud to announce that I am donating $1 million to CPS' Arts and Enrichment Programming." His nonprofit SocialWorks carried the work forward. By 2026, the organization had directed $5.6 million to 56 Chicago public schools for classroom renovations, equipment and arts education, support aimed at the same creative and educational opportunities in his home city that his own South Side upbringing had given him.
