Update: 2:36 PM EST (July 17, 2018) – It looks like we’re not getting a new Chance The Rapper album this week after all. The musician debunked the Internet chatter with a single tweet, which was sent to his nearly 8 million followers. While he said there’s no new album in the immediate future, he is indeed in the studio working on new material.
Sorry no album this week, def been in the stu tho. 😎
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) July 17, 2018
—
According to a new interview with the Chicago Tribune, Chance The Rapper confirmed that he will drop a new album later this week. While he divulged that the highly-anticipated follow-up to Coloring Book will be here by week’s end, Lil Chano didn’t say exactly how it will be released.
“I’ve never been against selling music,” the recently-engaged rapper told the Tribune’s Greg Kot. He’s attempting to keep his rollout options as open as possible. “Music has value. I put my music out there for free because I wanted people to see and notice it as a beacon for what I’m doing, in terms of how unorthodox I wanted my approach and my delivery of each piece of music to be.”
However, Chance is looking at both sides of the coin. He explains that there are limitless options because of all of the ways musicians can connect with fans. Keeping that in mind, the musician notes some of the bigger issues he may face.
“…there are so many more platforms now, a bunch of streaming sites,” he continued. “The bigger concern for artists now is navigating the legal issues of owning your music, your publishing, your distribution. It has been difficult for me to release music with artists who work with the majors. A lot of stuff I’ve worked on hasn’t come out since Coloring Book because it’s hard when collaborating with artists limited by record deals.”
Chance also discussed his collaborative album with his friend and idol, Kanye West–a project separate from the one dropping this week. They reportedly worked on a pair of songs “casually” during Chance’s recent visit to Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“I don’t know of a timeline on it yet, the trajectory of it, but he’s coming here to work on it some more,” he said. “We’ve just started making it, but I don’t want to manipulate the situation and impose any time frame, because that can hinder you.”