14 Things We Learned From Chance The Rapper's Zane Lowe Interview

Chance The Rapper's Coloring Book has received nearly universal praise since its release earlier this month, and while there's already been a large amount of writing on the subject, there is still much to be told by its creator, Chancelor Bennet, who sat down with Zane Lowe today to discuss the project. The hour-long conversation also featured some never before heard music, mainly in the form of early demos from both Chance and Kanye's albums. We learned about some possible collaborative projects down the line, Chance's gospel influence, and the sessions that birthed the music we hear today. Click through the galleries to find some of the more interesting tangents from the interview.

Kanye had called me when I was in Chicago and said I want to help you in any way I can... He hit me and said 'I want you to come out for 4 days'. We all went over to Kanye's spot, and after a few hours of all these deep conversations... He asked us to pull up the track... he starts doing his Kanye dance to it, and then he says "OK, I fuck with it." Take all the drums off of it... Ye says 'pull up the MPC... and he records drums in a way I've never seen before he records everything live off the MPC... He does it literally in one take... all of the drums that you hear on the track as they are now. Less than 5 seconds after he does that one take, he goes back and freestyles over it. 

Francis of Francis & The Lights supplied a vocal effect that will also be on Kanye and Frank Ocean's upcoming albums

Whenever they talk about [Francis'] vocal sound, they call it auto-tune. Or they say this sounds a lot like Bon Iver. Justin, who Francis worked with, and showed a lot of this musical styling to, uses a very similar harmonizer effect, but there's a very special effect that Francis does, and it's called prismizer. It's gonna be on Kanye's album and it's on Frank's album... he'll take a vocal and very similar to a vocoder, instead of it being singular keys though, he builds choral sound around it. It sounds like a choir. When you first hear Ye's vocal come in, it sounds like 15 cyborgs all singing in auto-tune. Really, it's one vocal with Francis saying this is the 3rd and the 5th and the 7th... It resembles the choir sound that I've been trying to get forever, but it also makes it kind of futurist at the same time. And that's kind of one of the all-encompassing things about the album.

Coloring Book was inspired by Kirk Franklin and Chance's time spent in L.A.

All of this music kind of came from me moving to Los Angeles. I moved out here at the beginning of 2014 and stayed out here only for about 4 or 5 months. But at that time I felt like I was kind of losing my God. I kind of got rid of that feeling by filling all of my time, really filling the whole neighborhood with this Kirk Franklin sound. We had the craziest speaker system.. It was the big dumbass mention that I never should have rented. Every morning starting at 6AM we'd get up and crank Kirk Franklin... it led me to understand and know that my next project would be founded in God and founded in my faith.

Chance doesn't like to call his music gospel

I never made anything that could pretend to be new gospel or THE gospel. It's music from me as a Christian man, before I was making music as a Christian child. In both of these cases, I have imperfections. I think there was a declaration that could be made out of going through all of this that I've gone through in the past 2 years. 

He also doesn't think The Life Of Pablo is gospel, at least in the traditional sense

When Kanye said that he was making a gospel album, he did not mean gospel the genre at all. He's talking about in terms of telling a story and recording a historic happening and documenting it. I think a lot of people got lost in the fact that he said it was a gospel anthem and that I also rapped a bunch of historical christian bars on it.

He wants young people to be able to talk about God

I still think that God means everything to everyone, whether they understand it or not, or can really see for themselves where they find God. I know for a fact that we're not pushed or promoted to speak about God with fervor... I think the new generation is all about freedom and the ability to do what we want. We're not free unless we can talk about God. 

He and Kanye might be teaming up to make "Good Ass Job"

The making of my album and the making of his album were very separate, but connected in that we had a lot of good conversations together... I think the main thing that we want to connect on is this project called Good Ass Job. That's a thing that we talked about a long time ago, and everything that we've been working on has kind of been a piece of it.

Big Sean, J. Cole, and Jeremih Collaborations were blocked from being put on the album

This Big Sean that was supposed to be on the project that got stopped. You probably couldn't play it on the broadcast because it wasn't a cleared single. Sean, Jeremih, and Cole all toured together, and those are like my three best friends in music. We had three songs together, and they all got stopped... Jeremih was on three or four songs on Coloring Book.

🙏🏾 yeah I don't do too much https://t.co/XwzYXl5Se8

He hinted at a Jay Electronica collaborative project

I like making mixtapes. I might make a mixtape with Jay Electronica a soon -- I might take a tape with anybody -- let me stop doing that [laughs]

Me and Justin met actually after we made ‘Confident’ so I won’t say we were friends when we made ‘Confident’ but I was a fan. We met at Coachella and hung out all day that day before I went on stage. And it wasn’t until right before I went on stage that he was like you want me to come out for a song and I said yeah that’s have a dance battle and we did it and he crushed me but only because I was so tired. I had been performing all day.

There is a Chicago version of the record that will come out at some point, and it does have the people that I wanted to have on the record... I don't need to say [who's on it]. It will come out. It's huge.

He supplied the reference for Kanye's verses for "Waves" and also had a verse on "Famous" back when it was called "Nina Chop"

(Previews start at 21:40)

A world tour is in the works

So we’ll be in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, definitely gotta go back to Europe and I think a very important thing we are trying to work out right now is being in Africa outside of being in South Africa. And then maybe we’ll do something in America. Starts in September