On Sunday, November 9, Chance the Rapper was given the Outstanding Youth of the Year Award by the state of Illinois. The rapper took to twitter right away to share the news. “’For your outstanding contributions to the youth of the State of Illinois’ it’s an honor to bear that weight,” the young rapper tweeted. He also shared a picture of him and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel on his Instagram account with the caption, “I received the most important award I will ever win today”.
Chance the Rapper got the award for his work with his father on the #SaveChicago campaign. The campaign aims to spread the word about gun and gang-related violence in the city of Chicago. The rapper has spoken openly about how he was affected personally by violence especially after an incident where one of his friends was killed in a street brawl.
“For your outstanding contributions to the youth of the State of Illinois” it’s an honor to bear that weight pic.twitter.com/YvsOmxU4SG
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) November 9, 2014
Chance talked about the incident with MTV News. “I watched it happen,” he said in the interview. “He was 19 when it happened, I was 18, and I just turned 20 this year. It’s just crazy because I have a few friends that were older than me, but now I’m older than them.”
He also explained that he is baffled by how people tend to romanticize life in Chicago despite the fact that murder is pretty much an everyday occurrence. “People wanna romanticize it and say, ‘there’s two sides to it, and it’s a beautiful love/hate story of violence and music.’ But it’s really just a very scummy place where people don’t have respect for other people’s lives. And it’s not gonna change until somebody, anybody, puts it right in front of everybody else’s faces.”
Recently, Chance the Rapper appeared in the Adult Swim animated series Black Dynamite as the voice of Bob Marley. He was joined in the episode by Erykah Badu, who voiced the roles of a prostitute as well as Marley’s wife, Rita.
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) November 10, 2014
Tonight @chancetherapper is Jamaican #BlackDynamite https://t.co/5Q5suqTZ13
— [adult swim] (@adultswim) November 8, 2014
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