Chance the Rapper has expressed a desire to take his Black Star Line Festival to Kingston, Jamaica, during an interview with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. The Grammy winning rapper along with fellow Chicago native Vic Mensa have organized the festival, which has seen a successful run in Ghana earlier year with a lineup of renowned artists like Erykah Badu, Dave Chappelle, T-Pain, Jeremih, Sarkodie, Tobe Nwigwe, Asakaa Boys and M.anifest.
Chance discussed his plans for the festival and says he wants to duplicate the experience in different spaces around the world.
“It was magical. 52,000 people, the largest concert in the history of Ghana.” he said. “We’re actually thinking about hosting the next one in Kingston, Jamaica,” he explains. “We’re still working it out in our heads. And we love the city of Accra and Ghana and West Africa as a whole. We just want to continue to, like, create community in other spaces.”
Chance is the latest U.S. star with plans to stage a major event in the island as last year Grammy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told WMV that he would be open to staging the Grammys in Jamaica.
“I think we would consider that, there is a lot of opportunities, borders are coming down. With music you are seeing people come together and people from all different parts of the world loving other genres. Jamaica having Taylor(Swift) with the number 1 record is an amazing example of that, so where we have our show could change, where we honor music might widen. There might be a chance to do more work in serving music people around the world. There is a saying that talent is distributed evenly around the world but opportunity is not so, that would say to us we might need to take a look at other parts of the world, where we could have events,” he predicts.
Two weeks ago Chance tweeted that he is looking for inspiration from the dancehall community.
American artist Chance The Rapper is on the hunt for some inspiration from Jamaican songs. The Chicago rapper, real name Chancelor Johnathan Bennett made the call for recommendations on twitter saying: “Can someone put me on to some of their favorite songs from Jamaican Artists. It can be new or old, widely popular or hidden gems. Reggae, Dancehall, Riddim, mento literally whatever. Just need some music.”
Can someone put me on to some of their favorite songs from Jamaican Artists. It can be new or old, widely popular or hidden gems. Reggae, Dancehall, Riddim, mento literally whatever. Just need some music
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) February 11, 2023
Among the recommendations given to the celebrated independent artist are Beres Hammond, Ini Kamoze.
Other recommendations were Hideaway by Tessanne Chin.
The celebrated independent artist came on the scene on 2012 with he debut mixtape 10 Day, then got fame when he dropped Acid Rap. Bennett took the christian rap niche similar to Kanye West’s Sunday Service, labelling himself a “Christian Rapper.”
Chance The Rapper has always been connected to Africa and advocated for the connection between Americans and people living on the continent.
“For Black Americans and a lot of diasporas around the world, we don’t have that, you know, very easy access to the continent,” he said. “We’re typically taught our whole lives that it’s out of reach and it’s obviously extremely expensive to travel but once you finally get out to the continent, especially West Africa, you learn about the connections and the similarities and just the richness of the culture.”
He also has an upcoming album called “Star Line Gallery” that he says is in honor of Jamaica’s National Hero Marcus Garvey.
Garvey was the architect of the Black Star Liner, a campaign in the early 1900s to bring all black Americans back to settle in Africa with the slogan “Africa For Africans, Europe For Europeans”. The album’s many references to African land and ocean liners were inspired by his trip to Ghana at the start of 2022.
The title of the album and nature of the art pieces suggests that there may be a physical experience associated with the rollout in future.
“All of the new pieces of music that I’ve been putting out have been in collaboration with Black fine artists,” he said. “So not only am I like focused on the music but focused on the visuals, the art that’s connected to it.”
