In a recent interview with GQ Magazine, Chance said that he got some interesting career advice from Obama at a White House event. The event was also attended by DJ Khaled, Alicia Keys and Nicki Minaj, and aimed to discuss the My Brother’s Keeper initiative and criminal justice reform.
For Chance though, the day was beneficial on a personal level, as he got some advice from probably one of the best advisors in the world.
Chance said,
“At the end [of the meeting], everybody takes a group photo, and he’s signing stuff. And he keeps pushing me to the back, and I’m like, ‘I don’t understand why he won’t sign my shit.’ And he makes me wait till the end, and then he brings me up to his office, and we had a really good conversation about what I was working on. He told me I needed to start selling my music.”
He continued, “He’s a good man. Even if he wasn’t president, if his ass worked at, like, Red Lobster, he’d be just a good man working at Red Lobster.”
Chance’s third mixtape Coloring Book, which came out in May, was released exclusively on Apple Music, and the rapper is yet to sell an album. The Obamas are huge fans of the tape apparently, with Chance adding in the interview;
“Oh yeah. They’re bumping Coloring Book hard up there. If you go up there, you’ll probably hear Coloring Book. This is not a joke at all.
“Malia [Obama] listens to Coloring Book. And I send them stuff sometimes. I haven’t seen Malia since I was a kid. I think [Malia and Sasha] were both in school the day that I went up there recently, but Barack was talking about it. Or, uh, President Obama was talking about it.”
Obama released his summer playlist earlier this month, and Chance’s “Acid Rap” featured on it.