Chance the Rapper and his collaborators are looking back on Coloring Book a decade later, unpacking how the project came together and what it meant for their lives. In a new oral history, they describe the mixtape’s creation as a chaotic, faith‑driven leap at a time when none of them fully understood the industry they were shaking up.
Chance recalls recording in makeshift spaces, juggling label pressure and trusting a vision that blended gospel, rap and Chicago energy in ways that felt risky in 2016. Producers and writers talk about songs morphing constantly and clearances being figured out on the fly, with no one realising how historic the project would become. Complex’s feature pulls together these memories and more here.
The piece also revisits how Coloring Book became the first streaming‑only project to win a Grammy, shifting conversations about what “mixtapes” and independent releases could do in awards spaces. Collaborators admit they didn’t fully grasp the scale of that moment as it was happening, even as it raised expectations for everything Chance put out afterward.
Ten years on, the mixtape sits in a complicated place in his catalogue, seen by many as both career peak and impossible benchmark. Complex’s oral history gives fans a more nuanced sense of the community, experimentation and naivety that fuelled it, beyond the tidy narratives that hardened later, and you can read it here.
