The marriage of hip-hop and dance music is getting stronger every day, and here at DAD we're always looking out for what's next and now after some poking around we've got a question ourselves:
Is Skrillex Trying To Sign Chance The Rapper?
For those uninitiated, Chance The Rapper is the 20-year old Chicagoan behind the BET nominated Best Mixtape of the Year Acid Rap. Though many have speculated and assumed Chance would ultimately sign with a traditional major label or highly-respected artist label such as Kendrick Lamar's Top Dawg Entertainment, evidence gathered from social media accounts and interviews suggests that Skrillex is indeed courting the young wordsmith.
In an April interview with VIBE, Chance told the hip-hop publication that he had met Skrillex while he was in LA and that he and the OWSLA chief have worked on "some shit" and that "He's a homie of mine." Though we have not heard a beat or a bar from those revealed collaborative efforts, Chance's claims are further supported by a bevy of tweets, pictures, and interviews scattered across the internet.
Perhaps as telling as the VIBE interview, a Dazed Digital profile on Chance published in July further linked the two when it quoted Skrillex saying "He could write about a doorknob and make it fascinating" - additionally noting that the OWSLA leader had offered him "a place to crash" while he was in LA.
Though those two pieces of information are substantial in their own right, additional social media pieces further strengthen the connection again Last month Boys Noize, the other half of Skrillex's supergroup Dogblood and close friend, first instagramed this video:
before following it up with this tweet:
late night nyc studio w @chancetherapper @Skrillex — Boys Noize (@boysnoize) July 17, 2013
Skrillex and Chance's documented working relationship comes after hints of a budding friendship dating back to April. Whether it's Chance and Skrillex just instagraming chicken, or just hanging out and eating tacos there's no doubt that the two bright musical minds have not only developed a working relationship, but a personal one as well.
Perhaps equally as noteworthy as the friendliness of Skrillex and Chance's relationship is the social media from the OWSLA camp. Not only did Skrillex manager and guru Tim Smith mentioned Chance on twitter last night, but OWSLA founding partner, publicist, and brain trust Clayton Blaha has had twitter interaction with Chance as well confirming the connection.
@YungGroupon what's poppin — Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) May 12, 2013
Though the last piece of information here might seem innocuous, when you consider that Mr. Blaha (a noted hip-hop head himself) and Biz3 currently represents a wide range of hip-hop acts, it all starts to make sense.
Combining the laid out pieces above, it seems reasonable to suspect that Skrillex and OWSLA are indeed interested in signing Chance to their growing cultural force. Add in the fact that Chance is not only already very different from his contemporaries but that he's no stranger to working with electronic music producers like Nosaj Thing and we're left with some very interesting possibilities...
