So many local hip-hop artists have helped me see the city anew through their work that I doubt I could name them all. Chicago hip-hop followed up on a tremendous 2016 with a flood of great releases that helped me get through the lows of 2017: to pick just three, Joseph Chilliams’s cheeky and tender Henry Church, Cupcakke’s brash and ecstatic Queen Elizabitch, and G Herbo’s introspective and ferocious Humble Beast.
In the case of Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, who wrote a commentary about Chance’s child-support case two days after he donated $1 million to the Chicago Public Schools in March, I don’t have to guess whether she did her research. She was happy when Chance won his Grammys, she wrote, even though she “hadn’t heard a single lyric the 23-year-old penned.” Mitchell’s column suggests that Chance would tarnish his squeaky-clean image if he gave his child and her mother a raw deal right after that extravagant gift to CPS. But Chance isn’t a cartoon goody two-shoes: on much of his best material, he paints himself as profoundly flawed. As it so happens, the case was resolved amicably a couple weeks later (both sides’ lawyers remarked on how speedy and civil the proceedings were), but that made Mitchell look even more like she was inventing a possible scandal for clicks. Chance isn’t above criticism—the music press pounced on him after news broke that his team had pressured MTV to spike a mildly negative piece—but this isn’t so much criticism as it is salacious speculation.
