Given who Chance The Rapper is — a relentlessly creative and morally driven young rapper from Chicago’s South Side — it’s not exactly a surprise that he idolizes Kanye West. In a new interview with The Guardian, Chance says that he one wanted “Kanye to be my dad” and that “The kid in me wanted a certain type of approval [from West]” — something he recently got when West recently shouted him out onstage in Ottawa. Chance has lately been teasing a West collab, but they almost did something together earlier. In that same interview, Chance says that West almost served as the narrator for Surf, the incredible album from Chance’s group Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment: “Yah, he was going to narrate it at one point. In the final weeks of getting ready to put it out, we had vocal chops that we were using from ‘Ye, talking about some of the themes of the project. Through just thinking about it, it didn’t end up happening that way. Not to say it wouldn’t have been dope as shit!” It would’ve absolutely been cool to hear West’s voice on Surf, but it’s not like that album needed someone explaining its themes. It’s one of the year’s best as is.

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