Christian artist Chance The Rapper makes history with seven 2017 Grammy Nods on Tuesday morning, when the well respected music selection committee released the nomination list.
https://twitter.com/XXL/status/806139039904624640
The nominations are historical because Chance The Rapper is streaming music directly to fans and surpassing the traditional record label approach.
🚨 Grammy nominations 🚨 Beyoncé earns 9. Drake, Rihanna, and Kanye West each got 8 nods. Chance the Rapper with 7. https://t.co/5qrI0WWq7R pic.twitter.com/kprIvjIVKh
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) December 6, 2016
His Grammy nomination list includes, Best New Artist, Best Rap song and Best Rap Album for Chance’s latest mix tape, “Coloring Book.”
Lil Max, a social media follower of the rapper shared his two cents. Saying, the “7 nominations is proof God exists and that you don’t need to sign a label if art is what you produce. ”
Ok the fact that @chancetherapper has 7 nominations is proof God exists and that you don't need to sign a label if art is what you produce
— ⓜ™ (@maximartian) December 6, 2016
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The artist has received high praise from the general public, including this young woman, 21-year-old Hunter Blogs who has been listening to Chance since 2013.
Blogs told Faithwire that her ears first perked up and tuned into Chance’s music when the first mix tape “Acid Rap” was released.
To be exact, it was the mixed tape before his latest album and tour, Magnificent Coloring World Tour.
So, Blogs has been listening to the Chicago bred man for about three years now.
When asked the question, “How did you find him?”, the college aged woman stated that, “A lot of my friends were just listening to him, ‘I was just like oh, this sounds really cool’ so yeah, my roommate my freshman year went to one of his concerts and that’s when I started listening to him.”
The rapper’s soulful connection to faith, a sentiment expressed in his lyrics was not something that Blogs first noticed, saying,”It wasn’t until his collaboration with Donny Trumpet and the Social experiment, which was last year in 2015 when I actually realized a lot of his music had like Christian undertones and stuff like that.”
“Obviously I really like this last album he put out, it is very much influenced by Gospel music and I really appreciate that. What I like about his music, is that it reflects a lot about his relationships particularly with his family and I think that’s something connected with my faith.”
“I’m not very religious anymore but I was growing up, I grew up Catholic, my faith and my religion is very connected to my family, so I liked that he always talked about his family in his music. I think that’s kind of why it has those undertones, at least that is how I interpret it. And yeah, I don’t really think about it as much, but its there and it is definitely more prominent in this last album.”
Overall, “I enjoy his music (however) I don’t think about (his religion) too much, but I appreciate that he is unapologetic about it.”
“And it is really interesting that he’s as popular as he is with how much he mentions (his religion) because it is not that popular in rap music and hip hop to really talk about that.”
Other 2017 Grammy nominees include Justin Bieber for his album, “Purpose” and Beyonce’s “Formation” song, which is one of nine nomination for the Queen Bee.