The White Sox, New Era, and Chicago-based rapper Chance the Rapper have announced a partnership that will feature three new White Sox snap-back hats and a new commercial featuring Chance. Chance, who grew up in Chicago’s West Chatham neighborhood, will be throwing out the first pitch before Friday’s White Sox home opener against the Indians as well as doing voice overs for White Sox commercials throughout the season.
For Chance, this announcement continues an impressive start to 2016, after already being featured on fellow Chicago south sider Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” (from The Life Of Pablo). In 2015 Chance released Surf with his band The Social Experiment (a band whose acronym is SOX), performed his music on national late shows including Saturday Night Live and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and was the face of the Warmest Winter charity to provide homeless Chicagoans with coats.
If it’s not abundantly clear from this write-up, I am both a huge fan of Chance’s music and impressed with his work as a person. His album Acid Rap is one of my all-time favorites (since its release in 2013 it is probably the single album I have listened to the most), so seeing him team up with the White Sox is incredibly cool (and as the only member of the BP Southside staff too young to legally drink beer, I speak for The Youth). It’s also cool to see the White Sox, whose games generally feature music made before I was born, associate themselves with such a young, talented musician. And man, these hats. I absolutely love the design of these hats, and will likely attempt to acquire one of my own when they go on sale.
On Ultralight Beam, Chance raps “I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail”. Hopefully whatever magic Chance acquired from Ye will be spread to the White Sox, and they see a similar lack of failure with their new brand ambassador.
Lead photo via Chicago White Sox