In 1993, while Adobe was launching the PDF, a star by the name of Chancelor Johnathan Bennett had made his way to Earth. Today, he’s known to the world as Chance the Rapper, and both entities continue to produce ideas that spark inspiration for the current generation of creatives.

Recently, the pair joined forces to announce Adobe Acrobat Studio, a groundbreaking platform that combines trusted PDF tools, an AI-powered assistant and Adobe Express to redefine productivity and creativity. 

The moment comes at the perfect time, as Chance’s highly anticipated second studio album, Star Line, just recently released. On tracks like “Tree” and “The Negro Problem,” the album showcases the Chicago native’s talents as he explores his roots and lineage as a Black American with ties to the Deep South and the motherland.

“It’s a huge honor, any time I get to work with platforms that help creatives or help people organize,” he told Blavity regarding his latest partnership with Adobe. “I think what I loved about working with Adobe was, to be honest, the commercial. I had a lot of fun just shooting on set with Hasan [Minhaj] and Kristin [Chenoweth]; it was like they let us ad-lib and have fun on set, making a fake audition thing happen. That level of creativity that comes with creating the PDFs around the project, and getting content out to people that makes them think, helps them organize or helps them create, is why I make music. So to be able to do that with somebody as big as Adobe, across all the different applications and software that they put out there, is pretty cool.”

Exploring his family roots

Songs like aforementioned “Tree” (featuring Smino and Lil Wayne) that are included on Chance’s 17-track project pay direct homage to his family lineage, specifically his mother’s roots in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina.

This same small town in the nation’s southern region was the connecting piece in getting India.Arie’s “Video,” which is sampled on the song, cleared for use.

“It’s been such a beautiful process, and I’m glad that it showed in the music. I think people are getting a rich understanding of who I am, how I see the world, what the world is like, and what and how they see themselves through the album,” Chance said. “That was exactly what was happening with me: conversations with my grandmother, where she just explained her involvement with the movement, and getting to go to my family reunion a couple years ago.”

“What’s a real fun and crazy anecdotal story that I haven’t told yet… [is about] not necessarily knowing the importance of our ancestors and what kind of crazy big roles they play in the movement and the world at large,” he continued. “A few years back, my dad threw a surprise 60th birthday party for my mom, this is maybe two years ago, and it was in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, where my mom’s whole family is from. It’s a very small town, like 2,000 people tops, and we have a history of sharecropping, and are descendants of slaves, so we have an important conversation every year where we learn about our history. We go to the church on Sunday and they go through the lineage of who begot who. But what I didn’t know until I was trying to clear this record — I ended up speaking with India.Arie’s creative director, who I was put in contact with by Miss Arie to talk through the record because that’s her girl.”

Chance added, “I was nervous about the phone call I was going to have with this woman, her name is Hilda. And what’s crazy, I remember driving, I was on 95th Street, thinking about what I was going to say because the song is important to me. I wanted it to be on my record. I wanted it to be my single. I wanted to honor my mother. I wanted to bring all these words, ideas and identities that aren’t on the radio to the forefront, and I didn’t want to mess up that call. When I called her, I was blown away to find out that this woman who’s close to India.Arie actually lived in Pilot Mountain for years and owned the only Black business on Main Street. Just for a little bit of context, as a family, we don’t even go on Main Street. My entire childhood, going to family reunions out there, we stayed at the house, especially after dark.”

Not only is “Tree” an ode to his mother, but the road to making the song also holds personal significance for Chance, as it was divine intervention that allowed for the song to make its way onto the album.

“For the first time ever, my dad was able to organize this party for my mother years ago, and I found out that Hilda, India.Arie’s creative consultant and manager owned the only Black building where we were able to throw my mom’s birthday party. So she met me and my whole family, understood my history, understood what I was talking about on the song, and it was through her that India.Arie gave me the blessing to sample it, and found out that this, you know, rich, cultural history, this connection to Pilot [Mountain] and our histories was shared by me and Miss Arie, not even through blood, but through experience,” Chance revealed. “It was deep to me and deeply humbling. If this woman hadn’t taken a chance on being a Black woman store owner in Pilot Mountain, of all places, and if my father hadn’t gotten connected with her through my mother’s family in North Carolina, this song probably would have never come out.”

‘Star Line’ may be Chance the Rapper’s most self-reflective album to date

As someone who found success early on in the current digital age of music, Chance broke barriers when, in 2017, he became the first artist to have a streaming-only album, Coloring Book, to be nominated for and win a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. It was a victory that highlighted the evolving landscape of how consumers consume music, and it was an early indicator of the success found today on streaming services. 

With Star Line, however, Chance is not only uncovering his roots, he’s returned to them by going back to the basics of face-to-face interaction. He is hosting a series of private listening parties called Writings on the Wall, where fans are able to kick back, listen to the unreleased songs, and even jot down their ideas while journaling throughout the experience. Now that the project is out, he’s hosting the parties across cities like Miami, Houston, Atlanta and his hometown of Chicago, where he’s personally handing out physical CD copies of the album and greeting his supporters — something that is almost unheard of in today’s age of social media, streaming and beyond.

“I feel like there’s a lot of fear, especially once you’ve tasted multiple successes and you’ve also felt misunderstood or not appreciated afterwards,” Chance said when asked what it means to restore the nostalgic feeling of experiencing music as he did as a kid of the ’90s and early 2000s. 

“I think there’s a bit of confidence that goes away sometimes, and so, to be celebrated, and being intentional and sticking to my roots or going back to my roots, it’s a validating feeling that I’ve damn near never felt before. I also feel like I learned everything that I know by example. That’s why the album is so referential, because I’m a part of a movement, like the movement didn’t happen in the ’60s, it didn’t happen in the ’20s. The movement is ongoing. And so to plug into something so important, and to know that whatever I add to this is going to be the tool for the next generation to use, it adds a level of importance and precaution to everything that I say and that I do.”

There were times when he had to redirect artists featured on the album

Later in the interview, Chance got vulnerable, noting that there were moments in the process of making the album that he had to ensure that everyone was on one accord when it came to the messaging and the story that he wanted to tell on the project. This was especially true when themes of identity, resilience, legacy and community, mainly within the Black experience, were involved.

“I said I wasn’t gonna say this, but I’m just not gonna be too specific,” he said. “There were a few verses that I got back on the album that were fantastic, but maybe not necessarily going to push the movement in the direction I wanted to go, or maybe like delegitimize a little bit of what I was trying to do, and I had to gain a lot of courage to talk to these also amazing writers and amazing recording artists to be like, ‘You know, I would never censor anybody, but if you’re getting on this train, you got to know that it’s going in one direction.’ I think I added a level of importance to what I was saying, but also in the same right, trying to make sure that all of the co-captains of the ship know where we’re headed.”

Check out the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio here and take a deep dive into the six-year process that led to the creation of Chance the Rapper’s Star Line.