Now here’s a story sure to warm your heart.
Plenty of people know Chance the Rapper for his three critically-acclaimed albums and frequent collaborations with industry mainstays like Kanye West and Childish Gambino. But Chance has really stepped things up with his latest foray into the public eye: he’s leaving the music industry and his career behind to start teaching introductory trigonometry at a public high school in Chicago!
Wow! Following budget cuts to the Chicago Public Schools at both the state and federal levels, ol’ Chancelor Bennett saw a real philanthropic need — and boy oh boy, did he fill it. Immediately halting his nationwide tour and cutting off all creative efforts towards a new mixtape, this former rapper is now filling in as a math teacher at Paul Robeson High School, a South Side school that has been struggling to make ends meet amid slashed funding and ailing political support.
“Mr. ‘the Rapper’ has been a real godsend,” commented James Elroy, vice principal at Robeson High. “I mean, I’d rather we had a city political apparatus that valued public education, but having Chance step in to teach third period math is a great solution, too.”
Well, looks like problem solved, everyone; goodbye Chance the Rapper, hello Chance the Teacher!
“I used to think that my life’s passion was creating music,” Chance said.
“But now I know that my true calling is making up for institutional failures and a racialized education gap by personally teaching 25 to 30 teenagers the half-angle formula and how to convert from degrees to radians every day, 2:00 to 3:15.”
“I also coach the Model UN team,” he added.
This is just the latest in a series of hip hop stars putting charity before music. Last month, Toronto legend Drake cut the unemployment rate in Miami to an astounding 0 percent after donating his entire net worth to residents who’d been left destitute by generations of poverty embedded in a system that overwhelmingly put corporate profit before social welfare programs.
Neat!