Chance The Rapper finally got Katie Couric up in here — here being Chicago, and more specifically, the inimitable Harold’s Chicken Shack — for an interview with Yahoo! and provided some inside baseball as to how his iconic “3” hat came to be.
Chance the Rapper has the Chicago White Sox to thank for his iconic 3 hat
A failed deal with the White Sox led to the creation of Chance’s new look.
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
White Sox fans, cover your eyes.
Originally, the cover of his “Coloring Book” album was set to feature the Chicago rapper wearing the Sox hat he’d been rocking in public for the last few years, but a little bit of karma got in the way.
As Chance explains it, he’d wanted to strike a deal with the Sox to become a team “spokesman” a few seasons back when his band, The Social Experiment, started using the team’s moniker as shorthand for their act.
The Sox said no. So Chance tried again in 2016. And they said no again, but they did let him narrate a few commercials for the team as well as throw out the first pitch on opening day.
It was also around this time that Chance started producing limited edition hats for the team that were essentially mashups between The Social Experiment and White Sox logos.
ESPN reported last April that the south side native was even set to become a team ambassador. According to Chance, that deal was never completed.
Which brings us to the cover art for “Coloring Book”.
Chance originally wanted to wear a White Sox hat in the image. But seeing as how the team never really held up their end of the bargain, he didn’t feel beholden to the idea of repping them. Instead he decided to create his own look: the “3” hat.
That turned out to be serendipitous, as Chance notes, the album won three Grammy awards.
The White Sox went on to lose 84 games and are now in the midst of a rebuild.
Moral of the story: Take your chance with this rapper.
