“I’m On” When I ask what transformed him into his stage name, Chance fingers the bill of his signature “Paris is Burning” snapback— the phrase stamped on a metal plate—and answers in all seriousness, “Well, a spaceship landed on a farm in Indiana...” before his mouth gives way to a modest smirk, developing like Polaroid film in the light. He pauses for a second before answering again. “I believe that life experiences push you into who you’re supposed to be. I think I was shaped to be Chancellor Warhol.” He crosses his arms, bringing attention to his tattoo collection. The muted ink designs look more like delicate watercolor sketches than dark markings. On his left arm, I make out Edgar Allan Poe’s line “Take thy beak from out my heart,” positioned next to a raven with a heart in its beak. Chance describes his initial inspiration, “I was watching the original Batman, and before the Joker shoots Bruce Wayne, he says that phrase. I knew then that I needed to get it tattooed.” Chance lifts his right shirt sleeve and I recognize another, this one a mostly-complete replica of Salvador Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres. To him, it represents the wom-
en in his life—his mom, sister, and others, past and present, who’ve impacted him. “It reminds me that you creatures are the essence of life.” His new last name was in the making ever since Chance was twelve. As a gift, his mother gave him a pillow stamped with a print of the pop god’s iconic Campbell’s tomato soup can, and when Chance first saw it, he thought, I wanna draw this! Just like that, he was hooked. “I became a sponge for art,” he confirms. Like Roald Dahl’s Matilda, whose quest for knowledge supersedes the classroom, Chance sought answers the only way he knew how—by frequenting the library. “There was no internet then,” he explains, hinting to his age. But books work like Wikipedia linkchasing: one interest leads to the discovery of another, and Andy Warhol soon became Chance’s portal to not only Postmodern art, but to the formation of his identity.
“Dope.Fly.Fresh” He found companionship in the work of Warhol, Dalí, and Lichtenstein before falling for music, but the second followed closely behind. When hip hop, grunge, and punk rock were ruling his adolescence, his mother was introducing him to the clas-
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