In the two-and-a-half years he's been in the national spotlight, Chance the Rapper has made a name for himself as himself as one of his generation's most musically adventurous rappers. Yet as he tweeted yesterday (Jan. 25), he's long wished he could be in a rap duo with someone who seems more interested in stripping away the genre's excess elements and striking at its very core.

Earl Sweatshirt, the onetime Odd Future wunderkind, dropped one of last year's most insular, most virtuosic records with March's I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside. Though the title would suggest a depressed, introspective mood, the tone is actually closer to pointed self-improvement. In any event, the Los Angeles native is one of rap's sharpest writers.

Chance has long been teasing his third solo mixtape, which will serve as the proper follow-up to his 2013 breakthrough, Acid Rap. That LP broke several streaming sites upon its release; it came in the wake of #10Day, which made him popular among younger hip-hop fans in his native Chicago. He most recently contributed to Surf, the album made by his creative collective The Social Experiment and officially credited to Donnie Trumpet.

Though neither has indicated that any collaboration is in the works, Chance's tweet came after Earl had posted a message about the necessity of collaboration in hip-hop. Since his de facto departure from Odd Future, Earl has worked repeatedly with the Long Beach rapper Vince Staples.