We are at a diner in West Hollywood. And he tells me this story. Never told it before, he says, but somehow it occurred.

“When I was younger, my grandma said a prayer over me that damn near sounded like a curse.”

This was maybe three years ago—so, after he'd made 10 Day, the mischievously cheerful mixtape he recorded while on suspension from high school for “weed-related activities,” and either just before or just after Acid Rap, the bratty, beatific record that helped make him famous among rap fans and actual rappers, a guy who Kanye West would share festival bills with and later invite to the studio, to work on The Life of Pablo. A guy who then got the opportunity to turn down every major record label in existence, which is what he did and continues to do. Acid Rap, as in acid jazz, but also as in the fact that he wrote and recorded plenty of the record on actual acid. “I was just doing a lot of drugs, just hanging out. I was gone all the time.”

One day he went over to his grandmother's house.

“And she looked me in the eyes and she said, ‘I don't like what's going on.’ She said, ‘I can see it in your eyes. I don't like this.’ And she says, ‘We're gonna pray.’ And she prayed for me all the time. Like, very positive things. But this time, she said, ‘Lord, I pray that all things that are not like You, You take away from Chance. Make sure that he fails at everything that is not like You. Take it away. Turn it into dust.’ ”

He appreciated the benediction. But also: “I'm thinking, like, damn, I don't even know if God likes rap! You know what I'm saying? Is she praying that I fail at everything I'm trying to do?”

But then he decided to take it how she meant it, which was: as a blessing. As fate. What he succeeded at would have God in it, somewhere. What he failed at would not. He embraced his own lack of control: “Things that you push so hard to get, and they don't work out—I don't dwell on them as much, because she said that. You know? Because it makes me feel like, you know…everything is mapped out.”

Los Angeles is a weird, complicated town for him. It's where all the record labels are, for one thing. And Chancelor Bennett, as he was born, is unsigned. Won't sign. It's maybe the most interesting, improbable music-industry story going right now—a young, obviously gifted rapper, universally hailed as the heir to Kanye and leader of a new generation of Internet-savvy kids who think of Jay Z as a failed tech entrepreneur, now on his fourth year of refusing to sign with a label. People find out he's in town and his phone starts ringing. These days he just ignores it. Hides out in places like this one, Mel's Drive-In, on Sunset, where he eats constantly when he's in town, surrounded by old-school diner waitresses in red lipstick.

At this point, Chance says, he's refusing to sign out of spite as much as anything else. “Just in terms of, like, those guys being able to say that they got me. That's what they want to do. It's like a fucking dick-swinging contest, where they all just brag about who they recently got. And so I'm definitely not trying to be a part of their dick-swinging contest. I'm staying far away from all dick-swinging.”

Plus, he doesn't need their money. “I make my money off of touring and merchandise. And I'm lucky I have really loyal fans that understand how it works and support. I don't see myself ever being in a position where I need to sign to a label.”

*GQ couldn't reach James Blake before this story went to press, but afterward he supplied this statement in response: “We’d very loosely and playfully daydreamed about getting somewhere to live/work for a little while, but never discussed specifics. We wanted to work together on something, so Chance invited me to the house he said he’d rented for him and his friends....I turned up and he told me my name was on the lease, which was creepy because I’d never signed anything. I’d never and still have never heard of Koi Kastle, had never seen a picture of the home and had never been to or known the existence of the area it was in. Then he went on MTV and said we were living together, and so to this day many people still think we are.”

So yeah, Los Angeles, a monument to a swung dick. But also, he tried to live here for six months and damn near lost his God. This was in 2014. He'd released Acid Rap the year before. Gone on tour with Macklemore. Moved here at the end of December in a pill fog, like a young rock star, and lived a young rock star's life. He got a place in North Hollywood, signed a lease on it with the mournful English songwriter James Blake. They called it the Koi Kastle. “It was like a big-ass rapper mansion.” Then Blake removed himself from the lease and left Chance to pay the whole rent. Chance set up a studio there. “I had the pool. I had the movie theater. I had the basketball court. I was doing it real big. I was Xanned out every fucking day.” He had instruments all over the house. He'd wake up in the morning and blast gospel music. In time he made local friends: Jeremih, BJ the Chicago Kid, J. Cole, Frank Ocean. “A lot of those people would be at my house constantly.”*

He will admit to some questionable decision-making during this time. He worked for actual months on a cover of the theme song to the animated TV show Arthur. Recorded a song or two with James Blake, when Blake was around. Mostly just hung out, did drugs, saw girls. Had the kind of nights you'd hope he might have. “I was on a date one time at the crib, and we're sitting in the front room, maybe rolling up some weed or something.” Frank Ocean was downstairs, somewhere. “And then Frank just comes up and starts playing the piano and lightly singing in the background of our date. Obviously, that scored me a lot of points with this female.” A reclusive genius serenading two kids, the sun setting over the valley. “But it wasn't where I was supposed to be.”

After a while, it started getting to him, the emptiness of whatever it was he was doing. Or not doing. “I was just fucking tweaking. I was a Xan-zombie, fucking not doing anything productive and just going through relationship after relationship after relationship. Mind you, this is six months. So think about, like, how could you even do that?”

“Oh yeah. They're bumping Coloring Book hard up there [at the White House]. If you go up there, you'll probably hear Coloring Book. This is not a joke at all.”

So he decided to move back to Chicago. Got demons out of his life. Got back to his God, got back to the Chicago in him—all the things that would eventually pump through Coloring Book like blood. Got back with his girlfriend, too. They got pregnant. “I think it was the baby that, you know, brought my faith back.” The heaviness of the responsibility. But also the terror of it. “My daughter, when she was still in utero, she had, they call it atrial flutters. It's kind of like an irregular heartbeat. But when you're in utero, it's real hard to detect and also to treat. Sometimes you have to get a C-section so they can operate on the baby. Never told this to anyone.” It made him and his girl closer. “And it made me pray a whole lot, you know, and need a lot of angels and just see shit in a very, like, direct way. And…you know, God bless everything, it worked out well.” Kinsley Bennett. Born healthy in September of last year. Chance almost vibrating from the energy it brought out in him.

Soon after, Chance started thinking about making Coloring Book. All he had, at the beginning, was a set of themes: God, love, Chicago, dance. He rented out a room in a Chicago studio, and then a second room. “And then we started bringing in more producers and more vocalists and a choir and an orchestra, and at a certain point we were like, ‘Okay, now we need three rooms.’ And eventually we decided to rent out the whole studio, and we just put mattresses in all the rooms and it became a camp.”