Chance The Rapper’s highly anticipated album, Star Line, was a lifetime in the making.
On paper, the body of work was a running thought for just a few years. However, the experiences outlined and topics explored were accumulated across Chance’s lifetime. From gun violence to medical warfare, the Chicago native’s work started with the rattling question, how did things get to this point, and his findings quickly filled Chance’s rap book.
One of Star Line‘s most unearthing tracks is “The Negro Problem,” so it was only right that Chance The Rapper selected it as his official The Late Show with Stephen Colbert sign-off.
Chance’s piercing performance of the record, which was inspired by the groundbreaking civil rights work of Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington, could not have been more timely.
As comparative then-and-now graphics of inner city violence and medical mistreatment of Black patients, Chance The Rapper sternly declares that these tragedies aren’t just impacting Black Americans.
“Keep your head on a swivel because the pistols got switches on them / And even lil’ sticks got extensions on them / It’s out a long way from some whippings, don’t it? / It’s all the same road, with some distance on it / Now it’s train police and it’s school police / It’s gon’ be police at the balloon release / Being real, that’s business as usual here / Look alive, you could die at a funeral here / It’s a lot of complaints, but we just can’t file ’em / Open case, shut case, still won’t solve ’em,” raps Chance.
While discussing the record with Ebony, back in October 2025, Chance detailed the making of “The Negro Problem.”
“A lot of the interviews I would watch from the Dick Cavett shows, and interviews with Malcolm X, would talk about this thing called ‘The Negro Problem,'” said Chance. “At that time, a buzzword or a question they would ask Black people who were intellectuals, ‘Well, how do we solve the negro problem?'”
He continued: “I found out about this book of essays that Booker T. Washington put together with a bunch of other writers called ‘The Negro Problem,’ and it’s a variety of what they thought the problem was, and all their solutions differ. I wanted to do this piece to explain that intersectionality. Maybe you’re not the negro, but you’re adjacent at some crosshair.”
Chance closed by adding, “To understand that you got to hear all these things that I’m worried about, that if you listen to it, you can be like, ‘Oh, I’m worried about this shit too!” There is a gun problem in America, and it’s not just Black folks that’s feeling it; white people are scared too.”
Watch Chance The Rapper’s full performance of “The Negro Problem” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert below.
Chance The Rapper’s latest album Star Line is out now. Click here to stream or purchase.