Today in Hip-Hop: Chance the Rapper's 'Coloring Book' Turns 10 — The Mixtape That Cracked the Grammys Open - Custom Creative

May 13, 2026. Ten years ago tonight, Chance the Rapper dropped Coloring Book exclusively on Apple Music at 11 PM EST on May 12, and by the time the East Coast woke up to the official May 13 release date the gospel-rap mixtape had already started rewriting what an “album” was allowed to be. Chance was 23. He had no label. The tape had no price tag. And eight months later it would walk into the Grammys and walk out with Best Rap Album — the first streaming-only project to ever pull that off.

The Grammy rulebook had to bend to let it in

The Recording Academy had spent years refusing to count streaming-only releases for awards consideration. Chance and his team — manager Pat Corcoran and uncle Ken Williams chief among them — pressed the issue, lobbied the rule, and got the language changed in 2016 specifically so projects like Coloring Book could compete. When the trophy hit his hands in February 2017 it wasn’t just a win — it was a precedent. Every artist who has since dropped a streaming-exclusive project and competed on equal footing owes that win some rent.

The Kanye throughline you forgot to notice

Coloring Book isn’t a solo achievement either — it’s the back half of one of the cleanest creative loops in modern rap. Three months earlier on The Life of Pablo opener “Ultralight Beam,” Kanye stripped his record down to gospel and handed Chance the verse of his career. Listen close — Chance literally raps “I hear you gotta sell it to snatch the GRAMMY” on his way to setting up Chance 3. The kid spoke a Grammy into existence on someone else’s record. Then Coloring Book opened with “All We Got” — Kanye returning the verse, the Chicago Children’s Choir taking the chorus. Closed-loop gospel-rap statement made.

The receipts: a tape you couldn’t buy with a label budget

“No Problem” featuring Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz pulled Best Rap Performance the same night Coloring Book took Best Rap Album. Kirk Franklin sang the outro on “Finish Line / Drown.” Justin Bieber, Young Thug, Francis and the Lights, Future, Jay Electronica, T-Pain, Lil Yachty — Chance pulled a roster you couldn’t have assembled with a label budget, and he did it by being the most goodwill-loaded artist of his era. The tape peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 on streams alone, the first record in chart history to do it. The format never had to be the same after.

Also turning a year today: King Push

Pusha T was born May 13, 1977 — 49 today — making this one of those days where Bronx-to-Virginia coke rap and Chicago gospel rap share a candle. Fitting timing too: we spent the last two days deep in the Clipse catalog, breaking down the Carhartt collab and every variant of Let God Sort Em Out. Happy birthday to the rapper who taught Pyrex the alphabet.

Also today in hip-hop

Kendrick Lamar — Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers turns 4. May 13, 2022. Fifth Billboard #1, Best Rap Album Grammy, and the album where Kendrick took the therapist’s couch on wax.
Stevie Wonder turns 76. Not strictly hip-hop, but Songs in the Key of Life is a producer’s holy book — flipped by Coolio (“Gangsta’s Paradise” lifts “Pastime Paradise” whole), Common, J Dilla, and roughly every soul-sampling beatmaker since 1976.
Foxy Brown — Brooklyn’s Don Diva turns 18. Foxy’s first mixtape, #5 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop chart on May 13, 2008.
Juvenile — Solja Rags turns 29. Cash Money’s first national-radar push, May 13, 1997 — the runway for 400 Degreez a year later.