New Chance The Rapper Album Coming In July

We should probably all get ready for Chance The Rapper to start wearing a "4" hat everywhere. Maybe. Hopefully. Last year, there were lots of reports that Chance The Rapper would release an album -- or maybe a Kanye West-produced EP -- without much warning. That didn't happen. Instead, Chance released a few isolated batches of singles. (The last two songs, "The Man Who Has Everything" and "My Own Thing," came out in November.) But now it looks like we'll really get a new Chance album this year. And we have five months to prepare ourselves.

Last night, Chance tweeted one word: "July." And his manager Pat Corcoran followed with a slight clarification: "CHANCE ALBUM. JULY." That seems pretty cut-and-dried! Plans tend to change quickly in rap music, but that's about as official as it gets. And it means Chance is leaving himself a long runway rather than doing the thing most of his peers are doing these days, releasing an album only a week or two after announcing it.