Chance The Rapper Links Popcaan As Plans Get Underway For Black Star Line Festival In Jamaica

Chance The Rapper touched down in Jamaica and has already linked up with the Unruly Boss  Popcaan as he plans a Jamaican staging of the Black Star Line Festival.

Speaking recently on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the Grammy Award-winning songwriter and producer revealed his aspiration to bring the mega-festival to the island following its success in Accra, Ghana in January.

“We’re actually thinking about hosting the next one in Kingston, Jamaica. We’re still working it out in our heads. And we love the city of Accra and Ghana and West Africa as a whole. We just want to continue to, like, create community in other spaces,” he told Fallon. 

The Ghanaian staging, held in the historic Black Star Square on January 6, attracted approximately 52,000 patrons. It featured T-Pain, Tobe Nwigwe, Erykah Badu, and Vic Mensa—who is also on the island.

Chance shared a brief snap of himself, Vic and Popcaan.

In another post featuring Mensa, he wrote, “Mans on a business call @blackstarlinefest”

He also took the opportunity to behold Jamaica’s Dancehall culture by attending Uptown Mondays at Savannah Plaza on Constant Spring Road in Kingston.

Just a month ago, the rapper asked Twitter users to put him on to their favorite Jamaican songs.

Popcaan, the conceptualizer of Unruly Fest, has adequate experience in pulling a large Jamaican crowd to a venue for a concert experience; so it comes as no surprise that Chance has already made a connection.

The first staging of Unruly Fest was held in December 2018 at Goodyear Oval in St Thomas. It was a completely sold-out event, which saw thousands of local and international fans turn up to see the deejay, special guests Drake and Tory Lanez, and other entertainers live.

Chance is currently working on a new album titled Star Line Gallery also inspired by the Black Star Line—a shipping line created by a Jamaican leader of the Pan-African movement, Marcus Garvey. The ships were sometimes used to transport people and make largely symbolic port visits to cities in Latin America in celebration of black self-determination, business ownership, and economic potential.

Complex Magazine  noted that several members of Chance’s immediate family were Garveyists in the past, and that he hoped to carry on their legacy by infusing the corporation’s ethos into that of the new album.

“It’s going to be all Black artists from everywhere around the world with all different experiences, but a connection, and in conversation with me and my collaborators to create new pieces that show what it means to be Black right now,” he told Complex.

“It’s not all drenched in the conversation of trauma or about the most familiar aesthetic of Black that we know right now. It’s about what is real.”

The project will feature Ghanaian artists like Sarkodie, King Promise, as well as other international acts that are yet to be revealed.