Chance The Rapper says that the title for his upcoming album, Star Line Gallery, is a reference to Marcus Garvey’s shipping line he ran in the early 20th century. Chance discussed the long-awaited project during a recent interview on Sway in the Morning.
“I was inspired by Marcus Garvey in the early 1900s, 1919 through actually 1922, so 100 years ago now,” he told Sway. “He started and ran this very important, integral shipping line. He had a fleet of ships, these giant ocean liners which are the size of cruise ships, that he owned and funded with common Black folks’ money. But what he did with it was he created a trade route between the United States, all of the Black islands and the continent of Africa, and that created a network of people where people from all over the world were interconnected and working with each other and taking trips together, and created this connectivity that didn’t exist before.”
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From there, Chance explained that the shipping line was shut down by the U.S. government in 1922, but remained hugely influential for years to come. He recalls Ghana’s president learning about Garvey while coming to the U.S. and taking inspiration back home when he returned.
“It’s literally an unstoppable thing,” Chance remarked.
He continued: “When I think about the Black Star Line and all the spaces that it’s been in, the Black Star is the representation of Ghana, in their flag, in the fabric of how their country was set up. They believe in global Blackness, Black connectivity and a free Africa.
“So we gotta just continue to follow their movements, like the things that he was talking of was so [groundbreaking]. Like, the idea of the decentralized dollar of having one currency across the continent. That come out of the dude in 1957, like he literally wrote the book on it. When he said it, they called him a communist, called him crazy, and now we got the Euro in Europe. But we still can’t seem to get our dollar to be one thing.”
Star Line Gallery will serve as Chance’s second studio album, a follow-up to his 2019 effort, The Big Day.
Check out Chance’s appearance on Sway in the Morning below.
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