The “No Problem” rapper was the latest celebrity to take a ride with James Corden on Carpool Karaoke Tuesday night, and in between songs Chance spoke about his relationship with the Obamas and Jay-Z.
It turns out that getting a call from either 44 or Hova is a stringent process. “I don’t have a number for [Obama], but I have a number for him … I have a person that I can call that will say, ‘OK, I’ll have him call you.’”
“It’s the same thing with Jay-Z. Jay-Z and Barack Obama are very, very similar. Both of them have an assistant that you have to call and you get a call from a private number and it’s either Jay-Z or Barack Obama on the phone,” said Chance. “I never know which one is calling when I get that call back.”
Chance and Corden both, however, have a direct phone number for Kanye West, which, as they explained, can be both a blessing and a curse.
“I hosted a thing in New York once and he was there. He said, ‘Give me your number, man,’” recalled Corden. “Inside I was like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ Gave him my number. He said, ‘We’re having a party later at a studio in New York, do you want to come?’ And I said yeah.
“But then I didn’t get a text and I thought he’d forgotten. Then I got a text at 3 a.m. saying, ‘We’ll be getting there in about an hour.’ I was like, what do I do? Do I get dressed and go out at 4 a.m.?”
Chance has had similar experiences with West. “Kanye’s definitely the kind of dude that’ll be like, you meet up with him to do one thing, and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, I gotta go to Milan… let’s get on this jet.’ And you gotta make a decision right there, am I going to follow Kanye to Milan, or am I going to go on this date that I have?”
Chance’s relationship with Barack and Michelle Obama goes back many years. Chance’s father Ken Williams-Bennett served as Obama’s state director when the former president was senator of Illinois.
“Chance, I’ve known for years ‘cause his dad was my state director when I was a senator in Illinois, so I first met Chance when he was 8 years old, and so we’ve been family for a while,” Obama said in an interview with Sway in the Morning in 2016.
Chance also interned for the Obama for America campaign during Obama’s 2008 presidential run.