Chance the Rapper Shot Video in Denver and Featured Local Musicians

Chance the Rapper took the opportunity to shoot a video for the song “How Great” on September 20 while passing through Denver as part of his ongoing tour. The hip-hop star used a choir of local singers, and the video was shot using nine iPhones.

One of the singers involved was Faith Angelise, who goes by the name Queen Faith. She said that she received word just two days ahead of time that Chance wanted to shoot the video in Denver.

“Before they got out here, they were in Vegas, and then they wanted to come out here to shoot a video," she says, "so then I had to find a bunch of singers in two days, rehearse at my house, go to the Fillmore and rehearse all day there, then shoot the video right before the concert. It was a busy, busy, busy weekend.”

Chance the Rapper and his team initially reached out to Catherine Sailer, a conducting director and choral -studies professor at the University of Denver, in search of singers. It was Sailer who then contacted Angelise.

“I’ve been singing with her for years, because I went to school at the University of Denver,” Angelise says. “She just gave me the project, I found twenty singers, and we went from there.”

Angelise says that the shoot, which featured Chance’s cousin Nicole on lead vocals (billed simply as “My Cousin Nicole”), was fun and cool, but full of activity.

“They had a bunch of phones going around,” she says. “About nine different phones. We did three or four full takes of the entire video. Chance was very specific about what he wanted, and about his personal experience with the song and why he wanted us to bring it to life in a different way. Overall, it was awesome. It was just a very, very long day.”

The rapper, Angelise says, chose to shoot in Colorado because of his team’s connection with Sailer at the University of Denver.

“She knew that they could do the song justice if they did it here while they were touring,” she says. “They came here, and he knew that he could get what he wanted out of the song.”

As for Chance himself, Angelise says that he was very sweet and humble.

“He was very direct with what he needed, but alway coming from a place of love and out of his heart,” she says.

Chance tweeted that he wanted to “give the best praise & worship possible. I wanted to showcase strength and fragility. Thats how women who taught me how to pray look.”

You can see the video here: