Ludacris Honored on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame

The Word of Mouf emcee was recently honored with a Hollywood Walk Of Fame motion picture star. On May 18, Vin Diesel, LL Cool J, and Queen Latifah joined the entertainer, né Christopher Brian Bridges, to commemorate the event.

“Chris you wrong to try to keep me to two minutes. I could take two lifetimes explaining to the world the significance, your significance both to the world and to my family,” Diesel said in his speech, CBS News reports. “There’s so much to say, but there is so much you already know. You know his unmatched accomplishments. We’ve never seen anybody dominate the music world and then come and dominate cinema while being entrepreneurial in the way that he is.”

“It’s almost hard for me to put into words. LL was the person who made me wanna rap. Vin has changed my life forever through the gift that keeps on giving, this franchise Fast and Furious. It meant everything to have them show up for me today,” Luda remarked.

“I was just saying [that] I’ll put my cast up against any other cast in film history. We are the closest-knit family off-camera and on-camera. Compared to anybody, 100 percent…I was fighting tears. Seriously, I was glad that I had my sunglasses on today.”

Chance the Rapper on ‘Acid Rap’

Influencing Artists Like Lil Uzi Vert and Jack Harlow

2023 is likely to feature a ton of coverage surrounding the 10th anniversary of Chance the Rapper’s beloved mixtape Acid Rap, the milestone-commemorating revisiting of which will see key track “Juice” finally being made available on streaming.

Reflecting on the impact of the tape in a conversation with Complex, Chance called the project a “cult classic” that was unlike any other release in rap at the time of its unveiling.

“There’s definitely nothing that sounds like Acid Rap if you go back to 2013,” he said. “Like, you got [Kanye West’s] Yeezus, you got [Drake’s] Nothing Was the Same, you got Mac Miller’s Watching Movies With the Sound Off, you got J. Cole [Born Sinner]. In terms of rap, like, there was not another album that had a song like ‘Chain Smoker’ on it or another album that had a song like ‘Everybody’s Something’ on it. It was its own thing.”

Elsewhere in his chat with Complex, Chance detailed how he sees the tape’s sustaining influence, both on the “midwest sound” and beyond.

Jack Harlow, [Lil] Uzi Vert. People that are from opposite coasts and from other places still tell me, like, what the album meant to them at that time.”

But for those actually in Chicago at the time of the tape’s creation and rise to adoration, Chance pointed out, the experience was even more influential. Acid Rap, he said, served multiple purposes for artists at that time—it helped define a lane for those taking an alternative path, it solidified an “ecosystem” that was already in place, and it was part of something new in terms of what Chicago was known for in music.

Key to this era too was Chief Keef, who Chance shouted out as another Chicago artist who was redefining the sound at that time.

“I think it’s the blueprint for that midwest sound that you still hear to this day,” Chance said. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody that’s a year or two younger than me that wasn’t influenced by Acid Rap, even if they weren’t from the midwest.

“Kanye West was still the biggest artist, Lupe was still charting. It was still an older generation of music that didn’t sound anything like Acid Rap or like drill music,” Chance said of the importance of those breakthrough years, specifically for what he and Keef were doing. “So I feel like me and Keef came out around the same time, both doing our own thing. That’s why we got so much coverage and so much support was because it was different than what you thought would be the typical Chicago sound.”

As fans are already well aware, the Acid Rap festivities are indeed extensive and most notably include a special hometown show in Chicago this August.