Chicago rapper Joseph Chilliams is one of the tens of millions of Americans for whom the night of November 8, 2016, was a nightmare. But Chilliams’s evening went south even before the election was decided. While walking home in Austin, he was robbed of his wallet and backpack (the latter empty but for a broken umbrella and some Altoids) and badly beaten. His assailants left him bleeding on the ground with a shattered face. “They had to do plastic surgery and put a plate in my cheek to give me a foundation, because it was totally broken,” he says. On the first night Chilliams spent at the hospital, his doctor tactfully pretended not to know the outcome of the election. “He didn’t want to be the person to break that news to me. I was dealing with enough,” Chilliams says. “It was definitely decided. He was like, ‘Oh, you know, they’re still counting.'”
Take me back to the beginning of Henry Church—what started it?
What separated that from all the previous tracks you’d been working on?
I just chanced upon it, really. My whole life I knew I was gonna be a professional athlete. I was going to a church camp—they had a basketball rim, and I didn’t have a basketball rim at the time. I was like, “Oh, I’m here. Whatever y’all need me to do, I can dribble this basketball afterwards—fine.” They realized all the kids were just playing sports. It was like, “OK, let’s give you some options”—like, a mandatory break from sports. You had to either go play board games or go to this spoken-word class.
Tell me about your days first playing out in Chicago. How did you get to the point where you are now?
Looking at Henry Church now, what song most definitively represents you?
