Since the release of his first mix tape, 10 Days, Chancelor Bennett, better known by his stage name, Chance The Rapper, has taken the music world by storm. But now there’s a new Bennett on the scene who is surely going to become just as popular as his older brother.
Taylor Bennet, Chance The Rapper’s younger brother, has a similar vibe to his music, and is also equally dedicated to donating to charities and non-profits that benefit those in their hometown of Chicago. Like Chance, the up and coming rapper decided to use the SXSW music festival to help promote his recently released sophomore album, Restoration of An American Idol. He preformed at prominent showcases such as the Fader Fort, House of Vans, and the Pandora House.
I had the pleasure of seeing him at a more low-key event put on by treble.fm, a networking platform for artists. The event included The Skins, a band that received a lot of buzz throughout SXSW, Sup Bwe, Omenihu, and Andre Power. The showcase was held at Indra’s Awarehouse, a space created for artistic expression in many different areas including yoga, acrobatics, dance, music, and painting. As each artist preforming in the showcase played their set, dancers would move throughout the crowd and tightrope walkers would balance in amazing poses and twirl around on the equipment above us.
Although still relatively unknown, enough people in attendance had heard about Taylor Bennet to begin to occupy the space in front of the stage, which before about 20 minutes before his set had only consisted of about 50 people. He opened with one of his more popular songs, “Dancing in the Rain,” featured on his debut album, Broad Shoulders. The song features Donnie Trumpet, creating a sound heavily influence by Chance and The Social Experiment. The entire accumulated audience was singing along to every word, dancing with each other, and acrobats were swarming the room above us. Bennett the preceded to preform, “Roof Gone”, off his most recent album. Since the sets were running behind schedule, he only had time to preform one more song, dedicated to older bro, Chance The Rapper. The beginning of “No Problem” began to play and every person in the room became the most hype I had seen the whole night. Taylor jumped into the crowd and started a mosh pit in “true Chicago fashion,” according to him. He rapped along to Chance’s lyrics and even included his own verse, remaining in the crowd for over half of the song. By the end of his set the crowd was extremely hype and if they hadn’t heard of him before, they were sure to remember his name by his excellent performance.
Bennett just announced his first headlining tour beginning in April of this year, so make sure to catch him in a city nearest you.
You can also find him on Instagram (@taylorbennett), Twitter (@_TaylorBennett), on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/taylorbennetttunes), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/TaylorBennettentertainment), and at taylorbennett.co.