Chance The Rapper Addresses Divorce & Ex-Manager Dispute On New Song ‘Buried Alive’

Brendon Thorne/Getty Images for SXSW Sydney

Chance The Rapper has released a new bar-heavy joint just a day after announcing that he is working on a new mixtape titled Star Line.

On Thursday (April 25), a day after previewing a snippet on social media, the Chicago rapper and singer released “Buried Alive” in its entirety and even supplemented it with a music video. Per the song’s title, the visual features the 31-year-old trapped inside a coffin as he airs out his recent frustrations with divorce and management, among other things.

“Where’s his money now? Wherе his wife at?/ Where his managеr? Where his hype at?/ Then they threw the dirt on the casket,” he raps.

Later in the track, he confirms his reemergence with: “I just needed, I just needed somethin’ I could rap on/ Right then and there the roof caved, quick rubble stone/ The kid kicked another hole, the dirt filled another hole/ The pen in the hand of a hero arose/ Clenched fist clawin’ it’s way out the highs and the lows.”

Earlier this week, Chance quietly announced the aforementioned mixtape and teased high-profile collaborations with the likes of Lil Wayne, DJ Premier, Lil Yachty and more.

The Illinois native shared the news in unusual fashion, changing his Instagram bio to: “Working on my mixtape it’s called Star Line.” He also posted a teaser clip on X (formerly Twitter), featuring cameos from Jermaine Dupri, T-Pain, Jazze Pha and Vic Mensa in addition to those mentioned above.

The Grammy-winner, who has been relatively quiet on the music front since he released The Big Day back in 2019, has been teasing a follow-up project for quite some time now. He previously said that his second studio album would be called Star Line Gallery, so it isn’t clear Star Line is the same project or a precursor.

The “Ultralight Beam” spitter previously explained the meaning of Star Line during a 2022 interview with Sway Calloway.

“I was inspired by Marcus Garvey in the early 1900s — 1919 through 1922 — so 100 years ago now,” he said. “He started and ran this very important, integral shipping line. He had a fleet of ships, these giant ocean liners which are the size of cruise ships, that he owned and funded with common Black folks’ money.

“But what he did with it was he created a trade route between the United States, all of the Black islands and the continent of Africa, and that created a network of people where people from all over the world were interconnected and working with each other and taking trips together, and created this connectivity that didn’t exist before.”

He added: “When I think about the Black Star Line and all the spaces that it’s been in, the Black Star is the representation of Ghana, in their flag, in the fabric of how their country was set up. They believe in global Blackness, Black connectivity and a free Africa.”

Last year, Chance The Rapper revealed that he was aiming for a Spring 2024 release for Star Line Gallery, which he has also called “one of [his] proudest projects in terms of writing and artistic vision.”