Watch Michelle Obama Honor Chance The Rapper For BET Humanitarian Award

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 26, 2017 2:40PM

Chance the Rapper was honored on Sunday with the BET Humanitarian Award (along with Best New Artist hardware) at the BET Awards. No less than the former First Lady toasted the Chatham native in a video-taped congratulations that aired ahead of the award presentation.

"We have known Chance and his family since he was a wee little baby rapper,” said Michelle Obama. “Time and again he has been standing up, speaking out, and doing the work to get kids in our community the education they deserve. And with these passionate efforts, Chance is showing our young people that they matter, that they have something inside of them that is worthy of being expressed, and that they have so much to contribute to their communities and to our country.

“With these passionate efforts, Chance is showing our young people that they matter, that they have something inside of them that is worthy of being expressed, and they have so much to contribute to their community and our country,” she added. “I can think of no better legacy to leave, and I am thrilled to celebrate you here to tonight and honored to call you my friend."

Chance in his acceptance speech touched on the hypocrisy of drug policy and the underfunded Chicago Public School system—which at least he's done much to try to fix. He also noted that the award maybe felt a bit premature, but didn't doubt the sincerity behind it.

“To be receiving something like this at my age… it feels a little early to be getting something like this, but my God doesn’t make mistakes," he said.

"Y'all need to let everybody out of jail for selling weed before y'all start making it legal for people to sell it and make capital off it," he said. "I was gonna tell the Chicago Public School system not to take out a loan from Chase bank, when they know that our schools are planning on failing in our district. I was gonna tell those judges that we just need a conviction when we know these niggas wrong for doing this."

Check out portions of both speeches below.