Chance the Rapper kickstarts the roll-out for his second studio album with the single “Child of God,” which is part of a multi-faceted project that also includes the track’s official music video and an eponymous art piece, painted by the Gabonese-American artist Naïla Opiangah and used as the cover art.

The project as a whole, which looks like the first chapter of a series of cross-over collaborations between the rapper and up-coming visual artists, was premiered on March 23, 2022, during an invite-only conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois, both the city Chance was born and raised in and Opiangah has studied in.

The song addresses Gospel-inspired themes, frequently used by Chance for projects such as his 2016 mixtape Coloring Book, and tackles themes of self-discovery and self-affirmation over a soulful instrumental, with Moses Sumney and Opiangah herself providing backing vocals towards the end. The Chicago-based rapper explained the core topic of “Child of God” during an interview with the local press Chicago Sun-Times:

The song to me is all about keeping that voice in your head that allows you to know that you could do it, that you could finish it. Whatever your work is, whatever your job is, whatever your purpose is, that you could do it — you just gotta start and finish.