Want to Get Hired by Your Favorite Rapper? Build a Website.

In March 2017, Chance the Rapper was looking for an intern. Instead of submitting a traditional resume, recent college graduate Negele “Hospey” Hospedales created something better: a website.

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Chance, Hire Hospey!

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/846612517723947008

The day after Chance the Rapper’s call for resumes on Twitter, Hospey bought a domain name, chancehirehospey.com, and launched a one-page website, Chance, Hire Hospey!, to present himself and showcase his skills. Using Singl, a minimal yet powerful design template originally made for musicians, Hospey created a simple site with two posts.

The first post, formatted as a tour schedule, lists Hospey’s professional and entrepreneurial milestones, including the 2012 launch of his first YouTube channel at age 17 and the 2015 launch of RLGTcanada.com, an urban culture platform for Canadians. Below this “tour schedule,” a more conventional cover letter follows, detailing why Hospey is the best candidate for the internship.

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The second post on Hospey’s site is a short-form version of a creative portfolio, summarizing his growing expertise across genres — writing, brand building, website management, art, and video production. He shares writing and design samples, his social media following across platforms, and a video for RLGTCanada.

Branding and design work for his personal lifestyle website, Hospey How To.

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Personal touches using WordPress.com’s built-in features

Custom menus, backgrounds, and header images are built-in features for all WordPress.com sites.

Simple, lean, yet effective, Hospey’s website focuses on the essentials. In his menu, he links to his About and Contact pages, and prominently displays a social links menu at the top. With a custom background image reminiscent of concert stage lighting and a personalized black-and-red header image, chancehirehospey.com is dressed up perfectly for the job.

“Welcome to the Tour!”

And was Hospey hired? Certainly. “Life can happen as swiftly as a resume goes viral, and since your application happened to do so, about three weeks will pass before your first day on the job,” he reflects in a recent post on his personal site, “How To Work For Your Favourite Rapper.”

In the post, he describes what it was like interning for Chance and going on tour: The blurry, abstract, eye-opening first few weeks. The loneliness. But also the sense of comfort, the surreal happenings that became routine, and then, the exhaustion. It’s an honest, thoughtful look into a wild ride — and we’re glad to see it documented here at WordPress.com.

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