Heavy/Getty Chance The Rapper announced on April 3, 2024, that he and his wife are divorcing
While on break from filming “The Voice,” coach Chance The Rapper has announced his marriage is ending. The Grammy winner and his wife of five years, Kristen Corley, released a joint statement via social media on April 3, 2024, to announce they are divorcing.
Chance, 30, shared the statement in his Instagram Stories, which said that he and Corley, also 30, had decided to divorce “after a period of separation.” The former couple started dating in 2012, according to People, and share two daughters — seven-year-old Kensli and four-year-old Marli.
With this breakup, Chance becomes the latest coach on “The Voice” to have gone through a highly-publicized divorce while appearing on the show. Others have included Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson and Gwen Stefani.
Chance The Rapper & Kristen Corley Have Dealt With Speed Bumps in Their Relationship
GettyKirsten Corley and Chance the Rapper attend The 2021 Met Gala
Chance, born Chancelor Johnathan Bennett, and Corley got married in March 2019 in front of celebrity guests including comedian Dave Chappelle, rapper Kanye West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian, and gospel star Kirk Franklin.
Before the wedding, Chance tweeted a thread about how he actually met his future wife when they were kids growing up in Chicago, and that he knew then — at age nine — that he’d marry her someday.
Storytime. A thread on how I met my wife.
Their April 3 statement, signed by “Chance & Kristen,” said that their decision to split was mutual.
“After a period of separation, the two of us have arrived at the decision to part ways,” they wrote. “We came to this decision amicably and with gratitude for the time we spent together. God has blessed us with two beautiful daughters who we will continue to raise together. We kindly ask for privacy and respect as we navigate this transition. Thank you.”
Though it’s not known when the couple separated, their divorce news comes nearly a year after a video emerged of Chance dancing with a woman and slapping her rear end at Jamaica’s Carnival festivities in April 2023, according to Complex, which drew criticism from many fans.
Shortly after the incident, the outlet reported, Corley shared a since-deleted Instagram post featuring a passage from Maya Angelou’s “Letter to My Daughter” that read, “Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it.”
The passage continued, “They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed.”
In the caption of her post according to Complex, Corley wrote, “I hope one day, we all choose to grow up.”
The most recent photo of Chance in Corley’s Instagram feed is from November 2020, when she shared a photo of them with their girls and wrote that she wanted people to know they were not a so-called “perfect family.”
“I hope you see two imperfect human beings who are doing their best to cultivate a home rooted in Love & Grace,” she wrote. “Marriage is difficult. It would be irresponsible to say otherwise, or give ya’ll the impression that it’s a walk in the park.”
Chance The Rapper is Not the First Celebrity Coach to Face a Divorce While Filming ‘The Voice’
NBC“The Voice” Season 23 coaches Kelly Clarkson, Blake Shelton, Niall Horan, Chance The Rapper
Chance first appeared as a coach on “The Voice” on season 23, which aired in the spring of 2023, but he took the next season off. He has returned for season 25, which premiered in March featuring blind auditions that were filmed in the summer of 2023.
According to NBC, “The Voice” will air Monday nights throughout the month of April, featuring the pre-recorded Knockouts and then the Playoffs. So Chance won’t need to be back on set for live shows until May 6, when viewer voting begins and the series returns to airing twice a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays.
When he returns to the show, Chance won’t be the first coach to have navigated a divorce while filming “The Voice.”
When Shelton and Stefani first met on the set of “The Voice” in 2014, they were both married to other music stars — Stefani to Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of the rock band Bush, and Shelton to country star Miranda Lambert. But within a year, both were going through divorces.
According to People, Shelton and Lambert divorced in July 2015, and the following month, Stefani and Rossdale split up. The two coaches bonded over their heartbreak and got married in 2021.
Kelly Clarkson also went through a very public divorce while appearing on the show and, interestingly, her last season on the show was Chance’s first. Clarkson filed for divorce from her husband, Brandan Blackstock, in June 2020, according to ET, but their contentious split took two years to finalize.
Aiming for a fresh start, Clarkson left Los Angeles in 2023 by moving to New York with her two young kids, whom she shares with Blackstock. In doing do, she had to move her daily talk show and leave “The Voice,” which she later told USA Today was a big relief.
“Full disclosure, I put on a smile a lot of those times because I was struggling a lot in my personal life,” Clarkson said of trying to stay upbeat on TV throughout her divorce. “I’ve learned a lot about what I’m capable of handling, and also what you should not handle. That was me saying ‘bye’ to ‘The Voice’ and having this big move. I love that family, but I was like, ‘I’m struggling. I can’t smile anymore. I don’t feel like smiling.'”