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The St. Johns Scholar is leaving Portland.
Rapper Vinnie Dewayne, one of the Portland hip-hop scene's young leading lights, is moving back to Chicago, where he attended Columbia College.
"I just booked a one-way plane ticket back to Chicago this weekend," he announced on Instagram Tuesday. "Sometimes you just have to jump, take that leap of faith, and let the most high do what he do."
It might seem sudden, but Dewayne says returning to the Windy City was always his intent.
"It was always a plan for me to go back to Chicago," he writes in an email. "I stayed in Portland longer than I expected. It only feels right to go back."
After returning to Portland in 2013, Dewayne's knack for honest autobiography made him one of the city's most popular MCs. He placed on Willamette Week's annual Best New Band poll in 2015, performed at City Hall for the inaugural Hip-Hop Day, and released his long-awaited mixtape, The St. Johns Scholar, in January.
Dewayne is the latest high-profile rapper to leave town, following Tope, Glenn Waco and Hanif, who has since returned.
"I don't think hip hop is appreciated in Portland like it is in other cities," Dewayne writes. "There's not enough kids in the suburbs that are telling all of their high school friends to come to a local rap show in Portland."
Dewayne leaves this Saturday and is planning on immediately working on a new project in Chicago. He says he doesn't plan on performing again in Portland "for a long time," but isn't ruling out a return some day.
"None of my moves are really permanent," he writes. "I'm a Pterodactyl, when it's time I'll fly to my next location."
Watch Dewayne perform at PDX Pop Now last summer below:
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Willamette Week