“Cocoa Butter Kisses,” which features legendary Chicago speed-rapper Twista on a particularly geeky verse, finds Chance lamenting how his smoking habits have alienated his mother and friends. Collaborations with Childish Gambino, Action Bronson, and Ab-Soul later in the album break up the overwhelming wackiness of Chance’s rap style, which could become tiring were it not paired with such catchy, melodic production. Remarkably, Chance maintains this high level of lush production and innovative rapping throughout the mixtape, showing an incredible emotional range, from despondent numbness ( “Lost”) to ecstatic love for his fellow human ( “That’s Love”). Stream: Chance The Rapper – Smoke Again (ft. “Acid Rap” is a spring album, and it is with dread for the immediate future that Chance reveals, “I hope it storm in the morning, I hope that it’s pouring out / I hate crowded beaches, I hate the sound of fireworks.” “I know you’re scared, he says, to middle-class Northside Chicagoans who refuse to ride south of Roosevelt, to the national news media eager to brand Chicago a scary war-zone, to a government willing to use this city as a political talking point despite never addressing its actual problems, “you should ask us if we scared too.” It’s an indictment of everyone who wants to treat the South Side as a terrifying bogeyman in neighborhood form while ignoring the lives of the actual human beings who live there. These are also the worst days for violence and killing. On the hottest days, the public beaches that stretch along the lakeshore are packed with people. On the news, you hear about old folks dying of heat stroke. Most people don’t have air conditioning here and the summers keep getting hotter. And after the long, harsh winter ends, a boggy, midwestern summer takes its place. Murder saturates a few South and West communities, even as it pops up consistently across the map. Chicago is a deeply segregated city with a steady flow of illegal guns. “They murder kids here / why you think they don’t talk about it? / They deserted us here,” begins his second verse. As the track progresses, he becomes increasingly direct.
On the hidden song, “Paranoia,” Chance explores his feelings of malaise and fear over a woozy beat from Nosaj Thing.
Stream: Chance The Rapper – Pusha Man (ft.
Acid rap instrumentals full#
It’s a ballsy move to try the old CD-era hidden track trick so early on the tape, but it commands full attention from casual listeners who may have lost themselves in the fun melodies of the first song. Its cheerful tune and noble-hustler archetype build a false-sense of revelry which is abruptly cut short by thirty seconds of silence. His energy is matched by a lush instrumental built out of warm 1970s style organs, airy female vocals and a screwed-down hook. “Acid Rap” is about a lot of things – drugs, gang violence and grilled cheese – but mostly it’s a self-portrait in the form of an album, wherein Chance mines his surroundings, his relationships, his behavior and his inner thoughts for some insight into who he is, a potent example of how youthful self-narrativization can make for powerful, even political art.įor example, the album’s second track, “Pusha Man” sounds like art-nerd version of a mid-90s UGK song Chance raps like a classically trained actor playing a rapper in a movie, which is actually pretty great. Often his raps aren’t even raps at all his vocal style borrows liberally from dancehall, gospel and soul. His strange, theatrical delivery style recalls recent artists like Danny Brown and Kendrick Lamar, with a fair helping of classic weirdos like Fatlip, Baatin, even a little Pimp C for good measure. Chicago rapper Chancellor Bennett, better known as Chance the Rapper, wears his heart and his influences on his sleeve on his second mixtape “Acid Rap”.