Mark’s Pick of the Week: 10 Day by Chance the Rapper

            Rap culture in Chicago (at least from the perspective of an outsider like me) seems to be pretty “Drill” heavy.  Chief Keef, got big with tracks like “Don’t Like” and “Love Sosa” and pretty soon similar acts started getting signed left and right.  The music is very tough, violent and produced to a sleek chrome shine.  It’s not necessarily my cup of tea, but they get points for enthusiasm.  On some of these tracks the artists are hungry, and even if their rhymes are a bit on the simpler side (on “Love Sosa” almost every line ends with boy or Sosa) they are generating an energy that’s pretty hard to ignore.  However, Chicago’s a big place, and not everyone there is making Youtube videos while under house arrest.  Some are made while they are suspended from high school.

            Chance the Rapper is from Chicago and is less Keef and more Lupe (another Chicago native.)  While being suspended from his high school for drug possession he allegedly decided to silence the people who mocked his aspirations to be a musician.  The result is the mix tape “10 Day.”  The enthusiasm that I mentioned above is present, but the vehicle is a bit different.

Instead of Drill his beats are extremely diverse. He is a fantastic 90’s throwback like Joey Bada$$ (what do you know they did a track together).  This is most obvious in tracks like “Juke Juke” which uses the oh-so-smooth beat from “Between the Sheets” by The Isley Brothers.  That is the same beat sampled on  “Big Poppa” off of The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready To Die” one of the most important gangster rap albums, as well as rap album in general.  Both songs do the original justice in their own way.  While Biggie is all right with just riding the beat Chance is a big more on the offensive, moving back and forth between quicker and more relaxed flows.

The variation in the production is both a hallmark of some of the 90’s best as well as some of the revivalist acts.  Chance moves between electronic, funk, jazz, some gospel sprinkled in there and roots reggae.  Some tracks sound like they were recorded in studio, and some sound like they were really bedroom tracks which is a welcome release from a culture that basically makes you choose between one or the other depending on your audience, genre or label.  The only thing that really stays completely constant is this clearly talented newcomer. 

Chance has the lyrical aptitude as well as the shear rhythm.  Listening to tracks like “Brain Cells” and “Nostalgia” can give you a good idea of how good he is at sculpting a fantastic track out of the beats while “F*uk You Tahm Bout” and “Windows” are club worthy tracks that he carries with the confidence of any of those other “rappers” you can hear at clubs.  Personally, I’d take these tracks any day.

I will admit that I thought 1999 was a better mixtape as a whole, but both that and this mean the same thing: a young, talented kid who can make really good music with nothing but some home studio equipment and no money.  When these tapes reach the right people these talented people get better studios, awesome features, great producers, and we get the validation that the internet truly bridged the final gap between talent and success (*cough* Section 80).  Without a way to mass distribute his work for free Chance could be another juvenile delinquent. Instead he just released his second mix tape today.  So I would highly recommend downloading both (Acid Rap is downloading on my browser as I type this). 

                                                                                                                                                     You can downloads 10 Day compliments of Mixtape Monkey and Acid Rap off of WeTransfer

Bottom line: Chance the Rapper is pretty great today, so I can only imagine how fantastic Chance the Rapper will be tomorrow.  Check out the blog on Facebook.