I’m going to start this by saying two things; firstly I hadn’t listened to Chance the Rapper since he dropped that abomination of a song with Justin Bieber and secondly, amongst a giant mob of mollied up frat bros in Madison, Wisconsin was never somewhere I expected to find myself.
But there I was awaiting Chance and his Social experiment to take the stage after sitting through a very rough and typical DJ set from the Chain Smokers. The sun had just set and there was an air of excitement as D.R.A.M’s Cha Cha played in preparation then suddenly they started blasting Kanye’s new tip featuring fellow Save Money crew member Vic Mensa. The stage blacked out and the band takes the focus of the roaring and whistling crowd of bro tanks and shoulder girls.
Despite my own personal issues with the crowd this set was insane, Chance has clearly learned a trick or two from the seemingly endless stream of college shows he’s been playing because he knows exactly how to bring out the best of a rowdy crowd. The set consisted of mostly jazzed up versions of Acid Rap tracks mixed in with a few new Social experiment songs and even a little taste of Chance’s Ten Day tape. Other highlights included Chance playing his beautiful verse from Action Bronson’s hit Baby Blue as well as giving the hook typically done by Action himself the Social Experiment treatment.
The one thing that I took away from the show is that Chance has transformed from just another Chicago rapper with a healthy dose of acid in his veins to a genre bending leader in the industry. The combination of Chance’s high pitched screams that have become a staple in most of his tracks and the flowing and winding sense of Donnie Trumpet’s trumpet (who joined the Social Experiment for their perfectly timed encore) was nuts. A friend of mine recently said, when discussing the direction Chance was taking, that Chance was doing the smart thing and getting out of rap music. While to an extent I agree that perhaps leaving the rap scene in an age where theoretically anyone can get discovered, but most don’t, it is hard to continue on the path of excellence (even after a tape that goes as viral as Acid Rap did), I tend not to agree that Chance is completely trying to leave rap behind. In fact he is taking huge steps in advancing it to a whole new level. A lot of rappers are trying to bring hip hop back to its roots (most significantly and prominently Kendrick) and it appears that Chance is not only trying to show the past through his music, but also the future and because of this he could very well become one of the most important artists not only in his own genre but for this generation.
The set ends with a beautiful crowd based rendition of Cocoa Butter Kisses, sadly minus Vic and Twista, but not before Chance projected his thoughts on a few things, particularly about how this was an experiment for the crowd. He talked on entitlement to the show, “This is your show, this is your night!” he screamed as the crowd roared behind his gentle voice and the drums played softly.
The Social Experiment’s new album Surf is meant to be dropping any day now and if my experience with them is anything to go by, expect big things.
-Mac Dennis
