Album Review: Chance The Rapper - The Big Day
The big day officially came and went. Fans of Chance the Rapper and general hip hop listeners alike have been patiently waiting for the release of the Chicago native’s debut studio album since he came onto the scene back in 2012. Starting off as a teenager suspended from highschool, he is now seen as one of the biggest influencers in music today. It seems like Chance at this point has this whole life thing figured out. You would be hard-pressed to find any random person on the street who has an issue with who he is as a person. That being said musically he hasn't always been able to hit the mark. Since the release of his previous mixtape Coloring Book, he hasn't been able to really impress with any of the singles he has put out. With this being said, Chano deserved the benefit of the doubt because he has proven to us for three straight mixtapes that he can make great music. He waited patiently to call one of his bodies of work an album and finally seems proud enough with this collection of songs to give it that title. With expectations at an all-time high, the hip-hop community held their breath on July 18th anxiously awaiting the big day.
A sure strength of The Big Day is its sonic quality meaning regardless of how each beat sounds or what Chance is rapping about, everything is mixed and mastered very well. While this may not seem like a huge feat, in an era where artists feel pressured to rush out projects before they are fully ready it is encouraging to see one of the bigger names in the game be so meticulous with his craft. Aside from this though The Big Day leaves the audience asking a lot of questions. Chance still knows how to spit 1000%. Someone doesn't just forget how to rap, and there are moments on The Big Day where Chance shows that he can do something that others simply can’t.
As he has on every other body of work of his, Chano gives us a compelling opener. It is light-hearted and chance displays his versatility with flows and even his improved singing voice on “All Day Long”. His vocals are one of the most obvious signs of growth for Chance on this album and alow his melodies to hold their own on a lot of the tracks even with features. “We Go High” is one of the best moments on the entire album. Chance gives us a glimpse of the young kid we remember. He talks to us about some of his shortcomings and the things that he is currently struggling with. He sounds introspective and it seems like there might really be something for us to take away here.
The Big Day’s greatest weakness might be the expectations set before the project came out. Everyone who enjoyed all of Chance’s previous work expected his debut album to be his best release thus far. It has just felt like for years he waited to put the title of “album” on any of his work leading us to believe his first studio record would be near-perfect and ultimately important and a track like “Hot Shower” just doesn’t fit this description. It is too big of a moment for Chance and when he does things like this it shows why people are so worried about his future. Sure the track along with many others like it is very fun (and will be a hit on social media platforms), but this is supposed to be the most important project of his career thus far. There are numerous moments like this littered throughout the project where a lister could be left asking themselves what was the purpose. This is troubling in a time where it seems like the need for conceptual lyrics is at an all-time low.
Even the title track of the album just seems like a complete mess of a song. On “The Big Day” Chance and Francis and the lights just tell us the only way to survive is to go crazy, which is interesting given how safe the album really was as a whole. He eventually begins to yell for a whole verse attempting to show that he really will “go crazy”, but it is just more confusing than insane. It really just seems as if he was struggling with relevant content on this project, because what is supposed to be the message we get from a track like that.
Another factor that really works against Chance on The Big Day is the project's length. 22 songs is quite a bit, and it is very difficult to come up with 22 cohesive and necessary tracks. So by the time we reach songs like “Get a Bag” and “Slide Around” the project feels like it's dragging. One would think that the feature on each of these songs would help create a switch of pace, but they, like Chance, fail to present us with anything that can't be fully understood at face value on first listen.
It is important to mention something that all listeners should understand. These artists are regular people. They evolve, change, and grow just as we do. That being said it can be frustrating for them when we as listeners say that we “miss the old them” because no one is the same person they were a year ago. Who knows what Chance's mental state was when he made Acid Rap or 10 Day. Though up to this point those are seen as his best bodies of work he has said himself he was in a much darker place. All music aside, no one can deny that chance is doing well now and has used his platform up to this point to promote a lot of positivity in many different communities. It just so happens that his music seems to be the only thing that suffered in the process.
With his first two projects, Chance was able to capture what it feels like to be a young adult in this world. Youth is confusing and scary, yet at the same time when we are able to capture those few moments with those, we love it makes it all worth it. We will make mistakes, we will lose people along the way, but it is part of what prepares us for the next steps in our journey. Chance was the voice of the youth because a lot of us could relate to almost everything he was thinking and rapping. All of that is gone. As a listener, I just simply was uninterested in a lot of what Chance was saying. The message was positive which is a great thing that we may need more of in rap music, but that isn’t enough. There was no edge. What was supposed to be the takeaway from this?
Reviewed by: Carter Fife