ALBUMS

The Big Day

Chance the Rapper
2019

6.9

By Sheldon Pearce

GENRE: Rap

LABEL: self-released

REVIEWED: July 30, 2019

Chance’s sprawling, 77-minute “debut” is

an exuberant and often wonderful
celebration of love and family that
struggles to bring depth to his newlywed
dad-raps.

In the fall of 2015, about a year before Chance the

Rapper became the biggest independent rapper

on Earth, he released a song with his band, the

Social Experiment, about transitioning into a

family man. The song, a rendition of Kanye

West’s “Family Business” called “Family

Matters,” named after the sitcom about a black

middle-class Chicago household, warned that

things were changing. “In this part of my life, I’m

growing up and I wanna do this the right way …

grow out of it, in the best way possible,” he said,

as cautiously optimistic as ever. His daughter

was born the month before. With fatherhood

ahead of him, he plotted a new course and in the

years since, he has pivoted from a carefree yet

careful boy to a God-fearing man of the house.

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Chance’s new album, The Big Day, pegged as his

“debut” after three studio mixtapes, is a

preordained coming-of-age spectacle. It’s full-

fledged, 401k rap, a snapshot of the moment

where the future starts approaching so fast it

begins to look like now. “They don’t take teenage

angst at no banks,” he raps on “We Go High,”

invoking Michelle Obama’s famous line about

what to do when “they” go low. It’s a flavor of

righteousness that pervades the entire 77-minute

album.

Though less thematic than his previous albums,

the day in question revolves primarily around

his wedding to longtime sweetheart Kirsten

Corley. “The whole album has been inspired by

the day I got married and how I was dancing that

day,” he told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe. “Everything in

it is all the different styles of music that make

me want to dance and remind me of that day.” In

an attempt to take the rap auteur baton from his

mentor Kanye, Chance has curated these

festivities to be eclectic yet holistic, emblematic

of the guy who remixed the theme song to TV’s

beloved “Arthur” and sampled the indie darlings

Beirut. There’s an expansive list of guests: En

Vogue and SWV, CocoRosie and Death Cab For

Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, John Legend and gospel

singer Kiki Sheard, Randy Newman and Shawn

Mendes. For the most part, he wrangles them

into a collective indicative of the Chance

experience (the rapper co-produced every song

on this project). There’s nothing that suggests

he’s breaking character.

It’s just that this 22-track sprawl amounts to

everything and nothing at the same time. God,

marriage, fatherhood, children, adulthood, the

future: all heavy things that feel weightless and

inflatable in Chance’s hands. In trying to honor

all the love and music that moves him, Chance

becomes an ill-advised master of ceremonies for

an uneven reception. The songs are infectious

and exuberant until they become stilted and

underwritten. After reclaiming the maligned

subgenre of gospel rap on Coloring Book, Chance

is trying to one-up himself by bringing perky,

newlywed dad-rap back to the zeitgeist.

Somewhere on that dancefloor, or perhaps

before, he lost his edge.

On the surface, Chance hasn’t really strayed too

far from his high-spirited wheelhouse, which

presents opportunities for him to find his

signature stuff. As the Pi’erre Bourne beat wails

and shatters on “Slide Around,” he bounces

singsongy nursery rhyme melodies off a more

than game Lil Durk and Nicki Minaj, who match

his breezy flows and Grammy-speak. There are

enough glimpses of genius, like the thoughtful

living trust he bestows during “Sun Come

Down,” to serve as reminders of why Chance has

earned all this fanfare, but not enough to sustain

an otherwise middling effort.

His failures here are, if nothing else, in good

faith. Bringing his family together in holy

matrimony under the banner of God is clearly

very important to him. It’s also a means to get

his life on the right track. “My daughter mother

double-ringed up/Finger look like jean cuffs, or

two lean cups/Used to have an obsession with

the 27 club/Now I’m turning 27, wanna make it to

the 2070 club,” he raps on the Ben Gibbard-

assisted “Do You Remember.” But songs like “I

Got You (Forever and Always)” and “Found a

Good One (Single No More)” never reach any

level of introspection beyond the enthusiasm of

their titles. Through all the celebration, there

isn’t much consideration for what being a

husband and dad actually means.

It takes a lot to make the sheer honeymoon joy of

a new marriage sound labored or awkward, but

Chance is nearly bursting a vein rapping and

singing and squawking about how great things

are. His wife and child are his muses but they

almost never manifest as humans beyond his

awestruck fascination with them. The true

history of wives is one in service to the legacy of

patriarchs. In Chance’s songs, this marriage

exists solely as a symbolic vehicle for his

maturation. There are moments where he seems

to understand this (“For every small increment

liberated, our women waited/And all they

privacy been invaded,” he raps on “Zanies and

Fools”), but he never interrogates it.

One of Chance’s great powers has been

balancing a childlike wonder with a world-weary

pragmatism. His endearing corniness was a

coping mechanism for seeing and knowing too

much too soon. Now, as he continues to check

off boxes—rich, famous, philanthropic, award-

winning, married with kids—it’s as if he’s

conquered the game and all that’s left is searing

self-congratulation. The charms of his

cartoonish performances don’t translate well

when he raps about the mundanity of adulthood

or his Christian homilies.

Coloring Book made piety seem as sublime as an

acid trip with heady, expanding verses. Chance

was guided by his faith but never blinded by its

light; his rapping not just precise but

breathtakingly eloquent. It was personalized but

still far-reaching, steadfast but non-

denominational. Kanye’s self-proclaimed best

prodigy, “pre-currency, post-language, anti-

label, yet pro-famous,” had brought the secular

world of rap an invocation even more profound

than “Jesus Walks.”

In contrast, The Big Day, which is often just as

prayerful, feels closed-off. These raps aren’t just

duller and more rigid in motion, they’re

dogmatic. He loves his girl, he loves his God, he

loves his kid, and anyone who doesn’t share that

love is a dissenter. He is so tenacious in his

worship that it can feel contrived. “They prop up

statues and stones, try to make a new God/I

don’t need a EGOT, as long as I got you, God,” he

raps, demonizing the same awards he

champions elsewhere on the album as marks of

progress.

The album can become a slog, almost

oppressively upbeat, but The Big Day isn’t

without wonders. Chance is still one of the most

talented rappers working, and there are signs of

that latent brilliance across about a dozen songs.

There are instances where his assorted taste

shines, flipping Brandy’s “I Wanna Be Down”

into a hip-house jam with Shawn Mendes or

getting CalBoy to rap over a chipmunk’d James

Taylor sample for “Get a Bag.” The fierce Nicki

Minaj verse on “Zanies and Fools” that closes the

album is her best in recent memory, and the

most memorable among a slew of rap guest spots

(DaBaby, Megan Thee Stallion, Gucci Mane,

even his kid brother Taylor) that make the

quirkier ones all but forgettable. Still, The Big

Day rises and falls on Chance's vows. Even on

the dancefloor, his hopefulness can feel like a

beacon.

More Reviews for Chance

the Rapper

Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama:

Re-Wrapped

Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama

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