3.5/10
Favorite Track: "Do You Remember" Least Favorite Track: "Ballin Flossin"
I think the word “bad” is thrown around way too carelessly within the context of how we listen to music. For me personally, a “bad” project needs to be more than boring, forgetful, or technically flawed. A bad project needs to be something that I hate listening to; not something that simply bores me. With that I think this new Chance The Rapper album is being labeled as “bad” way too easily. I don’t enjoy Chance’s debut album; The Big Day, but it isn’t worth the amount of hate it’s getting. The only moments that equate to scratching a chalkboard are some of the hanus lyrical passages that Chance throws around on these tracks. I don’t have the sufficient amount of characters to list them all, but ill let you listen for yourself. This thing is also way too long. Like way way way too long. I understood the concept of The Big Day in about twenty minutes so I really don’t think that I needed to hear about Chance’s marriage for nearly an hour and a half. However, with twenty-two tracks there are thankfully some breaths of fresh air. If you can ignore the painful vocal performances from both Chance and Francis and the Lights the refrain and stuttering synths on the title track are pretty charming. “Do You Remember” also has a pretty acceptable hook and some cute keys and a surprisingly clean lyrical performance from Chance who also delivers a great flow on the beat. It’s moments like these that deliver the emotion-fueled, sappy, dad-raps that Chance wanted them to on this record, it’s a shame that everything surrounding it is pretty horrid. You could most likely boil this bloated track list into a shorter run time with like seven or eight songs that could function as passable but even if you did that, there really isn’t a song on this thing where we dont see some pretty cringey lyrical blunders. On the surface this album is rather safe and a little harmless but getting through the track list quickly becomes a chore and a bore rather than something I actually want to do. Chance punches WAY under his weight lyrically on this thing, that combined with the overblown length makes this project pretty difficult to sit through.