Chance The Rapper is a versatile talent. He sits outside rap’s porch painting a world that has more colour, passion and emotion than most. It’s almost hyper-real. On last year’s guest verse on SZA’s ‘Child’s Play’ he illuminated the track with Popeye references and a tightly structured flow that ends in a wistful singsong “But memories keep coming back / All the nights that we used to laugh / Wanna know how we used to was, how we used to was.”
He’s guested on tracks from James Blake, Justin Bieber and most recently to me, Shlohmo and Jeremih’s ‘The End’ adding a dragged syncopated ryhthmic stop-start verse to proceedings. On his own, or with his band The Social Experiment he approaches the unusual – covering a Kids TV theme song with Jessie Ware in tow.
On this Octave Minds song, a collaboration between Chilly Gonzales and Boys Noize (a fine match that has produced an album worthy of investigation), Chance’s pitter-patters lightly on Chilly’s bright piano riff, dexterously leapfrogging around the track’s melody, adding a filmic experience to the polymorphic exuberance on display.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
