When Chance the Rapper dropped the list of 27 stops for his tour, I gave it a glance—hopeful he may stop in Vermont. Bold, but he went to Castleton my sophomore year (late 2014), so there was a chance.
Nope, but until then, Boston made the cut, and Chance hasn’t gone there very much. It has to be an amazing show. A pair of tickets were purchased the second they went on sale, and my buddy Joe tagged along for the trip.
Along with the announcement of the tour he released his cover of the College Dropout classic “Family Business” with a video by his go-to videographer Austin Vesely. There are a few theories circulating the internet as to why this tour could have been announced. The first being in support of band mate Donnie Trumpet’s release this past summer of his debut project Surf. A groovy album that’s actually free to download on iTunes. Totally worth a listen.
Chano is also starting a family himself, a little Chancellor could be running around soon singing “juice, juice, juice” by the end of the tour. Both totally make sense, and it doesn’t matter because CHANCE IS TOURING.
Here’s a quick rundown of Chance the Rapper for those who’ve never heard of him. Chance the acid rapper is an MC from Chicago. He has three mix tapes out and also decided not to sign to a label when he finally blew up. During his senior year in 2011 he got suspended for having a blunt in his backpack and almost walking into school. He titled the mixtape 10 Day, after the length of the suspension he receives from school.
“Brain Cells” shows off his genius wordplay, almost tripping over his own words while rhyming over a slow, melodic beat produced by Peter Cottontail. “The flabbergasted avalanche of ambulances near/ The labyrinth of Pan’s Lab is adamantly here.”
“Juke Juke” samples Biggie’s Big Poppa and makes it tough to stand still with a soulful vibe.
Chance flexes his lyrical muscles a little bit over the Chuck Inglish produced “U Got Me Fucked Up” that has his signature sounding drums.
Fast forward two years, and this is when I first stumbled across this artist known as Chance the Rapper. It was just after my freshman year of college and right when he dropped his sophomore mixtape Acid Rap. I saw it pop up here and there online across several hip hop blogs that I pay attention to. Honestly, with the name Acid Rap I was initially turned off and never really gave his music a spin because he just seemed like stereotypical rapper who rapped about just drugs and that lifestyle. That’s not what I wanted to listen to, but oh how was I wrong.
The first time Acid Rap touched my ears was in my old ‘92 Honda Accord on I-95, Rhode Island’s only highway, on a drive towards Providence on an early summer day. My mind was blown, jaw open the whole ride, bopping along to this…this music. While at third base the whole game, I kept singing the few words that wiggled into my brain that ride. Oh my.
That summer brought me to the Windy City actually. Through an oppurtunity with baseball I was out in Chicago for six weeks just playing baseball every day. I had a ton of free time—and if you know me at all, you know two things that took up most of that time would be music and more music. Most of my summer was dedicated to listening to favorite hip-hop, especially the Chicago hip-hop scene: Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, (now) Chance, The Cool Kids, and even Common. Ooooooh. That’s some beautiful hip-hop.
If you’ve gotten this far and never listened to Chance before a great starting point is “Cocoa Butter Kisses”. One of the catchiest hooks you’ll ever hear, and Chance talks about growing up and missing the days when he was young with lines like “Used to like orange cassette tapes with Timmy, Tommy, and Chuckie / and Chuck E. Cheese’s pizzas, Jesus pieces, sing Jesus love me.”
In “Acid Rain”, Chano continues his clever wordplay while venting about all aspects of life. “As of late, all my verses seem not so verse-y / and all my words just mean controversy / Took the team up off my back, like “That’s not your jersey?”
The day I got home to Rhode Island from the Chi that summer somehow I had Back to the show, so we arrive in Boston and get lucky with a free parking spot. After initially walking the opposite direction we get where we need to only to find the line is around the block. Then before we know what happens an usher walking down the line is looking for people 21 and over.
“Walk with the group, walk with the group.”
The usher had some problems scanning the tickets on my phone because there’s a small crack in it. I would have caused such a scene, but it was their lucky day because the tickets eventually scanned. We got finally got in.
We end up in a maze of a club above the House of Blues, The Foundation Room. Almost instantly I met up with my friend Sarah (she took some pictures); we were all confused as to how we got up there. We figured as a group that getting drinks would help us solve our mystery, but that was the least of our worries. The bartender Derek was the man as well; he told us Chance was scheduled to come at 10:30.
There were three opening acts for the show. The first being Towkio, another Chicago MC and mainly played music from his recently dropped project titled .Wav Theory, played some his standout songs like “Heaven Only Knows” (one of my personal favorites) and “Reflection”. The next act was D.R.A.M., better known as the guy who Drake arguably took Hotline Bling (NOT THAT DRAKE DIDN’T KILL IT) from. Everyone turned up when he started performing “Cha Cha” came on. The METROBOOMIN (pictured above) was next, playing fire song after fire song. Whether it be “Jumpman” or “All Day” or “Hotline Bling”, everyone in the theater was bouncing.
All of the opening acts definitely held their own, a perfect build up to the headliner.
Chance finally came out on stage, backed by the always amazing Social Experiment. The band totally killed it to. Stix tore the drums up. Peter Cottontail and Nate Fox laid down beautiful melodies on the keys all night. Last but not least, Donnie Trumpet was blessing the air with the buttery sounds from his trumpet. It was exactly the set-list that you wanted as a Chance the Rapper fan. He glided effortlessly through music from each of his projects, mostly hanging out in the 10 Day and Acid Rap area though.
The night before the show Chance just happened to be on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where he debuted a new song called “Angels”. One of the high points of the show was when he teased that he was going to play “Angels” the next night in D.C., he laughed and the band jumped into the song. He wanted to blow the walls out of the joint and this was easily the closest point, the place exploded.
Later in the show he even dropped a hint that a new project is coming our way in the sometime near future. New Chance is always good news.
The Family Matters tour was lit to say the least. If the opportunity to see Chano ever comes up in your life please take it. If you’re disappointed, I’ll personally hug you, and that’s a promise.