Album Review: The Big Day by Chance the Rapper
Album Review: The Big Day by Chance the Rapper
Chance the Rapper’s ‘The Big Day’ is where rich people toast to themselves.
There is this theory that artists who are thriving under challenging times no longer make good music once their lives are under control. Eminem’s gruesome Revival would be such a candidate. But rarely was the sound of a healthy world so in the foreground and intrusive and as insubstantial and shared as on Chance the Rapper’s official debut album, The Big Day. The album processing of his six-month marriage swings somewhere between an Instagram couple photo and a Christian youth camp.
This is confusing and frustrating because Chance has delivered with Acid Rap, a securitized classic that is based mainly on its arch-sympathetic character. He is the loose, somewhat squeaky, and lively dude who still sees the good in the world, in others, and in himself, even in the face of a lost city and drug problems. Seeing the good is also at the center of The Big Day. Only Channo is now a rap superstar, rich, sober, and married.
That doesn’t mean you don’t give him happiness. But it changes the narrative. And the fact that he talks continuously about his wife over the 70 minutes, but apart from all the loving stalk, no detail about her is revealed, has rightly developed into a meme. It’s not even the case that this record would be musically wrong. Even the opener. “All Day Long” shows on Kaytranada-esque neo-soul with gospel impact how agile Chance raps are. But he doesn’t just turn in circles; he literally revolves around the one emotion that is supposed to fill the whole album.
It is one-dimensional. It doesn’t sound so bad at first, considering that a few of the best rapals of all time are one-dimensional. But it is the tone that makes The Big Day the doom. Because it is not only wholly built on one topic, it also works on this topic in an undetailed and superficial way, but with tons of emotional bead. Even the intro tracks sound like a sentimental closer. And the whole hour of material that follows is only more and more sentimental, sloppy closer with a few interruptions from the pop-rap landscape that make little sense.
“Hot Shower” is an absolutely solid trap banger against public opinion, on which Chance very shamelessly steals Valee’s “Womp Womp” flow, but MadeinTYO and DaBaby routinely jog over the beat. “Handsome” and “Slide Around” are solid pop-rap numbers that fit on a DJ Khaled album in terms of commerciality but are again saved by strong guest verses from the pens of Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, and Young Nudy. Worse is the house gray “Ballin Flossin” supported by Shawn Mendes, which makes even his Bieber feature on Coloring Book look like credible underground hip-hop.
These songs would be okay filler for another project but seem out of place in the concept here. The fact that they are still all highlights or at least refreshing moments testifies that the concept is quite crap. If you can cope with the first numbers, it will be really hard to bear in terms of sultryness from the middle of the day. At the latest, at the wedding speech of Chance’s father (played by John Witherspoon), you are left behind with the feeling of seeing here an uninteresting episode from the lives of rich people, which you have never asked for. Chance’s representations of being in love are so over-canned, cardboard-sweet, and offensively uncool that you want to be ashamed of ever having been in a relationship.
But with each track, the gospel choirs become a little more self-righteous, the verbiage a little more unbearable, and you have the feeling of feeling Chance’s forced grin through the headphones. It has the emotional effect of a sentimental end scene in a video game in which you have consistently skipped every dialogue sequence. It has the flair of rich young companies that toast to themselves. It has the aesthetics of helicopter parents. What a wasted potential after three impressive mixtapes. But let me know when the album comes about the divorce. That could become interesting again.
Poor (★☆☆☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Eternal”