It is Saturday night, roughly 11:50 p.m., and the crowd facing the Chicago-born Chance the Rapper in Nelson Stadium is getting antsy. The show thus far has been nothing if not a tad bizarre, and Chance is running out of concert staples to fill the venue’s echoey crevices. “Smoke Again” and “Juice” have somewhat revived the audience from the lull of slow jams dominating the last twenty minutes, but a sense of restlessness is lingering. Naturally, after a week of intense scrutiny and campus-wide discourse, the question remains: will he play it? The insidious lyric in “Favorite Song” resting neatly within the lush garden that is Chance’s acclaimed LP Acid Rap? Will he defy pleas of the administration and many students on campus?
And then it happened. Chance ran through “Favorite Song” without the hint of censoring.
Chance the Rapper begins singing “Favorite Song”. (middbeat)
“I’mma give you all one last test, I’mma play one last song … I want everybody, when I drop this next song, to start jumping; I’m not even gonna say the name of the next song, I’mma just countdown.”
Five notes — a revitalized sample of the famous opening of Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman” — pulsed through the haze and erased all doubt, igniting an uproar of cheers, invigorating the crowd and saving the concert.
Well, sort of.
Chance the Rapper is no stranger to controversy. Indeed, his first mix-tape #10Day is the direct product of a 10 day suspension period inspired in part by conflicts with teachers and life’s daily occurrences. In between cheap laughs and grim landscapes, Chance spits clever quips about love, drugs, sex and everything else 20-year-olds think about. Amongst modern rappers he is highly respected yet considerably mild; in context of the broader world, however, as well as the community of the College, Chance’s lyrics are reason for concern. The exact brand of anticipation held by students was therefore mixed: some were ecstatic, others frustrated; many were indifferent, the majority at least vaguely curious.
At around 10:45 p.m., the admittedly modest crowd began to thicken as ticket holders who had gotten wind of the late projected start time began to trickle in. Whispers of excitement flowed between expressions of uncertainty. Personally I was thrilled to see Chance; having read numerous reports commending his stage presence over the past year before finally seeing him perform a shortened set this past summer, I had high hopes for an energetic concert bolstered by a lively student body. The growing swarm of students was promising. “This is gonna kick ass,” I heard someone slur in passing.
The time crept past 11:00 p.m. and the anticipation was morphing into impatience. Some tried to accelerate the process with cheers and a brief chant to little avail. The collective buzz showed signs of waning.
And then the lights went out. “Good Ass Intro” began to pour out of the speakers. Chance ran across stage, stopping with his trademark stagger, strutted up to the microphone, started the song’s opening chant, and … something immediately felt off.
A breathy rasp coated Chance’s high pitched, nasally delivery. The speakers fuzzed and instead of the rich, orchestral track listeners expected, out came a tinny, flat replica. He danced across the stage but with a slowed step — some eight months of touring, it appeared, were finally catching up to him.
Moving into the first verse, Chance picked up the tempo and got into a little groove, but then began an unfortunate trend of cutting lines short that would come to permeate the remainder of the show. Granted his rhymes are jam packed and some breathlessness is expected when one flies around with as much gusto as Chance, but it seemed to break up the rhythm of his songs.
To fix this issue, Chance resolved to stick out his microphone at the ends of bars, expecting the students to fill in the blanks. Not many knew the right answers; and with each repeated effort came another gap marring his tracks. The effect was disheartening, but not entirely damaging.
Four songs in, the concert abruptly shifted in direction. Chance took a brief break backstage as the screen lit up with a dizzying mash-up of sex scenes, puppies fighting and an African village. A few minutes passed and Chance stormed the stage with his backing band, recharged and reinvigorated, and belted a silky smooth rendition of “Everybody’s Something.” The effect in combination with the video was above all bemusing; students were not sure whether to feel offended or inspired, instead left merely confused.
Yet as it came to a close and Chance drifted into “Paranoia,” a slowed-down standout from Acid Rap, a certain disconnect wedged itself between the stage and the audience and absolutely deadened the latter. A wholly out-of-place, out-of-nowhere rendition of Coldplay’s “Fix
You” further alienated the crowd. Regardless of the energy Chance unleashed on stage, they indulged him only in sporadic waves.
It was not until Chance kicked off “Favorite Song,” the closer of the main set list — the unstable, volatile crux of contentious student debate — that any sense of enthusiasm or passion grew out of the crowd. The implications of this are plentiful and divisive, and reactions were just as varied.
“Though I’m not sure how I feel about the lyrics, I think [the lack of censorship] may have been a good thing,” said Audrey Goettl ’16. “I believe musicians need artistic liberty to an extent to express their message without the fear of offending others when interpreted without context.”
Others, like Nathan Weil ’15, were less forgiving.
“Before the show I thought the [free speech] argument in favor of Chance carried at least some weight,” Weil said. “[But] from the bizarre misogyny of the pornographic projections above the stage to playing only enough of ‘Favorite Song’ to shout the word ‘f*****’ to a cheering crowd, Chance was a shock artist and nothing more.”
Nevertheless, the act of defiance heightened the spirits of the room for the remainder of the night. Chance unexpectedly played an extra fifteen minutes with as much zeal as he had throughout the show. Closing out the night, he graciously thanked the crowd, despite its lukewarm support.
Exiting the arena, I couldn’t reconcile my unmet expectations. Chance no doubt put up a dynamic performance, but the concert in its entirety felt a bit cheap and gimmicky. The inflamed controversy did nothing to assuage the disappointment. One cannot really fault the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) Concerts Committee — they had no control over the odd features of the show or the blundered venue change — but nevertheless I still feel wary over the upcoming spring show. I doubt an act as nationally revered as Chance will be easy to come by. At the very least, we can be certain that the student body will have far more vested interest in both the content and the execution of future concerts. Hopefully that will be worth something.
Comments
