Chance the Rapper

[Employee]

I've been listening to it wondering why the fuck so many people actually like it.

[Gyangsta 4 Life]

nobody has thoughts on Coloring Book? dude is on top of the city right now

She say mi skin pretty like a coloring book !



(chance is terrible btw)

[sleazy_j]

i downloaded it. it's actually the first time i ever gave dude more than 5 minutes of my listening time.

album is good, although a few tracks are really muddy in the mixdown.

kinda amazed that in consideration of all the choir vocals going on throughout, "God" was barely mentioned, and barely by Chance.

cool, because i like gospel samples, like on that Kanye album, but overall don't care about religion.

[Employee]

Do you also suffer from learning disabilities?

[blastmaster]

I am enjoying it. Happy music.

[intuition]

kinda amazed that in consideration of all the choir vocals going on throughout, "God" was barely mentioned, and barely by Chance.

i thought it was pretty god heavy.

this is good and chance is obviously amazingly talented. i prefer acid rap. i'll probably always have an acid rap bias with the dude though.

[Escobar305]

9 @ pitchfork

[samdoom]

The mixtape/album is definitely getting overhyped but that's mostly because people are finally catching on late. Chance is talented as fuck and will have a long and successful career but Acid Rap is MUCH better than this. Some of the beats and hooks are inexcusably bad. Chance's personality saves most of the mediocre tracks and somehow makes all the god talk a little more palatable.

[Piff Tannen]

i feel like this is the gospel album kanye wanted to put out but we got TLOP instead

im not well versed in chance's shit tho, but i thought it was p good

i feel like kanye's gospel vibes is coming from having chance around anyways but who knows

[intuition]

Acid Rap is MUCH better than this.

i feel the same way, but have a feeling if this is stated on rap twitter people would just accuse of haterism.

but yeah definitely some cringeworthy moments, "all night" sticks out as an example, and even the opening hook claiming "music is all we got" seems a bit contrived and corny to me, personally. the fact there is a 2:47 gospel overture before the most barred out rap song on the record seems excessive, wish that was a separate track i could skip.

also...dunno if it's just the version i DL'd, but the mix is not good. this new trend of "mixed specifically for iTunes" is garbage. mix it so it bumps in my car, not on laptop speakers.

all that being said: acid rap literally changed the way i view modern rap music, so i know i'm only pointing out the bad stuff on this record because i had unrealistic standards for what i was hoping it would be. there are some great cuts...blessings1, juke jam, no problem, same drugs, mixtape...all great. i'll probably end up plucking the ones i like off onto playlists more than i listen to the record as a whole though.

[ANU]

Acid Rap is MUCH better than this.

i feel the same way

[wuk]

he could use an editor, no doubt. we all could.

it's impressive that he's done all this with no label and without ever charging for his music. i'm sure apple cut him a nice check for having exclusive streaming rights for 2 weeks or whatever, but still nobody can say they are chance's boss and he is now one of the biggest rappers out there.

the kanye part is super loud and blown out intentionally, i'm sure, though i don't like it or that song too much. i'm not convinced we've heard the final mix/master of this album either...but even if this is it, it's not bad for free.

[Employee]

it's not bad for free.

[intuition]

it's impressive that he's done all this with no label

this idea kinda bugs me though.

sure, we all assume no label (in a traditional sense) is telling him how to sound or whatever...but this album was distributed with one of the biggest corporations on the planet, and that exclusivity is essentially the beginning of them deciding that music distribution is changing and streaming will soon be the only option. to think he is an "indie" musician is silly, he surely has all top notch booking agents, talent agents, PR, management, lawyers, marketers that have all been in the industry forever. it's not just him and pat the manager in a room alone brewing ideas. he may have skipped the middle man (major labels), but all major labels have left is radio...radio is dying because of streaming...apple is trying to takeover streaming.

so while this record is a surefire sign that labels are dying, it is also a sign that soon every major artist will be corporate sponsored, and instead of being on Warner people will be on Samsung. i'm not smart enough to know how this is going to fuck consumers over, but consumers will end up getting fucked over. theoretically these streaming wars are going to lead to people needing subscriptions to Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify, and whoever the fuck else enters the game, and paying like 50 bucks a month to streaming services when they really just maybe want to hear 1 new record a month that comes out. indie musicians will also have zero leverage with any of these companies.

so anyway...calling chance "indie" or saying he's "not on a label" when Apple paid for the record is asinine imo. yeah it's not a record label, but it might be something worse.

apologies for paranoid rant.

[Vlad Analogue]

Warner Bros, along with every other music label, is a corporation.

[Employee]

yeah it's not a record label, but it might be something worse.

Whatever new industrial incarnations of channels music is distributed by cannot be any worse than the way labels have traditionally handled music distribution. Artists not signing 360 deals with decade-long obligations and instead being hit off with cash by evil corporations (the same "evil corporations" who brought us all Public Enemy, N.W.A. etc) seems to be a step in the right direction. When and where there is a space created for profit, vendors will, naturally, flood the zone with their offerings.

And any consumer/s forking over multiple monthly subscription fees is a dumb consumer. There will always be those as there will always be "evil corporations" delivering music in various ways to various people who enjoy it for various reasons.

[intuition]

apologies, i didn't mean to sound like an "evil corporation" conspiracy guy. i'm not (nor was i ever) worried about labels censoring what comes out, if you're a good/influential enough artist someone will trust you to do you.

i still think this record does NOT represent an indie deal. with streaming becoming the eventual only route of distribution (let's keep it real this is bound to happen), the one controlling the streaming gets to control the pricing and gets to distribute the wealth back to the artists. i'll bet chance's team had some leverage on how much they see per stream since it was an exclusive deal. true independent artists without the power of negotiation with apple (or whoever) will never have that option. as long as people keep putting their music out there to stream they're never going to get MORE per stream, those companies will more than likely keep cutting their payouts over time because musicians will run out of choices.

at least with a CD / Vinyl / tapes as an indie musician you could name your own price point and, as a consumer, if you bought one of those you could play it on whatever brand device you wanted because they were all compatible. when everything becomes streaming exclusives, you're not going to have that option, you have to stream it how they want you to stream it, and if you're not subscribed to that service you're gonna have to subscribe. sure there will always be bootleg links, but i'm talking legally.

currently as an indie musician to get your album distributed to iTunes / spotify / tidal / etc you have to pay a third party company to distribute to all them (tunecore is like 75 bucks starting fee, 50 bucks a year after that), and you gotta accept whatever the streaming companies payout rates are per stream. you have no say, you never will, and it's an arbitrary number they made up, and it will only get worse as options get fewer.

[Employee]

i still think this record does NOT represent an indie deal. with streaming becoming the eventual only route of distribution (let's keep it real this is bound to happen), the one controlling the streaming gets to control the pricing and gets to distribute the wealth back to the artists. i'll bet chance's team had some leverage on how much they see per stream since it was an exclusive deal. true independent artists without the power of negotiation with apple (or whoever) will never have that option. as long as people keep putting their music out there to stream they're never going to get MORE per stream, those companies will more than likely keep cutting their payouts over time because musicians will run out of choices.

The challenges for artists hewing to the traditional model sound similar to those opting to follow a newer model.

at least with a CD / Vinyl / tapes as an indie musician you could name your own price point and, as a consumer, if you bought one of those you could play it on whatever brand device you wanted because they were all compatible. when everything becomes streaming exclusives, you're not going to have that option, you have to stream it how they want you to stream it, and if you're not subscribed to that service you're gonna have to subscribe. sure there will always be bootleg links, but i'm talking legally.

I see musicians releasing physical products and setting their own price points for their wares. I've also noticed artists offering an "a la carte" deal for listeners: X amount for a year's worth of music (yes: streaming, but with incentives for physical products etc). As with any other commodity, and music is a commodity, eventually things die and are later reborn in a different form: CD's, records, tapes. They'll always be diehards and stubborn groups, but most musicians and fans, of all stripes, don't particularly care about the means of distribution; they care about being popular, heard, listened to, critically acclaimed.

currently as an indie musician to get your album distributed to iTunes / spotify / tidal / etc you have to pay a third party company to distribute to all them (tunecore is like 75 bucks starting fee, 50 bucks a year after that), and you gotta accept whatever the streaming companies payout rates are per stream. you have no say, you never will, and it's an arbitrary number they made up, and it will only get worse as options get fewer.

I couldn't disagree more: if you are an independent artist who makes all of their own decisions, you choose whether or not you want to control your music or whether you want to give up a piece of your control (and how big of a piece are you comfortable with giving away?). And, again, it would be the same thing if we replaced the streaming companies with record labels. I mean, you're free to protest the model, but business is about profit; not the feelings of the artists or fans (not meant disingenuously).

[Employee]

i still think this record does NOT represent an indie deal.

[intuition]

i mean...i get it, you're hyper capitalistic, and i'm a bleeding heart idealist, that's not gonna change. you're right there are always going to be ways to get creative and work around the streaming system, i agree with you on that. as far as "you have no say you never will" i meant: "you have no say in the amount of money you receive per stream." and you're right musicians and fans will always care about being popular and heard, and when the streaming wars are over, there may end up be one company that you HAVE to be on to get heard (the way iTunes was / is THE download company you have to be on). that company will have all the control imo.

still think truly independent musicians are going to get the shit end of the streaming stick in the long run because the same way labels used to control how many points you'd get on a record, streaming companies will control how many milli-cents you get per stream. also still think a deal with apple is the same thing as a deal with a label when broken down to brass tacks.

anyway, you make good points emp, i'm just being all chicken-little-sky-is-falling.

[blastmaster]

As a snapshot of the current industry, it's cool to see someone cut out the current middle man (labels) and deal directly with a streaming service. As long as Apple/Spotify/tidal/whoever doesn't have influence over the actual content, it's a win for everyone (for now).

[intuition]

As long as Apple/Spotify/tidal/whoever doesn't have influence over the actual content, it's a win for everyone (for now).

unless you're a spotify subscriber who doesn't want another subscription service in their life but is also a chance the rapper fan that doesn't want to wait two weeks to hear the record while everyone on every social media talks about it. so many folks bitched about TLOP being available only on Tidal as a subscriber grab and how the release was a debacle, this is just a smoother version of that on a different platform.

no one seems to agree with me on this one, so perhaps i'm nuts. i just don't see it as that different from iTunes putting a U2 album on all our phones. "You're going to listen this whether you like or not" vs "You're going to subscribe to our product to listen to this whether you like it or not"

[blastmaster]

I mean.... You can always just pirate it. Piracy will always be a tool to teach someone a lesson. They will adapt.

[Escobar305]

mixtape goes

"how could they call themselves bosses, when they got so many bosses"

[step one]

In the midst of the debate about whether this is better or worse than acid rap and the definitely never played out debate about the role of major labels in the internet era, it's almost as if everyone has failed to notice that Chance The Rapper is terrible.

[Hayzoos]

In the midst of the debate about whether this is better or worse than acid rap and the definitely never played out debate about the role of major labels in the internet era, it's almost as if everyone has failed to notice that Chance The Rapper is terrible.

Nope

[wuk]

Step one please step out thanks

[Vlad Analogue]

In the midst of the debate about whether this is better or worse than acid rap and the definitely never played out debate about the role of major labels in the internet era, it's almost as if everyone has failed to notice that Chance The Rapper is terrible.

We can't have a "pass me the rizla" every month, bruh

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

good background music

[EMCEE DARTH MALEK]

In the midst of the debate about whether this is better or worse than acid rap and the definitely never played out debate about the role of major labels in the internet era, it's almost as if everyone has failed to notice that Chance The Rapper is terrible.

i like his sound, but yeah he's not good. still fuck with him