This week, Chance The Rapper released his third mixtape, Coloring Book. It's a fantastic, joyful, brilliant collection of music that just sounds like summer. It's hard to listen to it without feeling like a smile is taking over your entire body. And due to a deal with Apple Music, as well as the perfect verse he had on Kanye's "Ultralight Beam," Chance is gaining a whole bunch of new fans this week. If you're one of them, you're going to be on the hunt for more Chance. Start with his first two mixtapes 10 Day and Acid Rap which are great and fucking fantastic respectively, but after you've done that, there's still so much more to listen to. Because Chance guests on a lot of songs. A lot. This is by no means a definitive list, but here are my favorites.
11. "Lift Up" Milo & Otis ft. Chance the Rapper
This is Chance being romantic. And Chance is VERY good at being romantic (see also, every reference to his daughter's mother on Coloring Book). I feel like if you ever aren't sure that the person you're with is the right person, you should put this song on and if you don't relate to what Chance is saying you should immediately break up. That's how great and romantic this is.
Notable Lines:
"Make new words for love and old uses for Kodaks
Look through throwbacks like
You should grow your fro back
Let's get old together and never go back"
10. "Fight or Flight" - G Herbo ft. Common & Chance the Rapper
This is a brutally honest verse where Chance talks about how lucky he was to have a father and a two parent home, and the way his dad got on him about stealing and running around. Chance's ability to straddle the different worlds that he's occupied and own those experiences is one of the most refreshing things about him.
Notable Lines:
"My poppa love me, ops left me
Stains fed me, and they dressed me
Come home freshly dressed and he addressed me
And he pressed me
Called me a thief, called me a boy, called me a coward"
9. "Suitcase" - Vic Mensa ft. Chance the Rapper
Rapped from the perspective of a deadbeat dad choosing to leave his family, "Suitcase" is an interesting piece of writing from Chance. It's like a one-act play where Chance, a guy who grew up with his father and later had a daughter whose life he is very much in, gets in the head of a guy who walks away.
Notable Lines:
"Kiss the kids and kick the dogs, fix the dinner, fix the faucet
Wash the dish and wish for rain and when it pours make sure in the midst of all
You don't forget to call me to come back
Pardon me on that, I was too young
You was young too but uh, I was too young"
8. "Bout A Dolla" - The O'My's ft. Twista, Chuck Inglish, Chip tha Ripper, & Chance the Rapper
This verse is incredible. It's self-aggrandizing and lives up to all the self-aggrandizement. It's even more impressive when you consider that this is pre-Acid Rap. He's coming into his own and playing a little bit.
Notable Lines:
"Let 'em flash the bang, wait and see if they buck
Let me see if they miss, if they hit me it's luck
If they touch me I quit, I'm a rapper's delight
I'm the rapper to like, a comma after the the"
7. "Baby Blue" - Action Bronson ft. Chance the Rapper
A rapper listing a bunch of terrible things he wishes upon an ex could be gross, but in Chance's hands the ideas are so creative and funny that he still comes across as likable. And he ends the verse by expressing a complicated and nuanced emotion in amazingly simple language. He hopes his ex is happy, because he hopes she broke his heart for a reason. It's angry and it's sad and it's bitter but it's also sincere. That's good writing in any medium.
Notable Lines:
"I hope every soda you drink already shaken up
I hope your dreams dry like raisins in the baking sun
I hope your titties all saggy in your early 20's
I hope there's always snow in your driveway
I hope you never get off Fridays
And you work at a Friday's that's always busy on Fridays"
6. "Crossroads" - Mick Jennings ft. Vic Mensa & Chance the Rapper
Three great Chicago rappers with three great verses, but Chance still stands out. His verse features a section of homophones to run down the Chicago music scene and the power that it has that is so pleasurable to listen to that I can never get enough of it.
Notable Lines:
"Kamikaze comma Common Keef and ComicCon
Ye and me and King L Katie here's a comet coming
Kamehameha, Chi may have made a spirit bomb
Here’s a ton of acid, ready for it here it comes"
5. "Life Round Here" - James Blake ft. Chance the Rapper
Just as on Coloring Book, Blake and Chance just sound awesome together. Blake's dreamy singing and Chance's energetic flow don't seem like they'd fit as perfectly as they do. It makes you mourn the fact that these two were going to do a mixtape together at one point.
Notable Lines:
"I'm a chill pill addict
I wonder if God's still magic
I wonder if Nas stillmatic
Down under the north it's still havoc"
4. "Lonely Thoughts" Rapsody ft. Chance the Rapper
Here the wordplay shines. The best part might be towards the end when Chance is already murdering the verse and his text tone goes off and Chance just incorporates that into the lyrics.
Notable Lines:
"I grab life by the ankle like Kurt Angle
And ask it if it's ticklish
Ask me if that's ridiculous
I'm a meticulous fickle dude
That just happens to spit a little bit
And you can tell I rapped this off my phone
Cause you can hear that ringtone in the background but I'm in the zone."
3. "Bombay State of Mind" - Odd Couple ft. Uno Hype, Chance the Rapper, Hassani Kwess & Freeway
This is a perfect Chance verse. It's clever as fuck. It's dripping in energy. It just feels like a party. I can't pick one set of lyrics for this one, so I'm going to give you two notable sections instead of wasting my time trying to tell you how great this is. Just know that this is the only time a Ford Focus has ever been involved with anything cool.
Notable Line 1:
"Screaming, Burn it down!
Too loud, too dank for you to turn it down
Bad bitches runnin' 'round like shirtless now
Shit's just perfect now
When it's worth it why the fuck would I get nervous now?"
Notable Line 2:
"I was rollin' a blunt when I wrote this
I was smokin' a blunt when I spoke this
Hocus pocus, how's that for a smoke trick
Couldn't pay attention now I can afford focus"
2. "Hello" - Busta Rhymes ft. Chance the Rapper
I will be the first one to admit that this list suffers from recency bias. But I don't care. Two of Chance's best guest verses ever were in the last six months, and I'm going to put them on. You go write your own list. First up is "Hello" from Busta Rhymes' mixtape The Return of the Dragon. It starts with a CRAZY LONG Chance verse that Chance just destroys. It's so good that at one point Busta interrupts it to tell Chance to keep going. And when he does, you can't help but be glad he did, because I could listen to Chance's verse on this forever. (It should be noted that Busta's verse on this song is pretty great itself.)
Notable Line 1:
"Now I'm thinking about offices and mansions with amenities
And runneth over pools and infinities
Award shows and house wives and games shows and Hennessy
It's different from the energy I see being in your vicinity
Mistaken identity, you behaving differently"
Notable Line 2:
"Lets push it to the masses give them wavy, give them Surf
One time shout-out to Bust, I know this a long ass verse
But I'm just getting started I'm taking this rap shit global
Put my music in the museum, put my bars in Barnes and Noble"
1. "Ultralight Beam" - Kanye West ft. The-Dream, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin & Chance the Rapper
I'm sorry, and I know a lot of people are going to hate the fact that Chance's most famous verse is number one on this list, but come on. Kanye West built the opening track of his album around a song that had only one rapped verse and it was Chance's, and it's a masterpiece of a verse. Look at lil Chano from 79th.
Notable Line 1:
"Foot on the Devil's neck 'til it drifted Pangaea
I'm moving all my family from Chatham to Zambia
Treat the demons just like Pam
I mean I fuck with your friends, but damn, Gina
I been this way since Arthur was anteater
Now they wanna hit me with the woo wap, the bam
Tryna snap photos of familia
My daughter look just like Sia, you can't see her."
Notable Line 2:
"You can feel the lyrics, the spirit coming in braille
Tubman of the underground, come and follow the trail
I made Sunday Candy, I'm never going to hell
I met Kanye West, I'm never going to fail"
