When hip-hop albums are put together, they often seem collaborative concoctions that blend multiple visions, each rapper and producer contributing their own verse, riff, sample or groove. So it’s a pleasant surprise when you find a hip-hop artist with their own individualistic style, creating music that seems to come from one person’s mind and heart.
What’s even more rare is finding that that artist’s strong recorded output doesn’t do them justice. That they turn out to be a magnetic and disarmingly genuine live performer who connects with a crowd like only a handful of others in their genre.
Such an artist is Chance the Rapper, who performed a powerful and richly entertaining concert at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand on Friday night. Here’s a performer with a sense of his place in the progression of pop music, tapping into the roots of funk, soul and R&B for his arrangements and then applying eloquent poetry atop it, often in very fast fashion.
Not only that, but Chancelor Bennett from Chicago’s South Side proved a warm and welcoming host for the enthusiastic crowd, some of whom likely traveled for this, one of only three concerts on his schedule this year and the only one outside his hometown. Devoid of the macho posturing that can shape the performances of many a male hip-hopper, Chance the Rapper comes off as unapologetically dorky, bouncing about the stage like a loose-limbed marionette and engaging the audience in call and response passages and full-body arm waves.
Performing with a keyboardist, drummer, trumpeter and three backing singers who provided lush harmonies and sometimes stepped forward for breathtaking solos, Chance showed he knows how to endear himself to a crowd. In fact, he one-upped any performer in the Grandstand’s half-century-plus of history with one particular song.
Explaining that he was told within the last two weeks that his Grandstand show had sold 3,333 seats in a 14,000-seat venue — ironic, as one of his trademarks is wearing a ballcap adorned with the number 3 — he was asked if he wanted to cancel the show. He not only responded with an expletive-accented no, but wrote a song in honor of those ticket buyers called “3,333,” complete with accompanying video and pop-up lyrics that referenced the State Fair and the fact that he used to play shows with as many people onstage as in the audience.
That song launched a string of captivating numbers in which Chance and his ensemble seemed to engage more deeply, both musically and lyrically, with each passing tune. “YAH Know” was a socially conscious rapid-fire rap with a driving beat and the urgent refrain of “You’ll know when we get there.” Even more earnest was “Child of God,” a ballad on which the frontman seemed both exhilarated and transcendent. And “Summer Friends” was a sweet reminiscence with an aching sense of loss around the edges.
Some of the slower songs were downright hypnotic in their gospel-flavored harmonies, such as “Ultralight Beam,” “Ride” and “The Highs and the Lows.” And a closing coupling of “Cocoa Butter Kisses” and “Same Drugs” brought some familiarity to a set that had a fair number of new songs that have yet to appear on record.
While his 75-minute set may have proven too brief for some — especially after a warmup set of the same length from DJ Oreo — it was quite satisfying musically. And the crowd, which came in at a final count of 4,110, seemed to enjoy every one of the 21 songs. And, with a performer this charismatic, how could they resist?
Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.
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