Review: Chance The Rapper at The Ritz

Image: Chance The Rapper at The Ritz 

Never has a 10-day suspension for weed possession proven so productive. Chance the Rapper, self-admittedly the kid that gets away with everything, has indisputably landed on his feet, having found himself where few people do - standing at the precipice of hip hop building the ground beneath them. 

Professionally unsigned, having shrugged at major label offers and with no album to speak of in the three years since #10Day dropped, he’s back in the UK to tour the release of a side project from which he modestly withdraws his moniker – Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment’s Surf. 

Tendency might be to credit Surf to Chance, but it seems he strives to dissolve attempts at demarcation; outside of the odd production spot from associated members, and having originally adopted the funk/soul outfit as his backing band, it now appears they’ve adopted him as their front man. So in that case, let’s do this properly: we have Nico Segal (a.k.a Donnie Trumpet) on trumpet, producer Peter Cottontale on keys and synths, Greg ‘stix’ Landfair Jr. on drums, producer Nate Fox on keys and bass, and on vocals rapper Chancelor Bennett (a.k.a Chance the Rapper) - This is The Social Experiment (SoX). 

With my first step into the auditorium I felt a hot, almost viscous haze smack me square in the face, and quickly found myself breathing more moisture than air. The room was unfazed though; kids hung over the balcony, beads of sweat shimmering on their foreheads as they danced – all trap elbows, flexing, and breakneck head-nods that seemed to take their entire body's cooperation to pull off. They rapped along to the in-house bangers ahead of the show and involuntarily finished the bar a cappella when the music cut and the lights dimmed. 

Cheering and applause swelled as Donnie and the band crossed the stage, gently tempting us into ‘Everybody’s Something’, featuring just a flick of the J Dilla produced, Slum Village classic, ‘Fall in Love’, with the call of Chance from the side-stage, “ooh-ooh!”  

The crowd called back in turn and Chance countered over the lush, twinkling funk-standard overture, eventually flying out on the beat-drop, his movement presenting in stop-motion amid the flashing lights. The room blew up and the audience emphatically resumed their rap-along, each individual a hype-man, almost drowning out Chance himself. 

We had this kind of relationship with Chance all night. The intermittent, reassuring “ooh-ooh!” functioned as a kind of nocturnal echolocation in the dark and silence between songs, until we hurtled upwards as the next one began, propelling towards some intangible summit of sheer hype; any iteration of which would've befitted an all-out, final-tune climax.

He hit all the right markers, taking us through soulful live-band adaptations of most of Acid Rap: ‘Pushaman’, ‘Juice’, ‘Lost’, ‘Paranoia’, and ‘Cocoa Butter Kisses’ – the smash hit he invited us to pretend we’d never heard. 

The entire thing felt like a for-TV performance, complete with background audience-noise so perfectly, uncannily appropriate, and executed with the kind of production value reminiscent of Kendrick’s SNL (Saturday Night Live) or Justin Timberlake’s Jimmy Fallon appearances - except there were no cameras. Judging by the frenzied audience enthusiasm you’d be forgiven for thinking this was some rare, historical reassembly of a long since disbanded super-group, except they've only been around three years, and SoX tour incessantly 

At a point, Chance asked his audience to put their hands up, and leave them there if they’d ever met before. Not one hand moved. It’s evident he’s every bit as beloved, and his fan base every bit as dedicated and hungry for his work as any artist with fourfold his quantifiable cultural legacy. 

Speaking of which, #10Day and Surf saw some stage time as well. Between the ‘Brain Cells’ throwback and the brand new ‘Sunday Candy’, Chance busted out a Chicago-style juke breakdown to his manic footwork tune ‘Juke Juke’, a feat he somehow managed without collapsing from heat exhaustion; the water he periodically flung out over the audience now seemed to evaporate before it even reached anyone’s skin. He admitted this was the hardest he’d worked to keep going. 

SoX left the stage after ‘Everything Good’, then flashing projector slides set the encore in motion. With no less energy than when they started, the group made one final appearance, wrapping up the show with ‘Chain Smoker’ –  a solid party closer full of pleasantly resolving chords and one-step modulations, in-keeping and suitably concluding the entire set. It’s courageous to be sentimental like this; with cynicism so overwhelmingly the modern human condition, anything less charming, or less catchy, or less sincere than SoX might have fallen short. 

Soon after, the house lights faded back in and ushered out the hopeful post-encore dawdlers. We spilled out onto Whitworth Street desperate for air and were greeted with something much more welcome – rain. A shallow river ran either side of the road as people flocked to its centre, their arms out wide and their heads craned upward as though thanking their respective gods; and in the midst, the dampened “ohh-ooh!” continued to echo in the downpour. 

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @jechtRye

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