All Day Long
A solid effort. It’s got fast-paced verses and gospel vocals reminiscent of Coloring Book, and in the latter half of the song, with the refrain “We made it, we made it,” there’s a nice celebration / disco-dance vibe going. However, the number of switches between different vibes and melodies over the course of the song feels…a little forced. The name reminds me of that Beyonce verse “all night long”, so I guess there’s some extra points for that 🤷♀️ .
It’ll do.
Do You Remember
Yes. Unlike a lot of the other songs on this album, Chance keeps The Production™ of this song really simple but also unique enough to make the song interesting. Exhibit A: the synthesizer sounds in the background that kind of sound like a Pokémon breathing. Exhibit B: the little details, like when a school bell rings right before Chance starts rapping about the summer.
The chorus and Chance’s lines are catchy and sweet and nostalgic at the same time. Some of our favorite lines:
The summer left a couple Marx like Groucho
or
My family the Sopranos these *** the Altos
or even
Used to have obsession with the 27 club
Now I’m turning 27, wanna make it to the 2070 club
Put the 27s down, Lord, give me a clean lung
We could go on and on for this one — as at least 50% of the song is (asymptotically) approaching lyrical genius. Do yourself a favor and listen to the song with the lyric sheets open. Get prepared to say “awwww” a couple of times. Also, Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cute (he sings the chorus!!!) is a cool person with a really nice voice, and as people with a secret weakness for sad indie who totally jammed to Transatlanticism in middle school, we’re glad to see him on the album! Also, Ben Gibbard’s got some solid solo stuff. I like “Teardrop Windows,” and I like that someone wrote a song about the Smith Tower.
It’s a yes from us, folks!
Eternal
The beat: Groovy, has almost Daft Punk-esque vibes, except more chilled out. The lyrics: Pretty sweet, pretty clever.
I made the three more famous than Steph
No cap, that’s a roundhouse kick to a Jameson’s neck
I got a Jada Pinkett keeping sure my shame is in check
The chorus: Chance the Rapper singing “We can be…eternal!” With the harmonized choir in the background is pretty nice. Smino’s feature: We generally like the way he raps (the kind of lazy drawl), and the interspersion of lines he also sings in the verse was well done.
Nothing too crazy… but it’s sweet and solid!
Hot Shower
Sure, the lyrics “Hot damn, hot water, hot shower” may give you a chuckle the first time around. But they’re not ridiculous or terrible enough to make you laugh out loud (think Yung Gravy)—it’s more likely that you just kind of stare at your own body in vague confusion, like: “Am I really hearing this?” and then you have to laugh because what else is there to do? The beatline is generic. The feature verses don’t particularly stand out.
0/10 on IGN.
We Go High
I think the song had a lot of potential, especially with the (really good) lyrics at the intro:
My baby mama went celibate
Lies on my breath, she say she couldn’t take the smell of it
Tired of the rumors, every room had an elephant
Tryna find her shoes, rummagin’ through the skeletons
However, like a LOT of songs on this album, the song was too damn long to not be perfectly executed. The rapping gets a bit boring as Chance never switches up his style from the talk-rap he does at the beginning. And, although obviously not every song needs some clear concise message™ to be considered good music, the lyrics are all over the place, almost as if each verse belongs to a different song. The intro is never returned to, nor is “We go high” ever really explained. Just what are we going high for?
Not this song, that’s for sure 😞.
I Got You (Always and Forever)
The voice Chance uses with the rap is ear-piercing, slightly drawn out, and makes you feel vaguely like you’re being shouted at, in a lecture-y voice break kinda way. Yeah, that’s not gonna do it for us. By the time we reach the second verse, despite the fact that he’s got a couple choice lines, we mostly want him to stop, or for the song to end.
The refrain that’s mixed into the song: “Do it for the 1-9 love, 1-9 / For the 1-9, for the 1-9 love” doesn’t sound that good, and honestly ends up wasting precious time on a song that’s already too long for what it is.
Ari Lennox’s harmonized vocals show promise. They give strong Coloring Book vibes and feel almost ’80s inspired, but they’re also not enough to carry the song.
You could do without this one.
Photo Ops Skit
It’s fine. It was more interesting than the other skits, with more of a message (?), but in comparison to other famous skits/speeches in good albums (see: the majority of Kendrick’s skits, or Frank Ocean’s Be Yourself), it’s just “eh”. Since there were so many skits, in this album it would’ve been nice if there was some sort of continuity between all of them, and maybe some more interesting audio but alas, Chance fell short on that one 😔 .
Roo
The way The Production™’s done, with the trap snare and the laser beam-esque sounds and the slightly-reverbed drawn out atmospheric instrumental and the buzzing distortion, isn’t bad, per se, but also tends to strongly remind you of a bunch of other artists who you can’t exactly place. It feels like Chance is borrowing other people’s styles instead of inventing his own.
We’re ambivalent towards Chance’s verse…the top-of-the-lungs drawn out syllables grate on you, but once he stops with that and starts rapping, there are a couple lines where you’re just like, nice.
We look just alike, the prestige is so prestigious
The splitting image of Lupita standing on them beaches
A reference to Jordan Peele’s Us and a mention of Lupita Nyong’o, who is amazingly beautiful and charming and everything we wish the world could be? Yep, that’ll do!
Taylor Bennett’s feature verse was really good, the way it built up and got progressively more hype and faster-paced. Really, really, really good. And there are a lot of good lyrics in this one:
So if you do production just make sure the drums right
The independent Bennetts will never need your advice
and
In adolescence, seen ambulances, learned other lessons
Catchin’ blessings, overstretchin’ from first-hand impressions
Chano called my phone voicemail, hope he don’t get a message
It’s a nice return to form for him after his most recent album, THE AMERICAN REJECT, which was short on verses and more R&B/smooth based, and felt kind of poorly executed on that front.
Overall, despite its errors, the good lines in Chance’s verse and Taylor’s verse as a whole are able to make this a decent enough song.
If it came on in the car, that’d be fine.
The Big Day
For the titular song on this album, it’s a bit of a let down. There is an attempt at experimentation being made here: the tribal-type noises mixed in with the bumping drums, the sudden aggressive low sound quality rap.
The song’s trying, we’ll give it that. It’s trying to have cool production and do big transitions on you. But the poor execution on said production and transitions, the relative forgettability of the melody means that it’s just not it.
When the slowed down semi-autotuned outro with sweet piano keys comes in, you want to breathe a sigh of relief: finally, we’re wrapping things up here. In said outro, Francis and the Lights’ says, “This is the only part I like.” He might as well be talking about how we feel about the entire song.
The saving grace of this song is that the main refrain: “The only way to survive, is to go crazy,” is relatable™ for all pensive teens out there, including us!
He tried, but no.
Let’s Go On the Run
The melody and Chance’s singing is just really, really grating. The high notes are out of control and just don’t sound good, and not in a charming Kanye on the unreleased New Angels way (2:03ish). The electronic-keyboard type sound that’s forming the beat for Chance’s verse seems to compound on the grating-factor.
This song also attempts to switch vibes a bunch of times—from the dance-y electronic keyboard and Chance’s rap, to the Knox Fortune verse, then to the stripped down beat with the “oooh, oohs” in the background and Chance rapping in a more lowkey way—but it’s just not well executed enough, and nothing really sounds good enough to warrant the time it occupies. The song, at 3 minutes and 41 seconds, is pretty hard to force yourself to listen through. A bit of my soul definitely evaporated.
He tried again, but also no.
Handsome
Generic.
Not worth.
Big Fish
The inferior Big Fish by far. More generic stuff.
Just skip it, honestly.
Ballin Flossin
I replayed about twenty seconds of this song, and Anika went: “I don’t want to hear that.” That’s about all you need to know.
Nope.
4 Quarters In the Black (Skit)
It’s fine. See skit above.
5 Year Plan
“You gotta schedule celebrations in your five year plan.” The opening verse is sweet enough to warm your heart, and the kind of about-my-new-marriage lyrics we want to see from an album titled “The Big Day.” On The Production™: the piano (?) notes in the background and the pitched-upwards distant-reverbed vocals that occasionally dip in are a nice touch. By the time the instrumentation in the background really builds up, Chance goes “Love, love, love,” and Randy Newman tells us the “Time has come,” we’re getting really solid revelatory epiphany vibes from this song. The second verse has got some funny lines: “Why did it occur where it happened at?” And Chance’s barely suppressed laugh as he delivers them is pretty endearing. The distorted piano (I think that’s what it is?) at the very end of the song is a nice touch.
Solid work, and much needed at this point in the album.
Get a Bag
Okay, in the first ten seconds, we quite like the pitched up repeated sample going in the background. Briefly, some Kanye’s Graduation era beat-vibes, nice! But then Chance’s rap comes in: “You need a bag, get a bag.” (Sarah and I actually stopped in the middle of the song and rewinded to see if we misheard Chance’s lines). Not sure if these are the lyrics we’re going for, but then he keeps on keeping on with it. Hmmmmm.
Thankfully, the actual rap verses themselves (not the “if you X a bag, X a bag” style chorus) are solid, and the “bing-bing-bang-booka-booka” feels (almost) very Chance and (almost) very charming. CalBoy sounds like a slightly differently pitched Swae Lee, and his lyrics are…pretty forgettable.
Ehhh. Not sold. We won’t be getting this bag!
Slide Around
More generic beats, generic verses. The one good thing that stands out is the downward bopping beat (it sounds like a xylophone) that dips into the song. We’re both pretty biased towards Nicki Minaj features on anything, because the way she raps and talks is just cool, but like…it’s just not enough.
Nah. We’re sorry, Nicki, and we still love you.
Sun Come Down
The background sound is largely comprised of these muffled echo-y wordless vocals, and throughout the song they build up with alongside verse to be more and more layered. It sounds really good. That being said, hearing it will give you this very strong impression that you’re listening to another artist, you just can’t think of who. Because other people have definitely done this kind of vibe before, both in hip-hop/R&B and indie, and you’re like, damn, I’ve heard this before. Same problem as with the production on Roo.
The verse flows well over the instrumentation and has got some really, really sweet lines:
You wanna use my likeness, please approve it through my wife
And if you get the license then you better use it right
and
I don’t want nobody to be at my wedding
That won’t be there for my marriage
And the way Chance’s flow goes in the latter half of Verse 2—the “IIIIII….” and the quick delivery of the rest of the line, the sense of humour, is really really freaking nice. The song closes out with Chance saying, “Don’t look down, don’t look down,” which comes off as sweet and earnest.
Chance’s singing on the choruses is occasionally hard to listen to (particularly at the high notes), but we love him for trying.
Also has good details: the song seems to close out with a Mario-getting-the-coin sound, and it’s good; the slow, sparse strumming at the intro is a nice touch.
Not perfect, but worth a try.
Found A Good One (Single No More)
The chorus is smooth and sweet (“I messed around and found a good one!”) and really upbeat. The rap part for the first half of the song is also pretty sweet, he talks about marrying his “boo”, which is damn adorable. But there were two switches at the end of the song that overdid it. At around 2:20, the song slows down to an okay sounding and then again, at 3:43, the song switches again for a fast, high-energy chant of “I ain’t single no more”. Having only one of those switches in the song (preferably the second one) and cutting the song off at around 2 minutes would’ve made this one a good one. But the song in its original form is kinda hard to listen to.
We might make this one an Audacity Project though! This means we’ll play around with it on Audacity until it turns into a better version of itself, and then upload it on here at some point!
This one could be edited into something.
Town On the Hill
The muffled vocals in the back and Chance’s singing comes off pretty sweetly and earnest on this one. “Thank you father”—Gospel and Jesus vibes are solid. Around the 2 minute mark, the production starts to really come in in the background—you get that kind of distorted thudding / metallic sound that you hear on…well, I know that it’s on on a lot of things but right now what’s coming to mind is “Hard Feelings / Loveless” by Lorde (around the 2:30-3:15 mark) and “U & Me” by Yangze except not as intense. Which is what we like to see.
It’s not Yeezus, but then again, what is?
Give it a try.
Our House (Skit)
Alright? Yeah. It’s alright.
Zanies and Fools
Starts off sweet and smooth with vocals by—not sure who? But he’s got a lovely voice!
There’s a very tribal-feeling fast-paced drum beat going in the background that’s kind of nice, and the Verse 1 + the first part of Verse 2 + the first part of Verse 3 have Chance rapping at a quick clip, almost like he’s trying to get it all out. We’re not 100% sold on this flow, but for the latter parts of Verse 2 and Verse 3, however, the flow changes to be more… lifting upwards? Melodic? It’s a nice reminder of one of the facets of Chance’s rapping that we like most, which is that his rap can somehow also be sung to? If you’re not sure what I mean, check out this cover of Ultralight Beam.
BUT NICKI ON THIS THOUGH. It’s weird hearing Nicki rap about positive shit (“’Bout to walk down this aisle and be a mommy” <3) although of course by the end of her verse she hits us with the “Fuck they thought was sittin’ in my seat?/ Got a big bowl of ice cream sitting in my Jeep/Got some felons that’ll put you on ice, so don’t sleep/Bout to dead this whole beef and rock some gold teeth”. We missed you Nicki (Roman?) and we love you.
And we back and we back and we back!
Overall Impressions
The songs and the album were just way too long. If The Big Day was roughly 10 tracks, and Chance the Rapper had chosen different tracks to include—the singles he put out in 2018 (The Man Who Has Everything, etc.) the “All That” snippet, First World Problems with Daniel Caesar all could’ve replaced quite a few songs on this album—this could’ve been a solid showing. Instead, with a plethora of generic, radio-type filler tracks and a lack of strong melodies and lyrics on the album, we’re left feeling a little disappointed. Also, the lack of a Kanye feature was just sad (but also kind of understandable rip).
After the album, we popped into some Acid Rap. And it showed some things. Namely, that this album was just not as good.
Here’s our proposed alternate tracklist:
- All Day Long
- Do You Remember
- 5 Year Plan
- My Own Thing
- All That (assuming the full song)
- Sun Come Down
- Found a Good One (Single No More)
- Town on a Hill
- Zanies and Fools
- First World Problems
- The Man Who Has Everything
The Culinarity™ Score
| 2.6 |
Want an explanation of our scoring system? See here.