Chance The Rapper

Chance The Rapper

One of the recurring themes of my weekend was consistently underestimating the popularity of artists playing the Gotham Tent. Perhaps the most shocking of these was Chance the Rapper. Even with Acid Rap being one of the more beloved rap releases of 2013, I wasn’t expecting the kind of fervor that greeted Chance basically as soon as he walked onstage, appropriately wearing a blue Superman T-shirt. Backed by a live band that wasn’t afraid of pausing for a quick horn break or guitar solo, Chance ran all around, jumped over and over, and generally succeeded in eliciting increasingly uproarious responses from the crowd when you’d expect they had nothing left to give. This was a set that kicked off with the majority of the crowd rapping and/or singing along to every single word, but still didn’t peak till he dropped “Juice.” (That one’s one word chorus is pretty easy to rap along to, so maybe it got the stragglers speaking up.) Chance just seemed incredibly psyched to be there, and it wasn’t really possible to avoid getting swept up in his enthusiasm.