Review Summary: Disjointed and overly preachy, "Coloring Book" is a massive disappointment from Chance the Rapper.
23-year old rapper/singer Chance the Rapper is living the dream. He's become one of the most in-demand and hyped artists in the hip-hop community since he dropped his breakout mixtape Acid Rap in April 2013 without the backing of a record label and he welcomed his first child into the world last September. His long-awaited second mixtape, Coloring Book, is a celebration of the blessings life has given him over the past few years. Unfortunately, not much of that joy carries over to the listening experience.
Chance may be as happy and hopeful as ever in his personal life, but his music has never been more confused. Where Acid Rap reflected a 20-year old kid that was completely confident in himself and the lifestyle he was living, Coloring Book represents a young man whose life has been completely uprooted and is now trying to figure exactly how these drastic life changers are going to effect him in the long-term.
To say that Coloring Book suffers from an identity crisis would be a vast understatement. Over it's 55-minute runtime, it frequently teeters between being an R&B/soul, gospel, pop and drug-inspired hip-hop record. Pairing overblown, preachy Christian material ("How Great", "All We Got", "Blessings") that rely heavily on choirs and horns with trippy keyboard and synth-driven songs that either directly deal with taking drugs or using them as metaphors for sex, love, etc. ("Same Drugs", "Smoke Break", "All Night") is not a combination that works on any sort of musical or emotional level. Frequently shifting genres may make for a unique sound, but when those shifts are as extreme and sudden as the ones on Coloring Book are, it makes for a record that feels incoherent and haphazardly assembled.
Further ruining any chance Coloring Book had of establishing a coherent vision is the army of guest artists Chance enlisted to be on this project. I have no issue with a rapper throwing a handful of guest spots on their record to add variety and depth to a project, but what Chance did on Coloring Book is complete overkill. Chance seemed to be desperate to prove just how famous he's gotten since Acid Rap was released by bringing in over 20 artists-many of whom are wildly popular artists- to guest spot on this 15-track mixtape. As a result of having a legion of big-name artists featured throughout this record, he ends up taking a backseat on his own songs far too much and it results in a project that feels more like a bizarre group compilation album than a fully-fleshed out solo release.
The features are not only too frequent, they are almost exclusively terrible. With the exception of a pair of clever and amusing verses from 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne on "No Problem" and a surprisingly tight set of bars from usual guest verse slacker Future on "Smoke Break", the guest spots on here range from unnecessary (T-Pain and Kirk Franklin on "Finish Line/Drown", Jeremiah on "Summer Friends") to flat-out embarrassing (Young Thug and Lil Yachty on "Mixtape", Kanye West on "All We Got"). Chance's choice to pad Coloring Book with a plethora of guest artists instead of taking the reigns himself plays a pivotal part in its inability to establish a consistent tone and sense of direction.
For as flawed as Coloring Book is, there are a handful of times where everything comes together and Chance's special musical gifts shine through."Angels" is a damn near perfect slice of pop rap, "Juke Jam" is a beautiful ballad anchored by a truly stunning vocal passage from Justin Bieber and the aforementioned "No Problem" is a ridiculously catchy middle finger to the record labels that tried to interfere with the making of this record. The issue is that these moments of triumph are too infrequent to salvage the disjointed vibe that runs through this mixtape. Chance has way too much talent and creativity to give up on at this point in this career, it's just extremely disappointing that his first major release after the success of Acid Rap is something as middling and messy as Coloring Book.
