Hi, everyone. Cothony Worktano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Chance the Rapper album, Star Line.

Yes, here we have a brand new LP from Chicago, rapper, singer, songwriter, Chance the Rapper, with what, in my opinion, is one of the most highly anticipated albums of the decade, because we are talking about a follow-up here that has been promised and pushed back numerous times at this point.

For those of you who are out of the know, you might be wondering, why are there so many eyes and ears curious about this album? Well, it's because when you're talking about the great online rap reset of the 2010s and era, when hip hop really became the musical zeitgeist. There was just this huge multi-year wave of groundbreaking exciting artists coming out of every part of the country, even Canada, believe it or not, many of whom have become some of the most dominant voices in the music industry since.

In the thick of all of it, Chicago's Chance the Rapper had a truly exponential rise, even though his mainstream break came more around the middle of the decade. Because in a few short years, this guy went from viral Acid Rap mixtape to massive features with some of the biggest names in the music industry, be it Justin Bieber, Skrillex. At one point, Chance even had the endorsement of one of his greatest musical idols, Kanye West. I mean, as he says through his feature on Kanye's "Ultralight Beam": "I met Kanye West, I'm never going to fail."

And with Chance, you can keep going because the guy got multiple Grammy nominations. He was at one time the face of a Kit Kat ad campaign. This guy was even performing at the White House for the Obamas. So it really is true when I say that there were a few rap artists of the 2010s that were suddenly riding being as high as Chance was. And he had a really clear and wide appeal given his standout voice, his attention-grabbing adlibs, many of his classy production choices, which featured fusions of soul, jazz, gospel, and pop, and a lot of his sense of humor and empathy that came through in his lyrics, his open religiosity as well.

So for a moment, Chance was shaping up to be one of hip hop's biggest modern stars. However, even at his biggest peak of success, nothing truly felt finalized, mostly because he was yet to really drop a proper full-length commercial album, which many fans anticipated would be coming out not too long after Coloring Book, but it actually wouldn't be until 2019 we would get that album, The Big Day.

Now, 2019, as a reminder, is now six years ago at this point, which is a time period that's so long. It's likely there are people watching this video who weren't really there at the time or paying attention to Chance's career in that moment. Because of that, I want to stress that the release of this album truly was one of the most unique social phenomenons I had ever witnessed in mainstream music. Because while I didn't like the album myself, I mean, I gave it a 0 out of 10, there's a lot of albums I review every year pretty negatively that actually still have massive passionate audiences behind them and still see at least some commercial success.

However, in this instance, I have never seen an artist go so quickly from beloved superstar to almost total pariah that many fans and listeners just lost faith in overnight. And fans questioning your creative talents is one thing. But Chance was also turned into a near laughing stock with an almost endless torrent of memes making fun of him for loving his wife, some of which were pretty funny, I will admit. But even as someone who didn't really like The Big Day, I have to say, it wasn't that persistent of a topic across the entire album that it warranted this much focus.

So yeah, 2019, not a great year for Chance professionally. And after this, things would also go downhill personally because for him. A lot of the music industry interest dissipated. Chance and his partner would eventually seek a divorce, which is fine, and there's nothing wrong with, but it does add insult to it when so many fans are painting he was The Wife guy.

So this fall from grace for Chance, led to a lot of questions and anticipation around just an eventual follow-up. How good would Chance's next album even be if one were to happen? And would it be well received even if it were good, considering just how people turned on him so quickly after The Big Day.

In a way, with this record, even though Chance is coming into this album cycle very well known and very famous, it's almost like he is just building from the ground up once more. There are bars on this record that acknowledge this, like these here where at the very end, he acknowledges being switched up on, saying, "I guess that real old love wasn't real, was it?" Which makes me wonder what Chance will try to do on this record in terms of music and messaging. Will he make an attempt to rebuild relationships with some of those listeners who couldn't ride with him through one unlikable album?

All I can really speak to, though, are my own wants and expectations for this LP. I'm just hoping for Chance to bounce back and show us that he can make a pretty solid project once again. And while, yeah, it is true, putting out a record that's better than The Big Day is a pretty low bar to pass, the tough part truly is actually getting up after you have been knocked down as hard and as aggressively as Chance has. Because look, he easily could have just disappeared from the face of the planet after such a record, such an album cycle. I'm sure there was even a minute where he was considering doing so.

But he actually came through. He actually did it. Even though I do really think that Star Line is a mixed bag, I do think this record delivers enough to make me feel like Chance is really back and can build from here. And do so with emotional intelligence and self-awareness, which we hear on the "Starside" intro, where he drops bars such as, "Fresh off surviving the coup de tat / The music stop, you just might lose your spot / No fairytale endings if you lose the plot / It's written in the notebook if you forgot." And he even acknowledges this hiccup he hit with The Big Day, saying, "Three went platinum, the one went diamond / I had a F minus, but that's behind us."

Yeah, overall, this track, in my opinion, is a great tone setter. It's aspirational. It gives us a bit of a warning that we're going to be going into a record that is reflective. Deeper into the tracklist, we have a lot of songs with a lot of thematic focus, a lot of bars with a lot of heart, be that with "No More Old Men", where Chance is reminiscing over old barbershop and family memories in a way that sees him thinking about life lessons as well as experiences that made him the man he is today, and then extending that out into thoughts about his own self who is aging, too. He is gradually becoming an old man as well.

Following this, there is another incredible highlight with "The Negro Problem". On this track, we have some pretty sparse beats and neo-soul vocal harmonies that are soundtracking bars that essentially take systematic racism from different angles, most notably police, the court system, as well as health care. And while Chance is for sure just scratching just the surface of this very broad issue, he still dives into the sectors that he's focusing on here with passionate detail and tries to make the pain this song is about and digging into a universally understood.

Some of these themes are extended into the following track, "Drapetomania", which on the surface is a very digestible and fun, brash trap banger. But the title is in reference to a pseudoscientific term used to describe a mental illness that slaves were plagued by who tried to run away from their slave masters, which – is that a bit much? I don't know, maybe not in an era where the President is basically trying to argue that the Smithsonian doesn't portray enough brightness and worries too much about how bad slavery is.

After this, "Back to the Go", as well as "The Highs and Lows" feature great collabs with Vic Mensa as well as Joey Bada$$. And both tracks dive into the idea of overcoming some adversity and bouncing back from hard times, which, again, given where Chance is coming from on this record, we expect these themes. They play out well here.

But after this point in the tracklist, I feel like the quality of a lot of these songs begins to drop off as Chance begins to write songs and pick bits of production that I just don't get a whole lot out of. "Space and Time", for example, is an attempt at a big sentimental moment, and it feels like Chance trying to do his own Disney animated film main character monologue, but it just doesn't really work that well. Meanwhile, "Link Me in the Future" is one of several tracks on the record where I see a lot of good intentions creatively and emotionally behind this one. But Chance and his collaborators insist on packing these songs with vocal inflections and performances and effects make them grading and near impossible to enjoy. For example, all the autotune vocal harmonies on this particular cut sound like a horrible chorus of robots or aliens. I'm not sure.

Then there's "Tree", which in my opinion is one of my favorite tracks on the record, lyrically, storytelling-wise, in terms of Chance going down memory lane to talk about his mother, and also just diving into a lot of concepts around weed in general. But again, some of these vocal inflections, I cannot.

Things, thankfully, do pick up in the final leg of the record, but not by too much. The track "Letters", I do love. If you know anything about Chance, you know how much God and spirituality in the church means to him. But this song right here is a pretty bold critique of organized religion that a lot of listeners were just maybe not anticipating. Not only addressing occasionally toxic social cultures that can come out of the church, but mega church greed as well. Then in the final moments of the track, Chance essentially brings in a reminder of the Black church's legacy of radicalism as well as just combating racism in the past and present, making reference even to Dylan Roof's horrific shooting.

So again, I do want to be explicit and say this track isn't so much about tearing down religion or spirituality, nothing like that. It's more of a reminder of the aims and purpose that religious organizations should actually serve in the modern day.

The song "Speed of Light" is another mellow moment in the tracklist. It features this driving dreamy beat over which Chance delivers a lot of vocal lines that once again address overcoming adversity as well as moving on despite obstacles being in your path and throwing you off. Though I'm not sure if all of the adlibs were necessary. I also got a bit out of "Just a Drop" featuring Jay Electronica, which features a lot of great commentary around water, both literally and metaphorically, tying pretty heavily into religious imagery once again, especially with Jay Electronica's verse, which is a straight-up depiction of Jesus's crucifixion, and a pretty poetic one at that, I must say. Even if Jay's adoption of Christian scripture does feel like a thinly veiled attempt to work in many of the same controversial statements on a religion that he's been known to make in the past.

The closing track is yet another reflection on growth and change, but not one that is recent. It dives further back into Chance's early rap career, making reference to late stars such as Mac Miller at one point, as Chance shows a lot of heart and appreciation for just the career that he's had up until this point and everything that brought him to where he is, even if it did end in a pretty awful and nasty way in 2019.

It's very clear that he has the drive and passion to pick up the pieces and move on. And with Star Line here, makes not an amazing album, but certainly a very respectable album, which is why I'm feeling a strong 6 to a light 7 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Chance the Rapper, forever.