Album reviews: Chance the Rapper – The Big Day, and Berlin – Transcendance
The Chicago rapper’s debut album is like a lot of weddings (long and often quite dull), while Berlin are suffering from an identity crisis
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★★★☆☆
Chance the Rapper is an optimist. If you hadn’t guessed from watching his exuberant live shows, you’d know it from his 2016 mixtape Coloring Book, which was a joyful fusion of hip-hop and gospel by an artist who had recently rediscovered his faith.
On his debut album The Big Day, the 26-year-old’s joie de vivre is even more evident – only this time it’s themed around his wedding to partner Kirsten Corley. It’s not been the smoothest of relationships, and the record addresses that: “Took the scenic route but this is the way,” Chance asserts on the title track, referring to how he and Corley split and entered a legal battle in 2016 over their daughter Kensli.
Chance has gone overboard with the guest list – often the album feels crowded due to appearances from Nicki Minaj, John Legend, CocoRosie, Gucci Mane, Megan Thee Stallion, Death Cab for Cutie, Randy Newman and more. A Francis and the Lights feature on “The Big Day” doesn’t pull off quite as well as it did on Coloring Book’s “Summer Friends”, where Francis’s vocodered vocals provided an atmospheric backdrop for Chance’s sharp, witty flow. Minaj’s guest turn on closer “Zanies and Fools” is one of her best in a long while, and Calboy rapping over a chipmunk sample of James Taylor’s 1985 cheesefest “Only One” is delightful.
Too many songs zip by without leaving a lasting impression – “Do You Remember” with Death Cab For Cutie is ironically forgettable; Chance sounds infuriatingly vague on “Slide Around”, delivering lines over a Pi’erre Bourne beat in the manner of a child making up their own nursery rhyme. Things liven up on the superb “Ballin Flossin” (the album equivalent of when the wedding DJ cranks up Sister Sledge), featuring a scene-stealing double bass, house-style samples from Brandy’s “I Wanna Be Down”, and Shawn Mendes’s silky crooning.
Chance tackles big subjects – love, marriage, fatherhood, God – yet fails to hold onto any real substance. “We Go High”, which nods to Michelle Obama’s famous words on dealing with people who “go low”, shows Chance at his most contemplative, sincere self. He appears to admit infidelity on his part: “My baby went celibate/ Lies on my breath, she said couldn’t take the smell of it.”
Elsewhere, he makes multiple references to his daughter and her mother, but doesn’t establish what fatherhood really means to him, and his wedding is held up as proof of his personal growth more than a celebration of love between two people. The worshipful theme, where Chance thanks God for pretty much everything in his life, becomes cloying. The Big Day is like a lot of weddings: too long and occasionally a little dull – with one or two unforgettable moments. Roisin O’Connor
Berlin – Transcendance
★★☆☆☆
California synth-pop band Berlin might be best known for “Take My Breath Away” – the song that soundtracked 1986 classic Top Gun – but they were were no one-hit wonders. Before Top Gun came 1982’s “Sex (I’m A)”, a song so dirty that it was banned on numerous radio stations yet made the trio a cult sensation.
The three founding members (Terri Nunn, John Crawford and David Diamond) have reunited to make Transcendance – their first album together since 1984. So it is curious that they place an updated version of “Sex (I’m A)” midway through, replacing the seductiveness of Nunn’s undulating vocals and restless guitar and drums with an overpowering generic house beat.
Transcendance is a continuation of Berlin’s dance roots, but is it a nostalgic nod to their Eighties heyday, or a sign of where they’re at today? Or is it an attempt to cash in on the building anticipation for the Top Gun sequel? “It’s just fun, pleasure, enjoyable,” according to Nunn – and she’s not wrong. At best, songs sound like Kylie-lite dancefloor fillers. At worst, they sound like vocals pasted over unimaginative laptop creations.
In the final third, however, we’re rewarded with “All For Love” – a gem of originality and melody glinting in a sea of colour-by-numbers dance-pop. A gloriously memorable brass-synth melody melds with Nunn’s gliding vocals and a pulsating beat, as rhythms contrast.
And there are meaningful messages to be found. The yearning title track was inspired by Nunn’s beloved late mother, while in “Show Me Tonight”, Nunn’s former partner DJ Richard Blade provides a sinister parody of American obsession with youthful beauty. “You’re wondering why he hasn’t texted you back yet?” Blade snarls. “It’s because of the way you look! That’s right – you look old, run-down, and overweight. Look at those crows’ feet! Get rid of that fat! Call us now!”
But the album suffers from an identity crisis and does not, alas, take my breath away. Elisa Bray
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