Jackson Futrell on Coloring Book

I feel like a broken record, saying this again with the rest of them but I definitely think that this one could grow on me. I think there’s just this positive happy attitude that Chance shows throughout the whole record that’s really infectious and even if you want to be negative to it, you can’t be really fully negative to it because it’s really genuine and I can appreciate that. Also, I don’t wanna say that this was the first album, the crossover rap and gospel music but man, it did it super super well. I feel like I’ve heard the style enough now in recent music to think that this might have been like a big inspiration for a lot of people. On the positive end, for most of the songs, the production was pretty crisp and worked pretty well. I think the start stop nature of a lot of the production worked a lot and really well with Chance’s kind of slower, more unique flow and delivery. Another positive of course it’s just it’s such a happy record. It’s really easy to get into. I feel like it’s also pretty high quality while still staying really accessible. Unless if you had a reason to dislike this album, I feel like no one could really dislike this album, like I said, unless if you came into it, hating it. One of my favorite tracks. If not, my favorite was “Same Drugs”. Even though I’m not really sure what the tagline and chorus was about in relation to the rest of the song, I still thought it was a really cool reference to take the perspective of Peter Pan. I mean, how many times do you hear a rap artist do that, and it was weirdly and surprisingly emotional. As far as negatives go, I think I have a little bit of bias against Chance coming into this record just knowing that he claims to be Christian and so I know I’m going to look at his morals, a little bit more. As far as the more objective, didn’t matter my bias I didn’t like these tracks, the intro I thought some of the production was kind of weird when they would throw in some really cheap sounding clap drum machine sounds, and I feel like that kind of discounted the gospel feeling of their record. The song “Mixtape” felt totally out of nowhere and I could barely tell if Chance was in it at all. The production sounded like it was off a totally different album. Almost like he recorded it, I was like “Oh I can put this on this album. Yeah that works.” Especially it’s way more jaunting with the two tracks is it in between. I also can’t say that I’m the biggest fan of his rap style but I can get into it. There are some other tracks that are coming in mind that I just didn’t feel like worked for me but “Mixtape” probably had to be the worst of them. Anyway, I would be very much willing to return to this album and give it a second try to get a higher score I don’t feel like this is a permanent score but just my current personal opinion. Favorite song? Same Drugs