That Chance the Rapper’s Star Line has surfaced at all is a triumph: Chicago’s wonder boy went from the future of hip-hop with seminal mixtapes Acid Rap and Coloring Book to a laughingstock with his infamous debut album The Big Day, and in the silence that followed, he became an afterthought. There were loose singles and the promise of this project, but as the years passed without a full album or mixtape, hopes for Chance dwindled. Add onto that the public dissolution of his marriage, which The Big Day lauded, and one could easily think he would never choose to author a full body of music again. But the prodigy who became the Prodigal Son has finally returned, and on Star Line, he demonstrates that he has only polished his skills as a rapper while away from the spotlight.
Chance broke through as a fully formed lyricist, charismatic, comedic, and poignant. But the level he maintains throughout Star Line is multiple grades above his rhyming at the peak of his popularity. His trademark combination of nostalgia with tragedy, perhaps best demonstrated outside this album with 2016’s stunning “Summer Friends,” is far weightier now, and the scenes he creates are much more vivid and alive. The philosophy he brings to this album is more confrontational and, at times, militant; there are a few vague references to ‘coups,’ as in overthrowing a regime, with no clarification on what government deserves a reset. Christianity is part of this philosophy: as shown on “Letters” and “Just A Drop,” he invocates God while calling for temporal change, revealing religion’s ability to serve as not only an opiate, but also a mandate to the masses. And that former track, “Letters,” is an astounding lyrical display, confronting multiple facets of Christianity head-on, a crowning moment for Chance as an expert at his craft. But do not accuse him of forgetting how to have fun: he spends most of the first verse of “Drapetomania” flexing weaponry and women, as well as demonstrating how to “go crazy” with a well-placed nonsense lyric.
Even the lesser tracks have lyrical diamonds. On “Tree,” a would-be marijuana anthem with a charming but misguided chorus, Chance drops a hilarious couplet of bars revolving around a Saltine factory. And on “Space & Time,” an ethereal sung number reaching for Kanye’s art-pop heights, he twists the Odyssey for a story of a failed marriage before giving his Penelope a bar of her own, as she tells him, “Go back to the stars, that was always where your heart was.” In one line, he encapsulates the pain of ending with good intentions and of loving someone who could never have stayed, while also tying the narrative of the track to the album’s title. Chance is excellent across the entire album as a rapper, so these unsuccessful songs owe their issues to uninspiring production or unmemorable songwriting around the expert verses. One gets the sense that Chance would have benefitted from an auteur producer as a partner here, to construct beats that match his brilliance and channel his lyrical brilliance into stickier songs. There should have been a Pharrell to his Clipse; after this performance, though, Chance should have no trouble courting an elite producer.
The two best songs come back-to-back at the end of the album: “Just A Drop” with Jay Electronica is the crowning achievement of the record, as Chance’s exceptional verses meet his best chorus on the project. The first verse is a masterclass, as he turns a plea for water into an examination of different realities of Black lives as well as an illumination of racial inequality: he asks for “[just] enough water to cook with,” while seeing that “They have enough water to play in / They have enough water to swim in / They have enough water to drown in.” And in the second verse, he captures poverty as well as community in a single, gripping scene: “We do hospice at our aunts’ and our grandmas’.” No wonder when he dreams about the coming of the Christ in the chorus, he sings, “I know He’s coming,” and then, with his voice straining, high in his register, reveals “I can’t wait ‘til He does.” And when he cedes the final verse to Jay Electronica, the latter MC effortlessly keeps up the tempo, modernizing Golgotha (with a “janky-ass Cross”) before concluding that Christ today would be counted a hate group by this government Chance has questioned throughout the album. It is an excellent collaboration and a high-water mark of Chance’s discography so far.
As cheesy as the title of the closer “Speed Of Love” might seem, the song is anything but—yearning, introspective, funny, precise. Jazmine Sullivan’s calling chorus is gorgeous, a reminder of her excellence as a singer. The opening verse starts somewhat awkwardly with a drawn-out flow, but the lyrics are some of the most confessional and raw of the entire album, discussing his sobriety and the death of Mac Miller, illustrating his grief for Mac powerfully. And after that, Chance is off to the races, painting his youth beautifully—especially in the final verse of the album. When he reminisces, saying “Not a star yet, just a son at the time / Me and my dad burnt them CDs one at a time / The beauty of a Sharpie in the moonlight,” he transports the listener into that moment, into the childhood joy of creating music, with family cheering. It brought this reviewer back to making music in his high school days, though I came of age after CDs went out of vogue, and reminded me of that innocent feeling, when music was my playground.
I imagine how much more heavy Chance’s craft must feel to him now than in the night he reanimates, after all he has borne. I hope he realizes how greatly he has shone on this project, that he knows he has succeeded in his comeback, and that one of the highlights of this album is the sense that the best is still yet to come. He is grown now as a rapper, a force to reckoned with in a hip-hop landscape that, seemingly since Kendrick’s definitive victory, has begun prioritizing the meaningful and tenured voices again. Maybe he has returned at exactly the right time.