Coloring Book (mixtape)

Background

After releasing the well-received mixtape Acid Rap in 2013, Chance the Rapper went on tour with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. He subsequently relocated to Los Angeles from his hometown of Chicago that December. He rented a North Hollywood mansion, which he dubbed the Koi Kastle. While he worked on music in fits and starts, he mainly spent time socializing with friends he made—among them Frank Ocean and J. Cole. He also abused drugs, mainly Xanax: "I was Xanned out every fucking day," he told GQ in 2016. He also went through numerous relationships, and he began to feel unproductive and empty.

He returned to Chicago and got back together with an old girlfriend. He grew more religious upon learning she was pregnant, and especially so after learning his daughter had an atrial flutter. "I think it was the baby that, you know, brought my faith back," he remarked later. On the subject of her heart condition, he said, "[It] made me pray a whole lot, you know, and need a lot of angels and just see shit in a very, like, direct way." His daughter was born in September 2015. During this time, he began to mull over themes he wished to include in his next mixtape, including "God, love, Chicago, [and] dance." Before working on that, he contributed heavily to Kanye West's album The Life of Pablo. Coloring Book was mainly recorded between March and April 2016. He rented out a room at a Chicago studio, and then another as he needed more space. He gradually came to more or less live at the studio during recording: "Eventually we decided to rent out the whole studio, and we just put mattresses in all the rooms and it became a camp." His method of making the mixtape was inspired by West taking over an entire studio to make Pablo.

Music and lyrics

Chance the Rapper told Complex that Coloring Book would be a superior record to Surf, the 2015 album that he had released with his group Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment. As with his other mixtapes, 10 Day and Acid Rap, the cover artwork was painted by Chicago-based artist Brandon Breaux, who depicted Chance holding his baby daughter (below the frame) in order to capture the expression on his face.

According to Financial Times music critic Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, Coloring Book is an upbeat gospel rap album whose themes of spiritual fulfillment and worldly accomplishment are explored in music "that places gospel choirs and jazzy horns in a modern setting of Auto-Tuned hooks and crisp beats". Rolling Stone's Christopher R. Weingarten wrote that the gospel choirs were the foundation of the mixtape's music, functioning in the same way disco interpolations had on the earliest rap records, James Brown rhythms had for Public Enemy, and soul samples had for Kanye West.

Chance discussed Coloring Book's theme of Christian faith in an interview with Zane Lowe. "I never really set out to make anything that could pretend to be new gospel or pretend to be the gospel", he said. "It's just music from me as a Christian man because I think before I was making music as a Christian child. And in both cases I have imperfections, but there was a declaration that can be made through going all the [stuff] I've been through the last few years." Lowe himself believed the mixtape showcased how "faith in music and faith in God go hand-in-hand a lot of times".

Release and reception

Coloring Book's release date was revealed by Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon after Chance's May 6 performance of "Blessings" on the show. The mixtape was released exclusively to the Apple Music streaming service at 11 p.m. EST on May 12, the same day its second single "No Problem" was released; the lead single "Angels" had been released on October 27, 2015. Coloring Book was leaked to DatPiff, a mixtape distribution website, one hour after its release; it was removed from the site the following day. In its first week, the mixtape debuted at number eight on the Billboard 200 based on 57.3 million streams of its songs, which Billboard equated to 38,000 album units. It was the first release to chart on the Billboard 200 solely on streams. The mixtape was available only on Apple Music through May 27, when it was released to other streaming services.

Coloring Book received widespread acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the mixtape received an average score of 90, based on 20 reviews. In the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot hailed it as "a celebration of singing, harmonizing, human voices making a joyous noise together", while Kris Ex from Pitchfork named it "one of the strongest rap albums released this year, an uplifting mix of spiritual and grounded that even an atheist can catch the Spirit to". Writing for Vice, Robert Christgau believed Chance's already irrepressibly cheerful voice sounded more attractive and substantial than before because of how the music's gospel elements had encouraged a stronger "vocal muscle" and controlled pitch. Jon Caramanica of The New York Times argued that Chance had drawn on the spirituality and consciousness present in West's music while "blossoming into a crusader and a pop savant, coming as close as anyone has to eradicating the walls between the sacred and the secular". He found his flow melodically and rhythmically dense yet deft and effortless, while deeming his narratives both intimate and universal, touching on familial duties, the violent crime in Chance's native Chicago, and being an independent artist in the modern music industry era. In the opinion of Slate journalist Jack Hamilton, Coloring Book was "the first true gospel-rap masterpiece".

Year-end rankings

At the end of 2016, Coloring Book appeared on a number of critics' lists ranking the year's top albums. According to Metacritic, it was the seventh most prominently ranked record of 2016. Christgau ranked it as the ninth best album of the year in his ballot for The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll.

Track listing

Personnel

Artwork: Brandon Breaux

Mixed by: Jeff Lane & Elton "L10mixedit" Chueng at Chicago Recording Company (Chicago, Illinois)

Mastered by: Dave Kutch at The Mastering Palace (New York City, New York)

Assisted by: Noe Ramirez, Ashwin Torke & Mason Bonner

Track notes