Before I touch on them, I'd like to first comment on the role Surf has taken in the career of Chance the Rapper, because no matter what he, Donnie Trumpet, or anyone else says, this album is about him. After a critical breakthrough and achieving indie rap messianic status with his mixtape Acid Rap (A project I admittedly probably underrated in my initial kinda cringe-worthy review, although I'll maintain that the stretch of "Favorite Song", "NaNa", and "Still Smoking" was disastrous), Chance opted against signing with a major label, giving him the kind of fan-base and creative control that most rappers would die for. Pressure's a bitch, though, and Chance has his fair share of it, so it makes all the sense in that world that he would opt to join a band instead of directly following up Acid Rap with a straight-up hip hop album (I generally prefer at least two rap albums before rappers go full-out Love Below, but I degrees) Still, I felt that my initial skepticism towards the project was warranted, especially considering that his post-Acid Rap songs have showed him with a growing disinterest with rapping.
Questions about his solo career still remain, but Chance the Rapper's contributions to Surf are nothing short of excellent. The Social Experiment, consisting of Nico Segal, Peter "Cottontale" Wilkins, Greg "Stix" Landfair Jr., and of course Chancelor Bennett, clearly has its own independent ideas and direction that feels wholly collaborative. Members at least appear to be equal, containing a sort of democracy that allowed bands like R.E.M. to survive well past their life expectancy. It's easy to list Chance's previous success as the sole reason for their relevance, and as true as that may be, it's hard for me to imagine anyone actively hating the final product. It's simply too amiable, energetic, and sunny to be described as anything less than likable.
Pop music's recent fascination with throwing all genres together to create a giant clusterfuck and seeing what happens has yielded unfathomably bad bands such as Twenty One Pilots, but the best moments on Surf remind you how exciting genre hybrids can be. It's an incredibly difficult style to utilize effectively, and The Social Experiment occasionally slip up, but songs like "Just Wait", "Familiar", and "Sunday Candy" are some of the best moments caught on record this year. Though Surf heavily relies on live instrumentation, I was immediately reminded of the digital sampling mastery by The Avalanches on Since I Left You, a record that almost definitely played a role in the creation of Surf.
Like I said, though, making this type of music is risky business, and while The Avalanches worked with incredible consistency, Surf is riddled with missteps. The excursions of Donnie Trumpet, who is actually listed as the album's official headliner, particularity stand out. Aside from magically turning his trumpet into a synth on "Just Wait", his playing is rarely remarkable, and the two songs that he's most prominent on ("Nothing Came To Me", "Something Came To Be") can only be described as disappointments. Many of the songs on here feel unfinished, and as a result, completely forgettable. "SmthnthtIwnt" and "Questions" sound like blueprints to something bigger, and while they do perhaps add character to the album, it's hard not to feel underwhelmed when looking at the fully formed songs and seeing the untapped potential.
The subject matter of Surf, however, is obviously a feel good affair, a rather significant change in tone compared with the darker topics of Acid Rap. It's not blind positivity, and a majority of the songs with stronger messages are rooted in the philosophical approaches brought by Chance to some of his earlier work, but make no mistake: Surf doesn't require a whole lot of deep thinking and reflection. It is what it is. The lone and obvious execution to this, however, is "Windows", the most serious and best song on the entire album. Like I said earlier, Chance is rapping his ass off whenever he appears, and his singing is equally good, but the self portrait he produces here through his enigmatic lyrics is right up there with "Acid Rain" in terms of his best lyrical performances. I won't ruin it for you, but the instrumental coda makes for what is easily the most intense moment on Surf.
And of course there's the plethora of guest features that are spread throughout the album just as equally as you'd expect. There's huge names, such as Busta Rhymes, J Cole, Big Sean, and Erykah Badu, and most of them deliver decent enough verses, but it's the local Chicago artists that completely steal the show. On "Warm Enough", a subdued album highlight, Noname Gypsy outshines J. Cole, while Saba, Joey Purp, and King Louie all provide verses better than anything from the major stars. There's a few fuck-ups, though, and "Slip Side" just made it out of this category for me (it grew on me significantly, but I'm still not huge on it). "Go" sounds so much like Estelle and Kanye's "American Boy" that I can barely believed they were able to make the song. And I'm sorry, but "Wanna Be Cool" is an awful song. Love the Beach Boys beginning, and I love most of the instrumental, but having Big Sean (whose verse wasn't awful, except for that damn commas line) and Super Duper Kyle on the same song is a recipe for disaster, and I found the message to be way too far on the condescending side. But everything else is pretty good.
"Sunday Candy", rivals "Windows" as the album's most fully realized song. Gospel and religion have long been an important factor in Chance's songs, and he wraps the topic together with his grandma over an absolutely gorgeous instrumental. Chance never explicitly states what the song is about, though, and the ambiguous metaphorical approach never once appears corny, which is a much more difficult achievement that you'd think. Whether or not the listener sees the song as an ode to familial love or religious intent is not the point. The goal of the song is to show how the two concepts are intertwined, and bring each other to life.
For an album that's completely made to be listened to in summer, Surf ironically dropped on one of the rainiest weeks of the year, and it's no coincidence that I mostly didn't give half a shit about this album when it initially dropped. It took damn near a week for the album to grow on me, and even though I still have several issues with it, there's something to be said about how much context effects this record. Songs like "Miracle", the album opener, simply come to life when heard in the contexts of a bright summer day, and you'll be pissed at yourself for ever questioning their quality. Throughout the band's album, Chance remains the star and has the type of performances that justify his status as one of the genre's most promising lyricist, but most importantly, he shows that his unpredictability can yield entertaining songs. And when one of the album's best songs features a singing Quavo, everybody wins.
Rating: 3.5/5