2. Coloring Book / Chance the Rapper

Coloring Book is an absolute triumph and easily my favorite hip-hop album since Graduation.  No record was more fun to listen to this year, period.  Given the artist's staggering achievement, calling Coloring Book a mere “rap album” or "mix tape" is too simplistic and reductive because its musical ethos spans gospel, R&B, soul, jazz, and spoken word, resulting in a boundary-blurring joy of a record.

Chance the Rapper’s ebullience is contagious.  Nothing can keep him down – he will get to that proverbial finish line! – and the Chicago native is not afraid to tell you that his faith in God (and undeserved grace) has much to do with it.  When was the last time a popular album embraced genuine religious faith so positively and unabashedly?  Listeners can detect no hypocrisy or exaggeration—his spiritual experience, undoubtedly Christian, shapes his aesthetic worldview and is, indeed, embedded within it.  The blessings fall from above, hip-hop hymn after hymn.

I'm gone praise Him, praise Him 'til I'm gone.
When the praises go up, the blessings come down.
It seems like blessings keep falling into my lap. 

Our brainy and utterly sincere hero is not without his faults.  He addresses his impulses and the experiential nature of sin on several tracks: some nights he wants to party, smoke a blunt, or stroll into a record label's lobby and cause some serious problems for the suits who (stupidly) rejected his demo advances.  At only 23 years-old, he is engaged in the age-old battle of wanting to sow his oats and do right by his wife, child, family, and friends.  Born Chancelor Jonathan Bennett, it is clear he was raised within the black church tradition and hopes to reduce his sinful cycles, understanding that life is better served without such entanglement.  His boundless energy and curiosity could be a blessing and burden, although he is not unwilling to seek help and answers from people he trusts, and, yes, the Man upstairs.

The album celebrates and contemplates his successes and failures.  It is honest and upbeat, visiting the valley but never straying too long, instead finding ways to climb the mountain, thematically and lyrically.  Chance's writing is playful, smart, and funny, and he may be the only person that can pull off lines like "I want to give Satan a swirly!"  The spiritual aura that infuses his lyricism is deeply felt, going against the grain of hip-hop's prevailing trends, while also building an entirely new wing on the tradition.

Some of my favorite moments include the jazzy swagger and colliding crescendos in "All We Got," the down-tempo chill and wistfulness of "Summer Friends," the crumbling Jericho horns in "Blessings," the reggae-inflected "Angels" with his lightning fast bars, and the glory hallelujah of "Finish Line/Drown." The pinnacle of the record may be the final song, "Blessings (Reprise)," as Chance pulls everything back, stands under the spotlight, and dishes a vulnerable and pitch-perfect spoken word that captures the bright tones and genuine hope of Coloring Book: "Are you ready for your blessings?  Are you ready for your miracle?"