Backed By Fireworks, Possibly One Of Biggest Crowds In Lollapalooza History, Chance The Rapper, Reunites With Vic Mensa, To Elevate Hometown Of Chicago

Chicago's very own, Chance the Rapper, has the praises, go up for possibly record Lollapalooza crowd that sees him perform as closing headliner on main Grant Park stage on Saturday Aug. 5, 2017. Photo courtesy of Greg Noire

Chicago’s very own, Chance the Rapper, has the praises, go up for possibly record Lollapalooza crowd that sees him perform as closing headliner on main Grant Park stage on Saturday Aug. 5, 2017. Photo courtesy of Greg Noire

Chance the Rapper is Chicago, through and through.  From his very humble beginnings to where he’s now packing the main Grant Park stage in Chicago for Lollapalooza.  I don’t think there’s ever been an artist, including Eminem and Outkast four years ago, who packed and had so much people anticipating there headlining set, the way fans did for Chance on Saturday to close day three of Lolla.

Whether it was his hometown bearing, as Chicago’s now musical-prodigal son or him being the biggest he’s been within the last year and continuing to get bigger.  I think Chance knows and gets how much he means to Chicago with how much of a spectacle he put on for his set.

Opening with a video that showed several clips of him being announced on everything from late night talk shows to Good Morning America by Robin Roberts and of course being announced as a winner for every one of his three Grammys, as well as him being the answer to a question on Jeopardy.  As Mixtape started to play, the hometown Chicago hero then came out riding a pocket rocket and started rapping, as fireworks went off to open his set.

Chance would then go into crowd favorites Blessings and Angels from his Grammy Award-winning mixtape, Coloring Book.  Before telling the story about how he meet his girl with Juke Jam.  The South Side Chicago native would then go into a medley of his songs he was featured on from fellow Chicago native, Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo, with Waves, Father Stretch My Hands and his very electrifying verse on Ultralight Beam.  Which I think got fans thinking, Chance would bring Kanye himself out because of the rumors most heard.   He obviously didn’t, but still put on a very great melody of those records by himself.

Then asking fans if they where familiar with his longtime trumpeter Nico Segal and The Social Experiment’s, Surf, album that they dropped a couple of years ago.  Chance would get everybody giving the soul-clap along as he rap/sang the groups very popular, Sunday Candy.  Before going into covers of his verses on DJ Khaled’s, I Love You So Much and I’m the One.

Asking fans, if he can go back to some of his older material.  Chance then went into Acid Rap favorites Interlude (That’s Love), Chain Smoker and Favorite Song.  Before he brought out his first special guest, in fellow Chicago Hip-Hop emcee, Vic Mensa to perform their hit Acid Rap collaboration, Cocoa Butter Kisses.  In what was a truly defying moment for Chicago Hip-Hop too.  Both exclaiming how, “They got to do this for Chicago!” Before Vic asked, “Is Chicago in the house?”  The two then performing together in unison a very killer cover performance of Vic’s Didn’t I (Say I Didn’t).  A truly surreal heartwarming great moment for Chicago Hip-Hop to see these two, who many thought had a petty beef over the last year and a half, but neither ever acknowledged whether true or not.  Chance saying afterwards, “This world can take you many different crazy places.  But never let it take you away from fam.”

If you thought his set couldn’t be topped after that.  Then you where wrong.  As he got the packed crowd, even more energized for his always very energetic performance of his hit single, No Problem.  Chance would then get a pair of Chicago firefighters to drench the audience with a hose, before slowing things down for All Night and bringing Francis and The Lights out for a cover of their May I Have This Dance Remix.

Closing out with Same Drugs… or did he?  Nope, Chance came out for an encore of Blessings (Reprise).  Though he stumbled at times in the beginning of his set because how much he said, “He wanted to make it his best performance ever.”  He picked himself up by the end and though not his best performance ever, still ended up with a pretty solid performance that was truly just for Chicago.  As he said at one point during his set about, “I didn’t want to do a live stream.  I just want it to be me and Chicago.”  And with his masterfully backing band and fireworks going off at various times throughout, that it truly was.