Chance the Rapper headlines first Pittsburgh show on Saturday
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“I don’t make songs for free, I make ’em for freedom,” Chance the Rapper declares on the songs “Blessings,” pointing to his larger purpose as an artist.
Chancelor Bennett, the son of a prominent Chicago politician who worked under Barack Obama and now Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has entered to the rap world to uplift and inspire, while bringing some of his most beloved genres — jazz, soul and gospel — into this craft.
On Saturday, Chance the Rapper willheadline a packed PPG Paints Arena, playing his first show here since July 2013 when he opened for Mac Miller at Stage AE. He was on the rise back then, having turned up on Childish Gambino’s “Royalty” mixtape and released his own second mixtape, “Acid Rap,” which ended the year on best-album lists.
He took the momentum from that and his Where: PPG Paints Arena, Uptown. When: 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $75; www.ticketmaster. workon Kanye West’s “Life of Pablo” into his third mixtape, “Coloring Book,” which turned him into a bona fide star. Rolling Stone called it the year’s finest hip-hop album, lauding the way it, “combines radical politics and heavenly uplift to create life-affirmingmusic.”
In February, Chance lit up the Grammy stage doing a gospel-drenched “How Great” and emerged from the Staples Center with three Grammys, including best new artist and best rap album — the first Grammy ever for a record that didn’t sell a single physical product.
A month later, he announced that he would donate $1 million from his tour to the Chicago Public Schools.
Among other things, it prompted Eddie Vedder to name-drop him during his Pearl Jam induction at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“If somehow Chance the Rapper ever sees or hears this, I just want to tell him my daughter, Olivia, loves you,” the Chicago native said. “I also, Chance, want to thank you for all the great work you’re doing in Chicago. That’s the kind of music activism that gives us all hope.”
With this tour, Chance joins the ranks of Kanye, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Future as an arena headliner, and he comes backed by his friends Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment.
Expect to be uplifted, per Houston Press writer Clint Hale who opened his review saying, “I don’t claim to be a religious man, but damn if Chance the Rapper didn’t have me — and, likely, many more — reconsidering that notion on Sunday night.”