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See Chance the Rapper Get Fantastically Freaky for ‘Juice’ Video

Chance the Rapper 'Juice' Video

Chance the Rapper hails from the same embattled rap scene that birthed Chief Keef, but his style goes to show just how diverse Chicago’s rising crop of MCs is. In our in-depth summer profile on the city’s young stars, we learned that Chance spends a lot of his time listening to “freaky-ass, weird-ass white-people music” (via Beirut or Joanna Newsom) and that Kanye West’s The College Dropout changed how he looked at rap. While you may not hear blurting accordion or flurries of harp in the Rapper’s latest, “Juice” is wonderfully idiosyncratic, which, yes, is another way of saying that it’s rather freaky indeed. Passion of the Weiss points out that the beat is built from a loop of Donny Hathaway’s performance of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” but the truly important part is Chance’s striking delivery. He rhymes, sings, and shouts with exuberance, unafraid to get a little goofy if it’ll make the song better, all while making good on his claim: “I mean, I know I’m pretty cool.” His on-camera performance matches perfectly — he spins on his heels, bounces, stunts, points, and poses while director Austin Vesely subtly infuses the neon Times Square backdrop with visual cues plucked from the lyrics. “Juice” hails from Chance’s forthcoming Acid Rap mixtape. Look alive.