“Coloring Book” by Chance the Rapper
A look back at an album that legitimately changed music.
This album review looks back at one of the most important projects from the early streaming era, which turns 10 years old this week.
Genre: Hip-Hop, Gospel, Alternative
Label: Self-Released (independent)
Release Date: May 13, 2016
Vibe: ⛪💗⛪💗⛪
👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform
When Chance the Rapper won a Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2017, he changed the music industry forever. Not because of his talent behind the mic (though he has that in spades, moreso when he’s not chasing Top 40 clout, but I suppose that’s also in the eye of the beholder), but instead because he became the paragon for a streaming landscape teeming with underground talent that was primed to explode. His mixtape Coloring Book was the first streaming-only project to take home a Grammy in any category, and that win led to sweeping changes at the Recording Academy a few months later. The importance of that last point shouldn’t be underestimated. The institution that crowns the best music of a given year had, to that point, treated streaming as a loophole rather than a legitimate format or platform. Chance forced them to rethink their definition of what counts.
A decade later, the conversation (I wanted to use the word “debate,” but again, I’m not positive it’s as black-and-white an undertaking as some think) around streaming as the default option for music consumption has only intensified. You only need to take a semi-close look at the economic side of the business (h/t Daniel Parris) or the notion that streaming, as a digital content ATM, is “minutes away” from becoming obsolete (h/t Joel Gouveia) to understand how divisive the shift has become. But, if we’re being honest, even in 2016, that evolution felt inevitable. Netflix has already normalized the idea of renting your digital media for an affordable (in those days) monthly rate. Platforms like Tidal were gating and breaking albums from hip-hop and R&B’s most popular stars. A few global superstars even made a killing running in the opposite direction. I was working at a pop radio station at the time, and despite the station and program managers’ words to the contrary, the change was unstoppable. Streaming was the new cutting-edge, the place where what was cool lived.
In that sense, Chance the Rapper knew what he had and, naysayers be damned, held onto that advantage with all his might. By January 2016, he was three years removed from Acid Rap, the mixtape that had served as his initial coming-out party, and still no closer to signing with a major label. That’s not to say that big corporations hadn’t pitched him aggressively, because they had. But he’d turned every one of them down, including Ye’s GOOD Music, which, at the time, was the spot to be if you were a budding hip-hop star. Chance had ticked all other boxes: endorsements, XXL Freshman cover spot in 2014, and so on. All that left him oddly vulnerable, as he was seen as a critical darling with no distribution options, an artist operating solely on SoundCloud and Datpiff at a moment when the industry still couldn’t quite decide whether “free music” was synonymous with “commercially legitimate music.”
In September 2015, Chance’s trajectory changed again when his daughter, Kensli, was born. She had an atrial flutter, a heart condition that required immediate intervention, and the event had an immediate and lasting impact on him. He talked about quitting smoking and turning to his church for guidance. “All things are possible thru Christ who strengthens me,” he said on X. That discovery, and his experience contributing to the unabashedly spiritual exercise that is “Ultralight Beam,” off Ye’s Life of Pablo, clearly informed a lot of the aesthetic choices on Coloring Book. It’s more of a gospel record than straight hip-hop or R&B, with the rapper’s faith running through every track. What’s more interesting than that dynamic in a vacuum is how it allows him to create a dialogue with his former self. Under the posturing and layers of production, you can hear a young man, a new father, terrified by the reality staring him in the face. He has to reorganize his life and, creatively, build from a completely new emotional register.
Opener “All We Got” announces exactly what the record is going to be before the first verse ends. “Man, I swear my life is perfect, I could merch it,” he proclaims early on. “If I die, I’ll probably cry at my own service.” Every second of this track sounds celebratory—of life, or love, and of a global community that Chance makes clear later on gives him the conviction to practice his craft with such precision. “Music is all we got,” he adds. The Chicago Children’s Choir is another important throughline to highlight here, because they’re around for mere decoration. They appear on several songs, functioning as a structural glue on top of being a key textural element. It belies a specific set of roots, the center from which basically every other musical element on Coloring Book radiates outward. As he’d explain in several interviews during that and subsequent press junkets, Chance grew up in church, left, went back, and, after this daughter arrived, weaved it into his persona as a performer like few others have done in the 21st century.
On what ends up being a somewhat subdued tracklist, Chance still serves up several bops that bring ample energy to the party. “All Night” remains a seriously underrated weekend starter, with a suitably loopy Kaytranada groove somewhat obscuring the paranoid lyrics that Chance delivers with such cheerful remove that you don’t actually think it’s that big a deal. “No Problem” is even better, both in its club-ready trap structure and its fiery independent spirit. Flanked by Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, two artists who also navigated the music industry as untameable voices, Chance rails against the labels that tried to meddle too much in his creative process. Otherwise, as he puts it, some of his posse will be waiting for the offenders in the lobby. As is the case more often than people might think, history was on the side of the artist. “No Problem” was the engine that propelled this project up the charts, reaching No. 43 on the Hot 100 and nabbed Chance another Grammy for Best Rap Performance.
The more I’ve returned to this record over the years (and I say this as a staunch atheist), this material is at its most compelling when it’s at its most soul-searchingly spiritual. “Blessings” is a good example: an out-and-out tribute to God that invites you in rather than preaching to you from up high. “I don’t make songs for free, I make ‘em for freedom,” Chance spits. “Don’t believe in kings, believe in the Kingdom.” That thread is extended with cuts like “How Great,” featuring genuinely uplifting harmonies and a welcome appearance from Jay Electronica, and “Finish Line / Drown,” which pairs T-Pain with Kirk Franklin and works better than maybe it has any right to. All those highlights aside, the best and most surprising track is “Same Drugs.” It’s so stripped-down, with no collaborators pulling Chance into competing aesthetics. Instead, it’s just him and a piano, writing about growing up and losing touch with people who used to know you. It’s the album’s quietest moment and the one that holds up most cleanly a decade later, with a melody that I’m glad was left to stand on its own.
The record arrived right before one of the richest summers ever for mainstream hip-hop and R&B. By shipping Coloring Book 11 days after Beyoncé’s Lemonade and two weeks before Drake’s Views, it put itself at the front of the line regarding the genre’s tastemakers in a crowded, mostly excellent field. Unfortunately, it looks like this record will be Chance’s defining moment as an artist. The Big Day, which dropped in 2019, landed badly, drawing the ire of online trolls and music critics alike for being earnest in all the wrong ways. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, but it also doesn’t rise to the level that this project does. Few albums would be able to, if we’re honest. I didn’t love 2025’s Star Line, a release that most saw as a return to form but, even so, failed to recapture the momentum that made this one so special. It makes you appreciate circumstances when they converge like that, giving a burgeoning movement the spokesperson it didn’t know it needed.
What’s your favorite example of a small-scale, streaming-only record that hit it big? Before or since, doesn’t matter. Drop it in the comments.