NOTE: jacket is pretty haggard for a new record (some corner damage on 3 or 4 corners) but VINYL IS MINT & UNPLAYED
A year ago, when Chance the Rapper and Jeremih originally gave us their free mixtape Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama, already feels like a moment frozen in history. Barack Obama was still in the White House, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office. In music, a brutal 2016 taught fans that the biggest news stories for the foreseeable future would be about which beloved visionaries we’d lost.
On the mixtape, Chicago’s most magnetic rapper and R&B hitmaker, respectively, pulled off what it’s appropriate only around the holidays to call a “miracle.” That they were able to craft a Christmas record fluent in both present-day hip-hop and yuletide tradition, playable on Power 92 or alongside A Motown Christmas, was enough of a feat. That they also managed to salute a black, hometown president, whom Chance had met at age 8 and only recently sung for at a National Christmas Tree Lighting? All while simultaneously reflecting and soothing our deeper sense of cultural malaise? Well, some presents you can’t buy in a store.
The 2016 release of Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama was the gift we didn’t know we needed. The spirit of hope it carried into the new year, however, couldn’t last. Chance continued to scale new professional and philanthropic heights: winning multiple Grammys, rapping on his first No. 1 single, hosting “Saturday Night Live,” and donating millions to Chicago Public Schools. More quietly, Jeremih worked on his forthcoming album, Later That Night. But the tweeter-in-chief wrote about their home city as if it were enemy territory; each new day has brought fresh crises born of ignorance or mendacity. So the sudden arrival of an expanded edition of Chance and Jeremih’s tape—with more new music than old—feels like narrowly avoiding a year without a Santa Claus.
A1 | All The Way |
A2 | Snowed In |
A3 | Stranger At The Table |
A4 | Joy |
A5 | I'm Your Santa |
B1 | I Shoulda Left You |
B2 | The Tragedy |
B3 | Chi Town Christmas |
B4 | Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama |
C1 | Down Wit That |
C2 | Lil’ Bit Interlude |
C3 | Held It Down |
C4 | Big Kid Again |
C5 | Let It Snow |
D1 | Family For |
D2 | Ms Parker |
D3 | One More Cry |
D4 | Are U Live |
D5 | Stranger At The Table (Piano Remix) |