The 5 Best Tracks From Chance The Rapper’s “Acid Rap”

“I know you scared, you should ask us if we scared too,” Chance The Rapper fretfully quavers on “Paranoia.”

“I know you scared, me too. I know you scared, you should ask us if we scared, too. If you was there, then we just knew you’d care, too.”

In a Chicago rap scene largely defined by the drill subgenre (composed of gangbanging, murder, and a relative contest of whose d*ck or gun is the biggest), Chance is a much-welcomed breath of concerned, harmless air.

The 20-year-old emcee is a light-hearted cartoon character who combines juvenile delivery with Doodlebob sounds, and a confident but fleeting flow. His nasal voice almost mimics Lil Wayne or an unevolved form of Danny Brown and after every bar you half-expect to hear an ACME anvil fall out of the sky.

Chance’s second mixtape, Acid Rap, was dropped as a free release back in late April. The 13-track project was met with immense praise from critics and even spawned a vast bootleg market for the mixtape which led to Acid Rap bizarrely charting on Billboard’s Top R&B Hip/Hop Albums.

Acid Rap is Chance in a nutshell: Multi-faceted, spacey, honest and colorful. Its instability is what makes it one of the most entertaining listens of 2013.

Perhaps you can best define Chance by his go-to ad-lib; the buzzing and somewhat irritating “Na-Na-Na-Na,” which sounds like something he bit from a taunting second-grader playing Duck, Duck, Goose.

It’s kinda weird, kinda annoying. But much like the majority of Acid Rap, it’s impossible to turn off.

Here are the five best tracks from Acid Rap.

— Dan Troisi