“Paranoia” is an odd song for Chance The Rapper to have made.
The minimal, down-beat look at Chicago teenagers affected by gang violence and living with PTSD is odd in its context on Chance’s breakthrough mixtape Acid Rap – sandwiched between the Curtis Mayfield-via-DJ Screw sound of “Pusha Man” and the groovy, warm free-associative rambling of “Cocoa Butter Kisses” – and it’s odd in the context of Chance’s discography as a whole, which tends toward skronky, joyous mashups of gospel, soul, and juke.
It should come as no surprise, then, that that feeling of dissonance extends to Chance’s live performance of the song. At a recent stop in Orlando, the most famous member of the Save Money crew segued into the song almost immediately after asking the crowd to try and make the venue shake as they jumped along with “Favorite Song” and its incessant chorus of “This my jam! This my jam!”
This is the same guy who would perform his rendition of the theme song from Arthur later, the rapper who would close out his set with a song comparing a weekly meeting with his grandmother to a holy ritual, but for now he wanted the crowd to take a second and think about how “they murking kids, they murder kids here.”
Problem was, the crowd wasn’t ready to follow Chance. “Paranoia” features some of the same catchy, lilting speech patterns as the rest of his catalog. The crowd shouted along as if lines like “down here, it’s easier to find a gun than it is to find a f*cking parking spot” were tossed-off lines from “F*ck Up Some Commas.”
As the song went on, Chance seemed more and more desperate to have the meaning behind the words resonate with the people in the crowd. With each repetition of the chorus, Chance tried humanizing the deaths at the center of the song. “A lot of n*ggas dying” became “A lot of black boys dying” became “a lot of little black boys dying.” When that aforementioned line about “murking kids” came around, he signaled to his band The Social Experiment to quiet down and added extra emphasis to the line so that it came out “They MURDER KIDS here.” And still the crowd’s partying mood would not be dampened, even for a second.
Of course, it’s not entirely the audience’s fault. I’m willing to bet that almost none of the people gathered were Chiraq teens struggling after coming up in one of the most violent parts of the United States. How could this crowd largely composed of Floridian college students understand a song about kids who have grown up in an environment so violent that they literally fear the summer?
But Chance’s desperation and failure to get his point across did get me thinking about musicians and their messages in general. Do musicians have any say in how their songs are digested? Should they be able to tell you that the way you’re listening to/enjoying the song is all wrong?
Thirty years ago, this would have been a no-brainer. Artists didn’t have any say in the way their music was enjoyed. The only interaction they had with their fans came via concerts and album sales, and communication in that regard was decidedly one-way. The old major label system functioned kind of like the mech-suits popular in anime, if those mech-suits were made entirely out of men with ponytails. Labels trapped their artists in a bubble, with only approved communication getting through. However, the machinery that was isolating musicians from their fans was the very same machinery that helped their music travel vast distances and find success (and sales) once it landed. On the one hand, this led to smash hits like we’ll never see again. On the other, it led to several decades of folks playing “Born in the USA” when they’re trying to be patriotic.
Nowadays, that machinery has run down. Major artists still stand atop the mech-suits, with all the awe that inspires, but the cockpit has been busted open. Anyone passing by can shout up at the pilot and they can yell right back. On the one hand, artists who aren’t Adele and Taylor Swift no longer have the ability to blast off into outer space, but on the other, they can reach out to the folks on the ground and let them know exactly how they feel.
This allows the artist to do something unprecedented, and dictate exactly the way a song is meant to be interpreted, experienced and enjoyed. And while some might take issue with an artist telling fans the way they’re supposed to feel, I personally don’t see anything wrong with it. After pouring months or years into a project, I can’t imagine a much worse fate than having the whole thing be misunderstood. We’ve allowed this sort of reaching out and tinkering for years in other art forms. Directors are allowed to go back and re-release films with added footage, allowing viewers to better understand their vision. And if that wasn’t explicit for you, there’s always the commentary track.
Why shouldn’t musicians like Chance be given the same opportunity, whether it be via verified annotations on lyric sites like Genius, a series of tweets or live re-workings of songs to underline their message? So far, Mr. Bennett hasn’t felt the need to come out and say how a song like “Paranoia” should be listened to. But if he did so tomorrow — after seeing room after room full of uncomprehending faces dropping hard Rs and jumping around while he begs for news coverage of a hometown crisis — could you really blame him?
