Giving Rap a Chance (the Rapper)

My boyfriend and I do not enjoy the same types of music. He like post-punk, rap, indie, and alternative music and I listen to mostly pop, electronic, and dance. Deciding what to listen to in the car is often a struggle.

One of us looks like this.

And the other looks like this.

Or vice versa.

A couple weeks ago, he was raving about a new album entitle Surf by Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment. The group consists of Donnie Trumpet, a.k.a. Nico Segal, trumpeter, bandleader, producer and sometimes percussionist; keyboardist and producer Peter "Peter Cottontale" Wilkins; producer and engineer Nate Fox; drummer Greg "Stix" Landfair Jr.; and, most famously, Chancellor "Chance The Rapper" Bennett. The album is totally free to download and NPR wrote a very nice article about a song off the album called "Familiar." 

The Social Experiment on the cover of Fader magazine.

I finally decided to give Chance and the gang a ~chance~ (I'm hilarious) and listened to the entire album all the way through. Then I listened to it again. Then I decided I like it. It's not the kind of angry, in-your-face rap that I often hear on stations like Power 105.1 or Hot 97; it's jazzy, layered, and the lyrics are smart and optimistic. 

The cover art for Surf.

One song I am loving off Surf is "Wanna Be Cool" which features singers Jeremih, Chance the Rapper, and Kyle. The entire track is about how not being cool makes you cool and how you don't need to be rich to be happy. One part of Kyle's verse goes: "You'll be aware, it's easy, and it's so important / being cool shouldn't cost a fortune / Baby got her jeans from goodwill / but I bet that ass look good still." 

Another cool thing that Donnie Trumpets and The Social Experiment (other than put the entire album out for FREE) was not reveal the features on each track. Beside each track under "Artist" it just says "Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment." Now you can look up who is featured on each track, but when people downloaded the album and listened to it for the first time, they didn't know another artist was going to come into a song until they actually did. I really like this element of surprise and I think it definitely adds something to the album as a work of art. 

Download the album and give it a listen--it doesn't cost you anything--and feel free to check out the music video for "Sunday Candy" below.