Taking a Chance with Grief: Chance The Rapper & Sunday Candy

In some regard, I’m out of words. The past few months elude me. It doesn’t feel like the past 6 or even 2 months since my grandparents’ health declined, since I began to spend evenings with them, since grandfather and I were watching a documentary on Netflix, since he died, since my grandmother who had dementia just began calling out daddy in his absence, since the 68 days later when she died, since my family and I began to breathe again. No. It feels like one gigantic run on sentence that would have made the hairs on the back of my 11th grade English teacher’s neck stand straight on end. This Wednesday, I sat on the sofa with my love catching up on SNL on Hulu (Hulu & Cool or nah?) and here comes Chance the Rapper. Now, I’m going to be straight up honest with you and no matter how stunned you are, you will NOT revoke my Black card. I had no idea who in the hell Chance the Rapper was. Seriously. They said his name and I heard a dial tone. None of his past work came to mind, but I found myself glued to the T.V. This dude was dropping bars with a band and Jamila Woods singing in the background. Oh, HELL YES! This I can get with.

In his first song, “Somewhere in Paradise,” Chance danced and rhymed and gave shout-outs to his teachers (biggups to that and to the dawning of winter break). His hook with Jeremih “I believe that if I fly, I’ll probably end up somewhere in paradise” was tugging at me a little bit. Take the past few months of my life out of it and just think abo…