Chance The Rapper’s New Music Video Is A Must Watch, Especially If You Didn’t Love His Album

It’s been a year of highs and lows for Chance the Rapper.

The Chicago native has enjoyed a year of successful collaborations with the likes of Ed Sheeran, YBN Cordae and even the Backstreet Boys. He was also recently announced as part of Saturday Night Live‘s 45th season, where he will pull double duty of host and musical guest for the second time. On top of that, he and wife Kirsten Corley recently welcomed their second child into the world – a huge congratulations for that.

A lot of that, however, has been overshadowed by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to The Big Day, Chance’s debut album, which dropped back in July and was widely panned for almost a week straight. Needless to say, Chano was all in his feelings about the whole ordeal, and went quiet for awhile.

After a few months, however, he’s returned with a new music video for ‘We Go High’, lifted from The Big Day – and it couldn’t be more removed from the cheery, celebratory veneer that the album was initially pushed under.

Directed by Elijah Alvarado, who had previously worked with Chance on his video for ‘Hey Ma,’ the clip for ‘We Go High’ is a visual manifestation of Chano’s inner psyche.

In it, it’s clear that Chance’s achieved everything he set out to do. He’s living a life he could have only dreamed of a few years prior – and yet, it becomes clear very early on that something is missing. He’s lost sight of who he is, and the world around him neither seems to notice nor care.

It’s an emotionally striking visual, accentuating the emotion of the song the same way that a video like ‘Maps’ by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or ‘Daydreaming’ by Radiohead has done in the past. It’s unlocking something you might not have picked up purely by listening to the song itself – in turn, entirely succeeding as a medium and breathing relevance back into a format long-thought to be past its use-by date.

Watch the video for ‘We Go High’ below. Chance begins his world tour in 2020, although it’s not known yet whether Australia will factor into his plans — at the eleventh hour, he cancelled his headlining set at this year’s Splendour In The Grass.