How Rap Saved Christmas: Tyler, the Creator and Chance the Rapper Revived a Dead Genre



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FChristmas, it is not the cavalcade of joy Coca-Cola promised. Holidays can exacerbate financial hardships, arouse feelings for lost love and act as a pressure cooker for family friction. They are brutal in their request for self-reflection; the chance to relax often just gives the mind an opportunity to get to work. Of course, all this makes Christmas fertile ground for the art.

The music did not handle the holiday season particularly well. The canon of the Christmas song is an overwhelming delirium, each entrance is a white and shiny tooth with a plastered smile. You have to go back to the '80s for melancholy exceptions (Wham's "Last Christmas", The Pogues' "The New York Fairy Tale") and no song of this millennium has managed to sustainably reduce Christmas reading.

However, some musicians try to save you from the obligation to search for Spotify, "Christmas clbadics," and do not come from pop, but hip-hop. Earlier this month, Tyler, the Creator, was brought to bear on his contribution to The grinch soundtrack with a whole EP of Christmas music. Pushing the genre forward, he complains of festive clichés but has nuances of loneliness and nostalgia.

The story of rap with Christmas is quite short. Between Eazy-E's' Merry Muthaf 'kin' Xmas' and the Ying Yang Twins' 'Club Da Club', the holidays were mostly fun. Ludacris said "Ludacrismas" in 2007 by rapping: "Ice skating in the alley / I'm doing it in my own way / Eggnogs made daddy turn on the highway". Christmas get-togethers are an easy way to make money, and since the hustle is still part of hip hop, what prevents rappers from getting their big share of Christmas cheer?

However, other artists have perceived something a little deeper, however, a latent poignant force in the way Christmas story mingles with life on the streets. On Snoop Dogg's "The Father Goes to the Ghetto" set, Deee recalls that the absence of a growing father made Santa's concept a particularly strange one for a child to take his head.

"Hopin ', when I open the door, I'll see Santa Claus / now, who's in the blue bandana? "Messin 'with the boxes that are under the three / Looks like Santa has been crossed with a woman for me." Not wanting to embarrbad her mother when she works hard for Christmas to come true herself, he pretends not to have seen her. . "Millie shot a gun on Santa Claus" De La Soul, darker with his Christmas tales. The story of a girl badaulted by her father, she shoots him while working as a department store Santa in Macy's. Run DMC also made its contribution to Yuletide with "Christmas in Hollis", the narrator sank into the festive spirit by deciding not to steal Santa when he sees it at night. of the night. More recently, in 2010, Kanye West brought together GOOD Music alumni Teyana Taylor and CyHi the Prince for "Christmas in Harlem", which encourages visitors not to spend as much as Christmas and to the sale at the mall the highlight of the holidays.

All these half-published Christmas haircuts seemed random and disposable. However, the result of someone realizing that Christmas was coming on November 30th.

That changed in 2016, when Chance the Rapper and Jeremih decided to join and publish a complete mixtape of Christmas music.


Dedicated to the city of Chicago, Merry Christmas Lil'mama was a joy. It did not do much to be a critical appraisal, partly because it was a novelty release and only a mixtape, but probably because so many critics had already stopped for the holidays. Composed of nine tracks, Merry Christmas Lil'mama This is the ideal solution when you make a difficult journey back home or when you are in the depths of Christmas hibernation and you can no longer bear Mariah Carey. It's tender and soulful, but also funny, well-being and just plain stupid.

"Oh, I love Christmas, being forced to buy for people at some point in the year," comedian Hannibal Buress sarcastically on the front track, before shouting absurdly "Consumerism" " With the autotune in the manner of Travis Scott. Ladle, as always, Jeremih brings to the procedure a much needed filth, his verses making you smile, while you listen to the often infantilizing cocoon that is Christmas at home.

Chance, meanwhile, brings the heart. "You can pick up the phone / We could be adults," he wrote in "Stranger at the Table," missing his ex and hurt by the fact that she spends the holidays with another man. It updates the story of "returning home for Christmas" to the modern world – flying away from the family to catch a Uber in a new love – and becomes real for a minute, talking about the plight of homeless people at home. Christmas and giving a thumbs up to Bettie Jones, a mother of five who died by police during Boxing Day 2015.


"Shoulda Left You" was the Christmas day of the release of the mixtape. The choir line "I should leave you in 2016" was both an encouragement to overcome the ex-lost and echo the feeling of "f * ck 2016" that prevailed at the end of a grueling year. , during which Trump was elected president, the Brexit voted for, and the death of many beloved artists. It was clear that Chance and Jeremih had as much fun doing it as people listening to him. In 2017, they "re-packaged" the mixtape, adding nine new songs.

Tyler, the Creator (still banished from the UK senselessly) was to pay attention. It's the rapper who decided to save Christmas this year with Music Inspired by Illumination and The Grinch by Dr. Seuss. Only five tracks (and two of them are instrumental), the EP has a limited but charming range. It's just enough Christmas joy to warm you up without giving you nausea. It's a little hot chocolate with cinnamon in a paper cup. The project could be linked to Universal's big animated film. The grinchbut it is not remote. The lines of synthesizers of the eighties bloom but are then interrupted, like a kid who pbades his next gift on Christmas morning. He likes the Christmas temperament musically and still manages to give the impression that you are looking at him from the outside. "Lights On" sees Tyler worried when he realizes that Christmas just will not happen if he does not go home with his loved one in time. Whether it is conscious or not, it also brings us back to Tray Deee's Christmas memory, Tyler rapping: "I was packing gifts at the age of six with paper bandanas / Mom was always honest, I've never had Santa Claus, "in" Big Bag ".

Merry Christmas Lil'mama and Lighting have been Christmas blessings. They will surely try more of this new generation of rappers ready to show their vulnerabilities to release their own festive mixtapes. Christmas music is not a comfortable place for rock, independent music and alternative bands, but hip-hop has the dexterity to offer the mix of sincerity and clumsiness that the genre demands.

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