Journal 3 – Danny Flores

Summer Friends – Chance the Rapper 

The song I will be analyzing is called “Summer Friends” by Chance the Rapper (Chance). I decided to analyze this song not only because it is one of my favorite songs but also because it covers issues in low-income under-resourced communities. 

In both of the song’s verses, Chance reminisces about the summer time he and his childhood friends together growing up. He starts off the song referring to his friends and himself as “Jolly Rancher kids,” which is a way he depicts the way they were – happy and playful. Just as kids do, Chance and his friends would also get in trouble, however, most of his friends would make bad decisions due to the fact that they had no dad growing up as he says “None of my n***** ain’t had no dad,” however, they had each other during the summers and that is all they needed. Chance grew up in the southside of Chicago on 79th street which is all he knew as he refers to it as his “America” of back then. 

While summer in his America was great with his childhood friends, their fun summer time would frequently be interrupted by gang violence, police, and murders. He says, “We were still catchin’ lightning bugs when the plague hit the backyard.” By the “plague,” Chance refers to it as the gang violence and crimes occurring in his own town. He represents their innocent childhood by saying they were catching lightning bugs which allows the contrast of “plague” to have a greater effect. Chance shows this later in the first verse as he talks about the sad truth about gang violence and its effect on his community. He states, “Summer school get to losin’ students but the CPD geting new recruitment…our summer die, our summer time don’t got no shine no more.” Chance vocalizes his frustration through this as the amount of kids who go to summer school keep declining due to their lives ending because of violence and police. To add, his city of Chicago gets new police recruitment instead of focusing on real problems around his city. For the rest of the song, Chance mainly states that through violence and police, kids around his age die which ends their summer when they are supposed to be having fun and be kids.

I believe this song that fits in the genre of rap, displays a strong message through the eyes of the artist. This is why I feel like separating the artist and their art is not possible. Art does not just happen randomly but more so for a purpose and the artists have complete control over that. When music, paintings, or writing is created, separating the artist and the art itself is almost impossible to do.

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