Coloring Book Turns 10: Chance the Rapper Returns to Central Park

Ten Years, One Coloring Book

Some albums mark a moment. Others become one. Coloring Book did both, and on Tuesday, August 18, Chance the Rapper marks a decade of it live at SummerStage in Central Park, from 7 to 10 PM, with support from La Reezy.

We are not going to sit here and do the math out loud. We are simply going to acknowledge that No Problem, Same Drugs, and Angels were, for a certain stretch of 2016, basically the background score to everything — commutes, cookouts, late nights that felt important at the time and, in hindsight, absolutely were.

Why This One Matters

Anniversary tours can go either way. Sometimes they feel like a victory lap. This one feels more like a reunion — between an artist and the songs that made him a fixture, and between a crowd and the version of themselves that first heard this record.

Central Park's SummerStage has hosted its share of big nights, but there is something specifically right about hearing a gospel-inflected, joy-forward album like Coloring Book under open sky, as the sun goes down over a New York summer evening.

Ten years went by that fast. We're not going to discuss it.

What to Expect

• An outdoor evening set, 7 to 10 PM, with the city's skyline doing its usual quiet flex in the background

• Support from La Reezy, warming up the crowd before the main event

• A set built around an album most attendees know by heart, chorus and ad-lib alike

• The specific, slightly disorienting joy of hearing a decade-old song and feeling twenty-two again for exactly three minutes

The Coupian Take

We are filing this one under nostalgia, hip-hop, and concert date, because it checks all three boxes without trying particularly hard. Some nights you go for the artist. Some nights you go for the songs. This is the rare one where both answers are the same.

Central Park in August, an album that soundtracked a very specific chapter, and a crowd that is going to sing every word whether Chance asks them to or not — that is the whole pitch. See you there, coloring book in hand, memory-wise if nothing else.