When Chance the Rapper was booked to appear on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, he was planning to perform “Grown Ass Kid,” an outtake from his Coloring Book mixtape. But he was moved to debut a new song (with Daniel Caesar), written over the past few days, not even titled yet – a nakedly confessional track, granting that his may be “first world problems,” but trafficking in the kind of helplessness, fear, and exhaustion that seems so much a part of contemporary life at this particular moment. “Keep on tellin’ us that we makin’ it up / The American Dream, may you never wake up,” he notes, and the results are direct, searching, and soulful. Watch:
Chance also told Colbert, in a follow-up interview segment, that he’s been back in the studio “cooking up some yammers—they’re honestly great,” while addressing the fans who are attempting to draft him to run for mayor of Chicago: