Happy Holidays from Chance the Rapper! Listen to his Merry Christmas Lil Mama EP

Chance the Rapper capped off his year, or so we thought, last week, by tearing up Studio 8H; surrounded by artificial snowflakes and some of his best friends he got even the scroogiest of folks into the Christmas spirit after performing “Same Drugs” and “Finish Line/Drown,” and celebrating our last Christmas with Barack Obama.

He decided his year needed a tree-topper however, so he and Jeremih dropped Merry Christmas Lil Mama, a Christmas mixtape dedicated to all the black women back in Chicago; if you need a little hip hop and R&B added to your Christmas playlists, look no further than here. The tape serves dual function; instrumentally, it has the jovial, warmhearted nature of every other Christmas album, but also is grounded in the realities and stressors of the season. You always wind up having to buy a lot of gifts for a lot of people, you always wind up reflecting on the mistakes you made, you long for your loved ones, and especially in 2016’s case, you really just want the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

On “Snowed In”, Jeremih and Chance both show love to their black queens, and acknowledge the hardships they went through and the mistakes they made. They strive on “Joy” to bring Christmas back to its jovial roots, and they, like many other artists this holiday season, emphatically give 2016 the bird on “I Shoulda Left You”. The back end of the record is the duo’s tribute to Chi-town, explicitly on “Chi-town Christmas”, and more subtly on “Merry Christmas Lil Mama”, produced in Chicago’s famous juke style.

Take a listen to the tape, streaming on Soundcloud below!