Album Of The Week: Lil B & Chance The Rapper Free (Based Freestyles Mixtape)

We at Stereogum stopped running our Mixtape Of The Week column earlier this year; it first became The Week In Rap and then Status Ain't Hood when some other website claimed to own the phrase "The Week In Rap." But in the back of my mind, I knew we'd face a situation like this: One week when a rap mixtape completely obliterates all the commercially-available albums that come out during a given week. This week has its share of good albums. I like the new Gangrene and the new Palehound, and at different points, I planned on writing both of them up in this space. But this new Free mixtape is so far beyond any proper album this week, even though it's very much not a proper album. In fact, it's barely a mixtape, in the way that term has come to be understood. Mixtapes today are basically just street albums: All-original full-lengths, full of complete songs, that would've probably come out on indie labels during a healthier music-business era. This, on the other hand, is two guys spending a day in a room together, bullshitting whatever comes off the top of their heads. The whole thing lasts six tracks, and it seems like not one single word of what either rappers says was written or planned-out beforehand. It's two strange, talented people saying whatever pops into their heads and figuring things out from there. It should, by rights, be terrible. But it's so full of joy and warmth and genuine good feeling that it stands as one of the most purely pleasurable things I've heard all year.