Lately ShowYouSuck, the Cool Kids, and Mick Jenkins’s DJ, Green Sllime, have been dipping their toes into TV—and the medium has also inspired Chicago hip-hop group ThemPeople.
The collective’s fingerprints are all over the work of several buzzing local rappers, including that of the scene’s undisputed prince. So when Chance the Rapper won three Grammys on Sunday—which provoked Chicagoans to start poring over their digital archives so they could brag about their connections to him—I looked back on the feature I wrote right before he dropped Acid Rap and remembered ThemPeople’s contributions to his career.
When Chance accepted his Grammy for Best New Artist, he talked about the importance of community—well, he started to, but the show tried to play him off with a swell of music. Community has been vital to Chance’s career from the very beginning. When we talked for that Acid Rap article, he told me that ThemPeople producer Lboogie—aka Lon Renzell—had let Chance use his studio for free to work on #10Day, his debut mixtape.
On Monday, ThemPeople dropped the two-track release Sitcom. It appears to be part of an ongoing series—or at least that’s the impression I get from what little info is available online. On Sunday, Lboogie teased the release on his Instagram with the caption “-SITCOM- season 1 airs Monday at 12pm CST.” Sticking with the TV theme, each track ends with sampled laugh tracks. Oddly, both are named after daytime soap operas, not sitcoms, and of the two I prefer “As da World Turns.” Featuring vocals from molten-hot rapper Smino and ThemPeople affiliates Via Rosa and the Mind, the song coasts on tender guitar and hushed organ. It doesn’t seem to have a thing to do with sitcoms, but its sumptuous singing and brassy raps speak for themselves.