the MARZONYEAH shuffle - "Sunday Candy" by Chance The Rapper / Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment
MarzonYEAH playlist on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3bmmlB4
CHORD PROGRESSION
Key of C Major
C - B/G - Am - C7 [I - V - vi -I]
F - E/C - Dm - G7 [IV - I - ii -V]
MY LISTENING EXPERIENCE(S)
I (finally) started listening to Chance the Rapper around December 2013, around the same time he appeared on Childish Gambino’s “The Other Guys” song on Because The Internet. Chance’s unique voice and incredible music stylings instantly hooked me - I quickly downloaded his Acid Rap mixtape and had that on repeat for years! That album was so addicting with its frantic beats and Chance’s ridiculously genius rhymes and phrasing throughout. Chance could also sing(!) and he quickly became a huge influence on my music, even though he’s just three months older than me.
LMU c/o 2015 Graduation, circa when the Surf album came out.
When Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment released Surf in 2015, I wasn’t too crazy about it, maybe because it’s not Chance-centric, but the music is great. The spare Chance verses on the album are killer, and when it comes to “Sunday Candy”, I was blown away. It’s a beautiful, relatively simple song, and the lyrics are very reverent in talking about the impact of family and how much it means to have a loving, supportive grandmother.
Much like Chance’s grandmother, my mother’s mother (and all of my Filipino family, pretty much) was very religious and the spiritual lyrics conveyed the importance of religion in their lives. My grandparent’s house was filled with Catholic symbols and such, and she would pray the rosary every day. It’s fascinating to see her devotion to God and how it carried on to her sons and daughters. My grandma passed away in August 2015, just a few months after this song came out, and listening to it had even more of an impact on me.
[Okay live performance tangent here…] When Chance performed this song on SNL that winter (one of THE BEST SNL performances, in my opinion), I fell in love with the new slower arrangement and more delicate version of the song. I still get teary eyed (and often cry, yes) at the beauty of this whenever I watch/listen to this. I ripped the audio from this video, played it on repeat (whilst crying, yes) and could just imagine Chance performing this. That sound of someone moving on their chair when the music goes silent (at 0:35 in the video) is forever embedded into my brain. His passion is infectious and affects the performance incredibly, as he spits and nails every syllable with love. The simple act of standing (at 3:10 in the video) lends it so much more energy when he raps a verse unique to this SNL performance. Every piece of the layers of this appearance is wonderful (and I cry, yes - to be fair, this performance came shortly after a break-up and my grandmother’s passing, but as y’all know, I’m a cryer like Jon).
THE SONG
“Sunday Candy” uses the same chord progression throughout, but the instrumentation is incredible with all the melodies complementing the singers. It’s a simple song with a jazzy, blues chord progression. Playing it on the piano, it starts on the I chord, then uses the bass notes to descend as the right hand follows the chord shapes to complement. Of course, the actual arrangement involves more jazz-centric moves to flat-vi notes, and, frankly, my music theory knowledge and communication only extends so far. The jazz note moves and elements are more prevalent in the live version, but we still get plenty here in the studio version.
Chance strategically starts in his lower register when he first starts singing, then gradually raises in his range as he gets more passionate with the love he has for his grandma. Then when Jamila Woods enters for the chorus (0:47) with the silky smooth, catchy gospel-tinged melody and sings, the song just enters a heavenly stratosphere, as the hip-hop elements of the track take a break and the good ol’ organ seizes the spotlight for a bit. The backing vocals and male vocal double enter before it explodes into the double-time first bridge (1:12) for a dancy good time. [Side note - watching the choreography in the video for this makes me so jealous and is inspiring me right now MY GOODNESS.]
The second verse (1:36) is a classic Chance verse for me, in that he chooses a catchy melody and pairs it with alliterative lyrics. It also highlights his voice for the most part, so it’s just a *chef’s kiss* of a time. After an energetic repeat of the bridge, the song slows back down and lets Woods do her thing (2:37), while the rest of the song settles into a swingy, feel-good, holy groove. The final bridge (3:14) has a chorus join in to really nail that churchy, gospel vibe. There’s so many production elements and instruments used here that make this song a beautiful stained glass portrait that you’d see at a grand cathedral.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
“Sunday Candy” is technically by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, of which Chance is a part of, and Donnie’s trumpet certainly is a highlight of the song. (Donnie changed his name back to his given name, Nico Segal, midway through the 45th president’s term…) I still count this as a Chance the Rapper song, though, and it’s certainly a connective piece from his frenetic, unhinged Acid Rap mixtape to the gospel-heavy Coloring Book mixtape.
(Side note - please read that last paragraph of the MY LISTENING EXPERIENCES section about the SNL performance of this, which really solidified my love for this song.)
ABOUT THE MARZONYEAH SHUFFLE
It’s crazy how music can trigger memories, old feelings, and dormant, everlasting emotions. I recently (manually, painstakingly) ported over my “MarzonYEAH!” playlist, basically my master playlist made up of songs that I loved over the years and still love, from my local iTunes library to my Spotify account, and shuffling this playlist brought me back to those moments in my life that I discovered them, or memories of listening to them. For this series, I plan to write at least twice a month, chosen by pressing Shuffle on the playlist. Each post would be about my experience with the songs and a little analysis with a cover to accompany the post. I’m not going to talk too much about lyrics, since, weirdly, that isn’t what I listen for in a song. I’m into chord progressions, melodies, basically whatever the musicians are doing that makes me conjure up some sort of emotion. Lyrics don’t always do that at first listen, but I will be sure to talk about it if they do. (You can find lyrical analysis on the Genius pages, so I’ll defer to those.) I’ll try to break down these little features into sections as best I can! I highly encourage you to listen to the song on repeat while reading this!