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Chance the Rapper Celebrates a Decade of Acid Rap

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Photos courtesy Fourline Creative

Designer Michael Apostolos, Principal of Chicago-based Fourline Creative was Production and Lighting Designer for Chance The Rapper’s series of one-off shows celebrating the 10th anniversary of his 2013 breakthrough mixtape Acid Rap. He performed a homecoming show at the United Center in Chicago, followed by nights at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and Los Angeles’ Kia Forum. Apostolos has been working with Chance for over a decade and spoke with PLSN about designing these shows.

Talk about your concepts behind the Acid Rap anniversary shows.

Acid Rap was his step into stardom. People just gravitated towards Acid Rap, throughout the whole world. That’s what got him on his feet, and that’s when I started working with him. A lot of his fans found him from that mixtape, before his Grammy-winning album, Coloring Book. It’s the 10-year anniversary of Acid Rap and Chance wanted to put these shows on as a thank you to his fans, while also allowing for everyone to have this nostalgic moment.

People got to listen to the old tracks in their entirety, on a large scale, and highly produced. The show was really a celebration and a moment for people to jog their memory to where they were 10 years ago, when Acid Rap came out. The adventure of life that they went through while listening to it. Because people who listened to Acid Rap back when it came out, they were likely in high school, maybe just going into college. So, it was familiar, and it was kind of mimicking a lot of life moments that they were currently going through.

Chance wanted to do three big shows. He didn’t want to do a whole massive tour. He wanted to do three large one-offs. He just wanted them to be special; three really specific, well-produced shows that were slightly different from each other with special guests and song choices. We did one in Chicago, one in New York, and went out with a bang in L.A.

Walk me through your design.

A big thing was creating a stage, and a design, that lived up to the moment. Lived up to the scale of the celebration that Chance wanted to throw. A big part of Acid Rap were the visuals from a content side. So, right off the bat I knew we wanted to do a larger than life video screen that pretty much spans the whole width of the arena, even beyond the hockey dasher boards. We really took the video wall as far as we could. It’s 98’ wide by 42’ tall.

The stage was motivated by my overhead and floor rig, that mirrored each other. I knew that I wanted to have different tiers on the stage. So that upstage, Chance has this platform that runs the whole width of the video wall. That allows him, and the guest artists, to get close to the audience left and right. Then a step down from there, for his band and was his main performing area. Then an additional step down from there, almost like a mini thrust. It didn’t extend far but gave him another area to go to isolate himself.

A lot of songs in Acid Rap are moody. It’s like Chance in his own head, or Chance experiencing real intimate emotional moments. That’s why I specifically designed that smaller thrust, to get Chance away from everyone, away from the band, away from the video wall, away from the production. Give him a single spotlight that just allows him to be there, raw in his emotions, close to the audience so they can feel like they’re a part of that moment.

How much input does Chance have on the design?

He’s got a ton of input. We’ve been working together for over a decade, so I do have a pretty good sense of the general style in which he wants to go, but it always starts with a conversation with him, some back and forth calls or texts. I ask Chance to paint me a broad picture of what he wants to achieve. He wanted this to be celebratory, big, impactful, but also have some key moments. From there I’ll shoot him over some designs, some initial thoughts, initial sketches, and inspiration. Then we develop. Once the physical design of the production is done, then we bring in our other collaborators on the team from the video side. We discuss with Chance content, and really what the song meant to him and what he sees when he sings the song, and what he wants the audience to see and feel. Chance is super involved.

Talk about the challenge of creating so many looks over the course of the evening.

I find it’s the most fun challenge there is out there. It’s a challenge because you obviously have to utilize your design in specific ways so that your looks aren’t always the same, but also make sure that you’re capturing the energy in the moment. I think the show is well-tailored as far as its usage of content versus lighting versus when the two of them are playing together versus pyrotechnics.

It was a collaborative development with our team to just focus on song by song. ‘What does this song mean to Chance? What does the song mean to the fans? How do we want them to feel? What’s the emotion we’re trying to evoke here? How do we portray it?’ Oftentimes less is more. Not every song, just because it’s a celebration, doesn’t mean you need every light turned on or every part of the video screen having content on it. So, it was a fun challenge, and it just came down to collaborating with a great team to really make sure we were hitting the mark on every song.

 

Were there any solutions or looks you were particularly pleased with in the show?

I loved them all. One of my favorite moments in the show is a song called “Acid Rain,” an emotional song and story that’s inspired by a real life experience from Chance. It’s a song that when you listen to the lyrics itself, it pulls you in. It’s got raw emotion in it. So, the reason why that’s one of my favorites is we decided to turn off all the video on the video wall upstage. We had no video. Turn off every single light including followspots, and only have one light on. There was a light from upstage right, shining across the stage, just kissing the right side of Chance’s face. Silhouetting him from one side; it just draws everyone into the arena. The simplicity of it really allows people to focus on Chance and what he’s singing, and the emotion that is coming out in the words that he’s singing. That’s probably one of my favorite moments just because of how simple, how emotional, and how raw it is.

Talk about some of your key gear choices.

For lighting, I knew that I wanted to go with one profile fixture type. For the profile I went with the Ayrton Perseo. I love them; they’re bright, clean, and consistent. The reason for having a single profile type, was because I wanted these really clean looks with straight spots. I didn’t want a bunch of washes in the air. The whole stage and rig are symmetrical. We have straight trusses in the air. Two of the four trusses are lined with CHAUVET Color STRIKE Ms, then those were mirrored on the deck below and on the staggered decks. The STRIKE Ms line the front of the decks, so they’re not only a fascia, but also acted as a fixture that mirrors what’s in the air. I knew I wanted those because they’re versatile. You have the LED face, the color changing face, and the white, which just pops and accentuates moments. I knew that I would get my wash and my color through all those Strike Ms. The goal was clean, sleek, symmetrical, impactful, powerful.

For the video wall we used an Absen 8mm pixel pitch product. LEC, out of Chicago, provided the lighting and video equipment for these shows. We had a six camera I-Mag package just to make sure we were capturing all the moments and delivering them to the upstage wall for I-Mag as well as to the side I-Mag walls. LEC was a great vendor to work with. I’ve worked with them in the past at a few festivals and one-offs. It was awesome to have them as a part of these shows. They were great from the jump. They supported the team, the crew, and the vision and really went above and beyond to make sure it happened the way that we wanted it to look like. They definitely saw the vision.

Who created the content for the Acid Rap shows?

That would be Bob Zegler, Chance’s Video Director. He created the content with his internal Chance video team, so it was all in-house. Then Bob and I worked intimately throughout the process. Once I had met with Chance, Bob and I would have a back and forth, just constant communication on developing content and the color palettes and how it’s going to play with lighting and it’s going to play with pyro and the rest of the shows.

In terms of video, we alternate how it’s being used. Some is content, some I-Mag, some it’s a mix of both. Some songs it’s treated I-Mag; some songs there’s no video and lighting stands front and center. We just tried to be intentional with its usage and with what we’re putting on it and how that plays with lighting. That was important.

Who was some of your production team for the Acid Rap shows?

Kevin Puig, our Tour Manager, and Ron Castellanos, our Production Manager, were great as always. Kevin has been with Chance for years and this was Ron’s first time working with Chance, but I’ve done a lot of shows with him. We had a great team. Griffin Dennen, who I’ve worked with many times, took the lead on the lighting programming side. We brought in Aaron Sweatt, who also helped with programming and lighting direction. They were great collaborators. They’re dear friends, and it’s always great working with them. We brought in Matt Knutson to direct the I-Mag. He was crucial in helping identify the mix between content and I-Mag. With the Chance team we really lean into each other and trust each other. Chance projects are collaborative and a team effort. So, having the whole team really dedicated to making these shows as great as they could be, knowing how important they were to Chance. We couldn’t have done it without everyone.