The one album Chance The Rapper called the “greatest” of all time
Born in 1993, Chance the Rapper is still a young enough man. But there are aspects to his taste in music that make him seem a little bit older. One of his favourite ever albums, for instance, was released many years before he was born.
Speaking with Complex in 2013 about his favourite records of all time, Chance highlighted the work of Michael Jackson. 1987’s Bad, he said, was “hot as hell” because of “all the amazing singles,” which, indeed, included massive tracks like ‘The Way You Make Me Feel,’ ‘Smooth Criminal,’ ‘Man in the Mirror’ and ‘Bad’ itself.
But, despite those hits, plus several others on the album, it wasn’t Bad that Chance thought was the “greatest.” That honour, from his perspective, goes to one of its predecessors, Off The Wall, released eight years previously in 1979. Off The Wall, according to Chance, is the “greatest album by the greatest entertainer of all time.”
This was Jackson’s fifth album as a solo artist, and his first to be produced by Quincy Jones. They had previously worked together on the movie The Wiz, a reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz starring a Black cast, in which Jackson had played the Scarecrow. Jones had arranged the film’s score, and he and Jackson had gotten on so well that it was agreed that Jones would produce MJ’s next record.
Off the Wall was rooted in disco, both musically and in terms of its lyrical content. This was a difficult time to be making disco music, as the reactionary “Disco Sucks” movement had reached its fever pitch around this period. But, in spite of the widespread animosity towards disco—which many people believe was motivated by homophobia, sexism and racism—Off the Wall was nonetheless a massive success.
The album became the best-selling record in the United States in 1980, while many of the album’s singles did well, too. Both ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough’ and ‘Rock with You’ reached number one on the US singles chart, while the album’s title track and ‘She’s Out of My Life’ entered the top ten.
It is a mark of the album’s quality that it was considered to be scandalous that it was only nominated for two Grammys. He took home the award for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male for ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,’ but, notably, the record wasn’t nominated for Album of the Year. Jackson was very upset with that omission.
Today, the album is remembered as a truly significant release of the disco era, while it is one of the best-selling albums ever. Culturally, it’s considered a really important work, and Chance the Rapper is among those to speak up for its legacy.
Chance is a huge Michael Jackson fan more generally, and he also spoken publicly about his admiration for Jackson’s philanthropy. Speaking to Forbes about it in 2019, Chance declared that the “most philanthropic musician is Michael Joseph Jackson.”