Quelle Chris gets it. No, really. He feels your pain. He understands. His entire discography is dedicated to getting it. From the need to believe in yourself to interrogating the trauma behind being “fine,” to America’s obsession with guns, Chris has had his feet planted firmly within reality, and all of its faulty splendor. It is often hard to tell if building a surrealist drama/comedy around life is his own coping mechanism. In pitch-black times only threatening to get worse, it helps to laugh at it all. But during times like now, when it feels like our own government wants the American people dead at every corner, it is hard to really laugh.
Mothers cry while they die, good people are hunted like deer while holding the line, and evil spreads like a slow but aggressive cancer. The world looks at America like both the weaklings and the schoolyard bullies of Planet Earth. Then, there is YOU, reader. You are the person in the midst of chaos, trying to find some sort of calm, resolution, or escape for your nervous system. If only there were someone you could turn to. It would be easier for so many of us.
While there isn’t a promise on Happy Place, Chris’ latest YouTube-only EP, to offer this kind of refuge, you can think of the project as a one-way conversation with a friend on the stoop of your house—or at the seat of your favorite restaurant, your choice. Chris offers some words of encouragement with “If there’s something that you want and it ain’t for you, let it go / All that weight on your shoulders is just slowing you to grow” delivered matter-of-factly on the titled track. He encourages you to try laughing, even if the laughter is about serious things. On “Don’t Look Any Further,” for example, Chris balks at the absurdity of rappers not being “into politics,” commenting, “Most of these rappers are covered in tinfoil.” His dry approach adds a hybrid element of seriousness and humor that could rival Vince Staples.
An underrated element of Chris’ music is the way the production speaks. Not just referencing the samples, but the tone of the music. Where most people treat sampling as a chance to create something with more hit potential, Chris treats beatmaking like a collage board. Perfection is not the point, but rather having the message come through the samples, conveying and brewing different emotions. A majority of the blended samples have a sluggish, depressed, dejected feeling. But thankfully, it never stays that way. “All I Can See is All I Can Say” turns from sparkly and soulful to murky as soon as you get close to the song’s ending. It feels like looking out the window, seeing hell unfold, yet a friend appears, and such hell feels far away. The molasses crawl of “Certainly” slows a Teddy Pendergrass (?) sample down before suddenly bursting into sunshine with the useful piece of advice: keep hope alive.
Happy Place is like walking through the world while having so much on your mind. Just know this 19-minute EP is meant to be a commentary on the world, a calm hand on the shoulder, and the reminder that what you are going through, Quelle Chris is probably going through it, too.
