This is one of the most important hip-hop tracks of the year.  This is why.

1. Chance the Rapper is the first “up-and-comer” (revoke my blogging license if I ever use that term again) who’s entirely post-Kendrick Lamar.  I wish I had been clever enough to come up with that description myself, and I wish I had a memory good enough to remember where I saw it.  Regardless, it’s perfect - Chance the Rapper is much more 2004 Kanye than 2012 Kendrick.  There’s something about Chance’s music that suggests offhanded brilliance and spontaneity, while Kendrick thrives off intensity and grind.  It’s in Chance’s flippant rushed cadence, his almost wryly playful internal rhyming, and his Nickelodeon adlibs.  Even here, over pensive modulated synths and James Blake wails, Chance is still Chance.

2. James Blake’s a modern electronic artist - he’s got the buzzing dubstep snap down pat, and he even has the Sampha-esque, eccentric, off-balance vocals to boot.  But like King Krule, there’s something about his music that suggests hip-hop roots and appeal.  It’s as if 40’s minimalism and darting style was slid and translated across genres, and it’s no surprise that Drake was reported to have worked on Nothing Was the Same with the Londoner.  Blake’s influences are all over the latest record from Degrassi’s finest, with his trademark drum sounds scattered all across the Boi-1da-produced “Pound Cake”.  It’ll be shocking if Blake doesn’t make larger moves into the hip-hop arena; he’s got the connections (RZA was the only high-profile feature on Blake's Overgrown album) and the mystique to appeal.

So Chance and James Blake coming together to remix “Life Round Here” (which was screaming for a rap verse in any case) is a milestone.  These aren’t just two artists that very well might represent the next few years of hip-hop: these are two artists who you’d never place together logically.  Blake is brooding and atmospheric, fading back and letting sharp rhythms and almost unintelligible vocals tell his stories.  Chance is the opposite in his bombastic delivery and approach, floating on druggy clouds and never releasing his listener from his contagious exuberance.  Chance certainly isn’t who you’d plug for a James Blake remix - maybe Drake, or even Earl Sweatshirt.  And maybe this remix might be a bit better with an artist more willing to play along with Blake’s melancholy approach. But it’s a milestone.  Fingers crossed we’ll be considering it as such come October 15th, 2015.