Chance The Rapper Turns Phoenix Into His Show for the Coloring Book 10 Year Anniversary Tour
There are concerts where you can tell the crowd came for a specific album, and then there are concerts where the first few seconds of a song are enough to make thousands of people collectively lose it.
Chance The Rapper's return to Phoenix felt a lot like the second one.
On September 16, Chance brought his Coloring Book 10 Year Anniversary Tour to Arizona Financial Theatre, celebrating a project that has now been part of fans' lives for an entire decade. The night mixed nostalgia with newer music, plenty of crowd interaction, and one thing that became obvious pretty quickly: Chance genuinely looked like he was having fun up there.
But before Chance arrived, La Reezy had the job of getting Phoenix ready.
La Reezy Wins Over Phoenix
Opening the night was New Orleans rapper La Reezy, making his first appearance in Arizona.
There were already fans near the front representing him with merch, from hats and bandanas to shirts, but he still had a room to win over. To be fair, Phoenix was a little quiet when his set began.
That did not last.
La Reezy brought an easygoing but energetic personality to the stage, constantly moving, dancing, joking around, and gradually getting louder reactions from the audience. Instead of letting the quieter beginning slow him down, he kept pushing until more cheers started coming back at him.
By the later part of the set, the difference in the room was noticeable.
One of the coolest parts of his performance was actually something pretty simple. Between songs, La Reezy would tell stories while his keyboard player continued playing underneath him. Rather than feeling like dead time between tracks, the music made those stories feel connected to what came next, almost like the entire set was continuously moving forward.
“HARDHEAD” was one of the songs that immediately stood out. The idea behind hard heads learning fast already gave the track some personality live, but the way his set moved from there into more reflective material such as “God Forgive Me” showed another side of his range.
That balance worked well throughout the performance. One minute he was dancing around and making the crowd laugh, and the next he was moving into something more personal.
La Reezy also had fresh material to showcase. His album Skiddle Bandana arrived earlier this summer, and his performance carried the same good-energy feeling that made him a natural fit opening this tour.
For a first Arizona show, he walked into a crowd that was still warming up and left with a noticeably louder one.
Then it was time for Chance.
Ten Years of Coloring Book
Chance The Rapper hit the stage around 9:20 p.m., and there was basically no warm-up period.
“All We Got.”
“Blessings.”
“Ride.”
Three songs in and Arizona Financial Theatre was already moving.
Watching an entire crowd swing along to songs from Coloring Book made the fact that the project is celebrating its 10th anniversary feel a little ridiculous. These are songs that have been around for a decade now, but nothing about the reaction inside the venue made them feel old.
“Angels” was one of the first moments where that really hit. The crowd was singing along almost immediately, and Chance seemed perfectly comfortable letting Phoenix become part of the performance instead of simply performing at us.
That became one of the best parts of the entire night.
He constantly played with the audience, handing lyrics over to us, joking around, and reminding everyone, “We’re in the building” and “This is our show.”
During “No Problem,” Chance stopped and let the crowd take over.
Apparently, Phoenix wasn't loud enough.
He stopped us and told everyone we could do better.
Round two was a completely different story.
The room came back so much louder that it felt like Chance had figured out exactly how to push the crowd's buttons. He mentioned that some of his best concerts have happened in Arizona, which meant Phoenix had something to live up to.
Phoenix showed up.
A Birthday in Phoenix
There was also a much more personal reason September 16 mattered to Chance.
It was his daughter Kensli's birthday, and she had flown out to Arizona for the show.
That turned Arizona Financial Theatre into a giant birthday party for a minute as Chance had the entire crowd sing “Happy Birthday” to her.
And then came “All Night.”
Chance jokingly cleaned things up for Kensli, giving Phoenix the censored version for the birthday girl.
It was one of those small moments that had nothing to do with production or spectacle, but somehow made the concert feel more personal. For a tour built around looking back at music from ten years ago, having his daughter there while thousands of people celebrated those songs with him made the passage of time feel even more real.
Then Came the Auto-Tune Mic
At some point, Chance decided it was time to have even more fun.
Out came the Auto-Tune mic.
Suddenly we were getting Auto-Tuned Chance talking to the crowd, singing “Smoke Break,” and eventually moving into “Juke Jam.”
Honestly, I loved it.
There was something hilarious about watching him mess around with it while still delivering songs that people in the building knew word for word. It didn't feel like some heavily planned production moment. It felt like Chance found another toy onstage and decided Phoenix was going along for the ride.
Once the Auto-Tune mic disappeared, he went straight into “I'm the One.”
And that one hit me differently.
Hearing it live made me realize just how many songs involving Chance and Justin Bieber ended up attached to a specific era of my life. That's one of the strange things about anniversary tours. You go in thinking you're celebrating an album, and suddenly a song starts playing and you're remembering where you were years ago when you first heard it.
Old Songs, New Songs and Everything Between
The night wasn't only about Coloring Book.
Chance also made room for newer material, including music from STAR LINE. At one point, he noticed that some people in the crowd already knew one of the newer songs he was performing.
For everyone else, his solution was pretty straightforward: just sing, even if you don't know the lyrics.
The crowd laughed, but that attitude pretty much summed up the entire concert.
Chance wasn't asking Phoenix to stand there and quietly appreciate a ten-year-old album. He wanted everybody involved.
That made songs like “Ultralight Beam” hit even harder.
It's still one of my personal favorites, and hearing Chance perform it after spending the night bouncing between different periods of his career brought everything back to the era the tour was celebrating.
Then came “Same Drugs.”
As the final song of the night played, confetti filled Arizona Financial Theatre, giving the concert the kind of ending that just felt right. After a night of Chance joking with the audience, challenging us to get louder, celebrating his daughter's birthday, breaking out the Auto-Tune mic and revisiting songs that have been with fans for a decade, “Same Drugs” brought everything down to one final moment.
Watching the confetti fall while one of Coloring Book's most reflective songs closed the show was a great way to end the night.
Ten years is a long time.
People graduate. Careers change. Families grow. Music you once thought of as new slowly becomes the music that reminds you of a completely different version of yourself.
But inside Arizona Financial Theatre, Coloring Book didn't feel like something everyone had come to nostalgically look back on.
For a little while, it felt current again.
Chance wasn't treating these songs like museum pieces from 2016. He was joking around, dancing, messing with Auto-Tune, celebrating his daughter's birthday, challenging Arizona to sing louder, and letting thousands of people turn the songs back into something communal.
“This is our show.”
By the time the confetti fell during “Same Drugs,” it really did feel like it.
Photos by Nico Madrid / The Mikan Box
