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Hannibal Buress might just be transitioning from comedy to making funny music. He hasn’t been signed to a record label yet, but he definitely should. On Wednesday night, the world got introduced to Hannibal Buress as a recording artist on Chance The Rapper and Jeremih’s Merry Christmas Lil’ Mama mixtape. Hannibal has officially went hip hop.
According to a new interview from Fader, this collaboration between Buress and Chance was the result of being at the right place at the right time. This was truly a chance encounter between the two (don’t mind my corny pun, I’m no Hannibal Buress). Chance was in New York City for an episode of Saturday Night Live, and Hannibal was stuck in that city because he didn’t want to return home to Chicago, where it was incredibly cold. But when Chance heard that Buress was in town, he called him and requested that he lay down some tracks for his Christmas mixtape.
I’m like, “Does that mean rap?” Because, I mean. He’s like, “Whatever, come through.” So he’s working on this Christmas project with Jeremih and he asked me to talk about Christmas at the end of this track. He loops it up and I just go in and talk for a few minutes. On my podcast lately I’ve been really obsessing with Auto-Tune. A title too late, but I’m really getting into it. So I jokingly just tell them to Auto-Tune my shit and put Travis Scott vocals on my shit. And they cut it up and that’s that.”
Hannibal laid down some serious heat on this track. Of course, this song is definitely not the best or worst thing to come out of 2016. But it’s pretty damn entertaining and funny, mostly with the inclusion of Buress. He provides the outro to the song, which includes some autotune by the stand-up comedy star. But this wasn’t the first time that Hannibal used autotune. He experimented with “scat autotune” on The Eric Andre Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvM_g2hvGf8
Hannibal also recorded another verse for Chance The Rapper’s mixtape, but it didn’t make the cut. It’s definitely a letdown to know that Hannibal’s verse was cut out, but Buress says we’ll hear it at some point. The comedian said, “I might just have to take the beat and put out my own remix of it and ride the wave.”
Chance and Buress have been friends since at least 2013, when Hannibal appeared in this Chicago star’s music video “NaNa.” Since then, Chance has ascended to the top of the hip hop game. You can check out the music video for “NaNa” right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dZFL2BofbM
Hannibal admires Chance The Rapper’s rise to hip hop super-stardom. “After Acid Rap shit got pretty crazy, but to see the level now is wild,” Buress said. “The dude did US Cellular Field, where the White Sox play! Chance can do what he wants, man.”
Now, it’s the time that you’ve all been waiting for. It’s time to listen to Hannibal Buress make his hip hop debut. Listen to “All The Way” and hear the multi-talent Hannibal. Maybe one day, we’ll hear him drop his own mixtape or album.
https://soundcloud.com/chancetherapper/all-the-way
