Chance the Rapper transforms Blaisdell into a big club in Hawaii debut

Chance the Rapper came to the Blaisdell Arena on Saturday night to open a two-night stand that finishes off his Magnificent Coloring World Tour.

Chance ends the tour with a stretch of travel worthy of … well, the University of Hawaii football team. He kicked off 2017 with a handful of shows Down Under and then squeezed in a trip to Washington, D.C. for President Barack Obama’s farewell concert before making his way back to Honolulu. (Chance met Obama when his father worked for the then-Illinois state senator and has made a few trips to the White House.)

All that travel apparently wore little on the 23-year-old, who put on a rousing, energetic and … downright chatty — albeit short — show in his Honolulu debut Saturday. In the end, the result was something akin to a blown-out club show — disappointing for its length (a mere 72 minutes with no encore), but notable for achieving the intimacy of a small venue in a large arena. The conversion of the first few rows into a standing-room-only “pit” added to that atmosphere. (Speaking of “blown-out,” on louder songs, the sound got a little muddy at times, but it was fine for most of the show.)

Chance took the stage an hour and a half after the scheduled 8 p.m. start, but the sold-out crowd didn’t seem to mind the delay.

Opening act Esta started his set at 8:30 and DJ’d for about a half-hour, mixing in many of today’s biggest hits (“Caroline,” Rae Sremmurd’s chart-topper “Black Beatles,” etc.), and the bass-heavy playlist got the young audience going. The energy stayed high even through the warm-up music, by far the most hyped I’ve seen a crowd before a headliner’s arrival. Many of them were even dressed up as Chance clones, wearing colorful overalls atop white longsleeve and the rapper’s trademark “3” baseball cap.

There was, of course, no let-up when Chance opened with “Angels” from his 2016 mixtape “Coloring Book.” Chance and his backing band — trumpeter Nico Segal (known as Donnie Trumpet until the election two months ago), drummer Greg Landfair Jr. and keyboardist/musical director Peter Cottontale — ran through almost every song from his third release and threw in a few from his second, “Acid Rap,” for good measure.

Chance makes his music — all released as “mixtapes,” though his blur the lines between that medium and albums — available via free download. So concerts are a major income stream for him. Delivering a unique live experience, one that incorporates his personality, is important, and in that respect the show was a great success, even if not every attempt worked out.

The rapper made valiant efforts at crowd involvement through rap-alongs, but the audience was not always up to the task. Who could blame them, though? If it was that easy, Chance wouldn’t be the star he is. Keeping up on a speed-switching song like “Summer Friends,” which he called his favorite song off “Coloring Book,” requires a professional. He had more success when he turned the mic on his audience from time to time for a line here and there.

All in all, Chance proved quite the showman, whether it was prowling the stage from end to end, attending to the entire arena, or interrupting his songs to chat with his fans, sometimes telling funny anecdotes, including one about talking with frequent Hawaii visitor Childish Gambino about how to get the crowd to jump for him that led into his performance of their collaboration “Favorite Song.”

‘Bino wasn’t in the house to perform his verse. Chance’s solution in such instances — 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne’s absence from “No Problem” was another example — was to just snip off the guests’ parts, as unsatisfying as that could be at times. It might have been the only option, though, for an artist whose work incorporates so many cameos.

Chance did include Justin Bieber’s lines from “Juke Jam” by singing them himself — he’s quite the able vocalist — and also pitched in some of Noname’s contribution to “Finish Line/Drown.” In other instances, recorded backup singers were used, such as the female vocalists on “Blessings.”

Though Chance didn’t bring the full complement of accompanying musicians and singers fans may be used to seeing from his many TV appearances over the past year or so, there was no skimping on some of the other effects. He made good use of a backdrop screen and incorporated bursts of smoke, confetti and beams of light (most notably on, ahem, “Ultralight Beam,” his collaboration with mentor Kanye West).

Tickets are still available for Sunday’s show, which starts an hour earlier, at 7 p.m. Go to ticketmaster.com or call 1-800-745-3000 for tickets.