I haven’t had a lot of experience with mixtapes — because I don’t have a lot of experience with modern hip-hop in general — but they seem pretty sweet, mainly because they’re like albums but free. Acid Rap, the second mixtape from Chance The Rapper, was something I kept coming back to mainly for a few really great songs (“Good Ass Intro”, “Chain Smoker”), while the rest was a little hit-or-miss. But perhaps that’s just the nature of any collection of hip-hop songs, though even on the less essential songs on Acid Rap, it’s hard to deny the 20-year-old Chance’s potent combination of bratty swagger and heartfelt confusion over the crime-ridden state of his native Chicago. Also, in a year that saw Kanye West going progressive, it was nice to hear someone who could mine the kind of catchy R&B/hip-hop territory of early Kanye, but with a style and personality all their own.