Earlier this year, Chance The Rapper premiered a new song on Stephen Colbert's show. Colbert clearly digs some hip hop but apparently, he's found a unique connection between Chance's Acid Rap cuts and found the similarities it has with J.R.R Tolkien's writing style.
In a recent profile with Rolling Stone, Stephen Colbert seems to have found a connection between Chance The Rapper's "Favorite Song" ft. Childish Gambino and a poem from Lord Of The Rings.
“I just want to talk about one verse of the song that really has three very distinctive rhythmic sections to it,” he said before rapping Chance's second verse from the song. "That was just a worm in my brain and I couldn't stop listening to that song. There was something about the rhythm of that second verse... I didn't know what it was until I realized 'Oh wait, that's Gilbert and Sullivan's rhythm.'"
After comparing Chance's verse to 1879 opera The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan, he said that the only other place he's ever heard that rhyme scheme was in Lord of The Rings’ “Song of Eärendil."
"It’s a pretty rare rhyme and rhythm scheme because it’s got a lot of internal rhymes within the lines." He said, "So whether or not you know it, Chance and Childish, you wrote a song that includes in it this really kind of rare rhyme and rhythm scheme that Tolkien used in the poem that actually influences all of the rest of Lord of the Rings.”