Surf begins like the Beach Boys and ends with the loping pop melody of a lost 1970s AM radio record. These moments bookend a world and a worldview; as its title suggests, the album is a musical vacation. Instead of following a straightforward path, Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment spill outward, finding new inlets and tributaries to explore. Surf contains multitudes, contradictions: ambitious, but playfully so; lighthearted in spirit but fiercely moral; wide-ranging in its influences, mapped onto a coherent whole. It's a new sound built on lots of older ones—indie, hip-hop, funk, rock, gospel, various strains of R&B, The Lion King soundtrack—and despite bringing on a large cast and letting each person play their part, the guests all exist on the Social Experiment's terrain. The album touches on many ideas and moods, but above all, is a celebration of friendship, and a tribute to the alchemic power of collaboration.

Chance the Rapper's success allowed the group the space to take such a purposefully meandering approach. In the wake of his hugely successful sophomore tape Acid Rap, Chance ignored the industry's baits and lures. Freed from its constraints and pressures, with a devoted flock waiting eagerly behind him, he's directed his time and energy to his friends. So as you may have heard, this album does not belong to Chance the Rapper, but to Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment (that's Nico Segal and Peter "Cottontale" Wilkins, Nate Fox, Greg "Stix" Landfair Jr., and Chancelor Bennett himself). The group has extraordinary range, and thanks to time on the road as Chance's touring band, the chops to execute. But whatever the name on the packaging, this project does belong to Chance the Rapper: He is still the album's main draw, and despite the number of guests and the cover art billing, its guiding spirit feels reflective of his own ideas and values—albeit in a less intensive, less personal form than on Acid Rap.

Donnie Trumpet, though, is our official headliner, and as such, the album intermittently features his horn's impressionistic interludes. On "Nothing Came to Me" and "Something Came to Me", his smeared, effects-laden playing recalls Don Ellis or Jon Hassell. But Donnie Trumpet also makes his presence known throughout the record, punctuating the marching band-meets-MJ dancefloor record "Slip Slide", or taking a fiery solo on "Just Wait". The overall sonic blueprint coheres gradually, as a diverse range of records bundle up a diverse range of sounds: say, a Bone Thugs-style harmony ("Just Wait"), a Rick James-style funk groove ("Wanna Be Cool"), or an "American Boy"-style disco record ("Go").

Despite the variety of influences and ideas, the vision coheres in the details: use of space, rhythmic variation, creative whimsy, a musicality that feels consciously shaped to convey levity, comfort, and freedom. Certain tracks feel more like frames without pictures, melted sandcastles rather than the fully functioning parapets of actual songs. In some sense, the constellation of sounds isn't far from a DJ mix. Think, maybe, of the beachfront party eclecticism of the Avalanches as produced by the Mizell Brothers and Kirk Franklin, heavily featuring the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Lester Bowie.

But these pieces are linked in large part by the quirks of Chance's personality. And these quirks can sometimes be divisive. It's hard to imagine anyone could be mad at Chance: as rap stars go, he appears about as decent and well-adjusted as a person can possibly be. But he boldly and unapologetically embraces aesthetics that, historically, aren't fashionable, or are seen as uncool: the affected staginess of musical theater, the lyrical pretensions of slam poetry, a nostalgia not just for the memories of childhood, but the very feelings of childhood innocence. His debut project 10 Day stood out so starkly in its innocence, it was easy to see it as unconscious naivete; now, it seems quite purposeful, a point Chance makes explicit on "Wanna Be Cool", a song featuring Big Sean and KYLE with vocals from Jeremih. The record's message of self-love in the face of social pressure, and the fruitlessness of cool-chasing, aren't merely "Hip to Be Square" updates for 2015, but represents Chance's wider philosophical approach.

Acid Rap, an easy critical favorite, dealt with "serious" subjects, autobiographical and sociopolitical, and implied a looming darkness: an artist who'd created a space for himself and his friends to flourish wrestled with the encroaching troubles of the outside world. Here, the anxiety is tamped down (we're on vacation, after all), and many songs indulge in the rhetoric of self-affirmation and positivity, like the gleeful release of a submerged balloon rushing to the surface. But this isn't a blind, didactic positivity: it often takes the shape of wisdom, and is actually quite practical, an argument and set of tools for living in the real world, as on the coda of "Slip Side": "It ain’t so easy, but it’s not so hard/ To stand up, stand up, but it’s just too easy to sit back down." (Alternately, the hook to "Just Wait"—"Good things come to those that wait"—repeated in a similar mantra format, is the rare moment more suited to a coffee mug.)

But just as this album suggest a coherent personal philosophy, Chance resists taking himself too seriously, most explicitly on the ambiguous "Windows", which he's called his favorite song on the tape: "Don't trust a word I say." That record itself is driven primarily by its enigmatic lyrics and unusual composition, its vocals a tonal color, with foregrounded percussion. But if we are not to listen to his words, his actions provide an equally responsible blueprint: his generosity with the guest list is democratic in the extreme. Chance and Donnie elevate friends from his hometown (rappers Saba and Joey Purp, King Louie and Noname Gypsy) to equal footing with musical legends (Erykah Badu, Busta Rhymes) and established stars (Quavo from Migos, J. Cole). In several instances, it is the locals whose parts shine brightest: poet and singer Jamila Woods' feature on "Questions", in addition to providing tonal balance, is the album's emotive heart, a moment of elegiac reflection.

The core of Chance's principled approach might suggest a line of continuity with Kendrick Lamar, and what the writer Reggie Ugwu described as his "radical Christianity." And certainly, his music is rooted in gospel, and he stakes a moral position when such stances are readily dismissed in certain corners. Church is even referenced explicitly in "Sunday Candy". But Chance's position on religion is elusive. "Sunday Candy" could certainly be read as a statement of religious intent, but it's first and foremost a song about familial love, and all of the particulars of Christianity become vivid, evocative associations not with spiritual life through religion, but through love of friends and family.

There's a classic disco record by Dinosaur L—a group built around the avant-garde cellist and disco producer/songwriter Arthur Russell—called "Go Bang", popular at the Paradise Garage, in which vocalists shout out: "I want to see, all my friends at once!/ I'd do anything, to get the chance to go back!" In many ways, what feels fulfilling about Surf is in the fantasy of its creation: of musicians and friends who've secured the fanbase to experiment, working together to explore their creative impulses, letting each artist's fingerprints help shape a singular product. It's that sense of collaboration that energizes this project, and as much as this feels like an accomplishment already, it points equally to future possibilities. Chance has admitted to fantasies of Michael Jackson-level pop success, and while he's taking his time here, there's an element of looking to the future even in his rapping. While written with absolute precision and poetic skill that rivals the best rappers currently working, Chance's words tumble from his mouth effortlessly, as if he's already done with the verse by the time he recites it, looking to what's next.