Who’s Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: November 18, 2017

A two-time SNL musical guest graduates to host in just two years’ time as Chance the Rapper hosts a new Saturday Night Live tonight!

Chance the Rapper has quickly moved up the SNL ranks. His appearance hosting tonight at 11:30pm on NBC, will be his third official SNL appearance in two years, (make that four appearances if you count the time he did a guest cameo with Kanye West when Yeezy was an SNL musical guest). He was first a musical guest in a December, 2015 episode hosted by Chris Hemsworth and then also a year later when Chance was the musical guest in the December 17, 2016, Season 42 episode hosted by Casey Affleck. It was that last SNL of 2016 where Chance the Rapper’s digital short from the show became a viral sensation.

When Chance the Rapper was the musical guest last December, he and Kenan Thompson performed in the digital short music video, “Jingle Barack“. It was a homage to Run–D.M.C.’s holiday song, “Christmas in Hollis” and also a farewell ode to President Obama. December-2016, when the short aired, was the last Christmas with Barack Obama in the White House, which only feels like a lifetime of insane tweeting ago. The hilarious video also featured founding Run–D.M.C. member Darryl “D.M.C.” Matthews McDaniels, plus a verse about Joe Biden performed by cast member Leslie Jones, also Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney portraying a same-sex couple, Vanessa Bayer as a housewife enjoying some legal weed and host Casey Affleck as Jesus. It was the hysterical lyrics performed by Chance the Rapper and Kenan Thompson which made “Jingle Barack” a hit including the lines- “Been drinking eggnog like I don’t care / Imma hurt myself before we lose Obamacare / Say goodbye to Barack, say goodbye to December / Before a new holiday called ‘Regular Winter.‘” You can watch the full “Jingle Barack” video (also known as “Last Christmas With Barack“) below via YouTube along with the promo for tonight’s episode.

If we look at what’s going on in the country and the world for what might make it from the headlines to the writers’ room to the actual show tonight, Thanksgiving sketches could be at the top of the list. This is the last new show in this current SNL run of new episodes in November. With this being the last new show before Thanksgiving, watch for some turkeys. We mean that literally, not in the bad-sketch kind of way. Also. tonight will be a chance for Kenan Thompson to break out his new Season 43 character / impression, LaVar Ball, who is the obnoxiously proud father of Lakers rookie point guard Lonzo Ball, college player LiAngelo Ball and former four-star recruit now home-schooled high school player, LaMelo Ball. It’s his middle child, LiAngelo, who put the Ball family in the news this week. He along with a couple of other players from UCLA were arrested for shoplifting while visiting China and it took some of President Trump’s charm and diplomacy to get them released and sent back home to the states. LiAngelo, along with his arrested teammates, have been suspended from playing college hoops indefinitely, so this is the perfect chance for Kenan Thompson to don his skin-cap and mustache and bring back his LaVar Ball impression which by the way, is very close to his Charles Barkley impression.

One news item that should definitely make its way to Weekend Update tonight, is the Al Franken sexual harassment scandal because of two reasons. First, even though Senator Franken is part of the SNL family being a former writer and performer, last week the variety series showed very little mercy to those men accused of being inappropriate or worse with women they’ve worked with, so the show isn’t afraid to go there. And secondly, the Franken scandal should be an SNL must tonight because featured cast member Alex Moffat does a killer Al Franken impression and hopefully this is just too good of an opportunity for Moffat and the writers to miss out on bringing back Moffat’s impersonation of the junior U.S. Senator from Minnesota.

In the promos for tonight’s episode, a nervous Chance the Rapper asks cast member Beck Bennett for advice, saying, “Dude, how am I going to be ready for Saturday?”. Beck suggests just dancing it out. As the lights go red and the party music plays, Chance and Beck are joined by cast members Kate McKinnon and Pete Davidson along with brand new Season 43 featured players Chris Redd and Heidi Gardner. The dance party is soon spotted by Kenan Thompson who makes his own observation about what’s going on. Then in the next set of promos, Chance the Rapper finds himself caught in the middle of a possible rap battle between musical guest Eminem and cast member Leslie Jones who later both try to rename the SNL host.

Chance the Rapper hosts a new episode of Saturday Night Live with superstar musical guest Eminem, tonight at 11:30pm on NBC.

Read more comedy news.