{"id":3984,"date":"2021-12-13T15:52:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T20:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=3984"},"modified":"2021-12-13T15:52:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T20:52:06","slug":"he-changed-the-music-industry-and-its-time-chief-keef-gets-the-credit-he-deserves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=3984","title":{"rendered":"He Changed The Music Industry And It\u2019s Time Chief Keef Gets The Credit He Deserves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jabari Evans<\/a>, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Before he was arrested in December 2011, Chief Keef was a 16-year-old budding rap star. He\u2019d released a song, \u201cBang<\/a>,\u201d which had more than 400,000 views on YouTube, along with a mixtape that he\u2019d recorded in a friend\u2019s bedroom. He also had a dedicated Twitter following among Chicago high school students.<\/p>\n

The track displayed a rawness unlike anything else that was released at the time, and you couldn\u2019t stroll down the streets of Chicago\u2019s South Side without hearing Bang\u2019s lyrics pulsing from the stereos of cars rolling by:<\/p>\n

 Choppers gettin' let off\n Now, they don't want no war\n 30 clips and them .45's, gotta go back to the sto'\n And that Kush gettin' smoked, gotta go back to the sto'\n Cock back 'cause there's trouble, my mans gon' blow\n<\/code><\/pre>\n
Yet he was almost completely unknown outside of Chicago. His Facebook profile had less than 2,000 followers, he claimed his occupation was \u201csmokin\u2019 dope\u201d and he still lived with his grandmother.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the verses written and hastily disseminated on social media by Chief Keef and his peers were fast becoming a unique sort of news ticker<\/a> for low-income communities of color in Chicago, detailing the turf wars, rivalries and hassles of everyday life as a Black kid growing up in the city.<\/p>\n
The songs became known as drill music<\/a>, a genre characterized by its dark synths, booming 808 drums, seemingly off-beat, mumbled verses and war-cry choral chants. Its vanguards \u2013 artists like Chief Keef, King Louie, G Herbo and Lil Durk \u2013 emerged as local heroes by staying tethered to the blocks and neighborhoods they rapped about on SoundCloud and YouTube. Eventually, the national press caught on. The coverage was often less than flattering.<\/p>\n
At the time, I was entrenched in my own hip-hop music career, rapping under the moniker Naledge in the duo Kidz in the Hall<\/a>. As I was touring the country, I noticed that everyone from back home in Chicago was asking me if I\u2019d heard of this kid Keef who was from Washington Park.<\/p>\n
I knew that if a 16-year-old kid had the city buzzing, it would only be a matter of time before he was famous. What I didn\u2019t know is that five years later, the drill subculture would be the subject of my field work as a doctoral student at Northwestern<\/a> and that it would inspire me to write about the ways in which the city\u2019s Black youth dealt with cultural, racial, economic and political oppression through inventive media production<\/a>.<\/p>\n
I started to argue, to anyone that would listen, that drill music was more than shock value or a new spin on gangsta rap. The scene planted the seeds for hip-hop\u2019s ascendancy in music\u2019s digital economy.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Drill goes viral<\/h2>\n
When Chief Keef\u2019s house arrest ended, on Jan. 2, 2012, WorldStarHipHop posted a video<\/a> of a young child in a hysterical fit of excitement, bounding around a room and rapping along to \u201cBang.\u201d<\/p>\n
The video of the boy went viral in the hip-hop community, and curious viewers furiously searched YouTube for more Chief Keef content.<\/p>\n
Later that year, Chief Keef cemented his national reputation with the commercial success of his song \u201cI Don\u2019t Like<\/a>.\u201d As the lead single for Chief Keef\u2019s debut album, \u201cFinally Rich,\u201d \u201cI Don\u2019t Like\u201d charted on the Billboard Hot 100<\/a>, accumulated tens of millions of listens online and helped drill break into the nation\u2019s musical mainstream.<\/p>\n
Within months of the song\u2019s release, drill was seemingly everywhere. Hip-hop icons like Kanye West<\/a> and Drake<\/a> began co-signing drill rappers, while record labels instigated bidding wars over the South Side of Chicago\u2019s budding rap talent.<\/p>\n
At the time, drill music was still one of the only music scenes to exist almost exclusively on YouTube and free streaming sites like SoundCloud and DatPiff.com \u2013 a form of DIY distribution that circumvented the traditional gatekeepers of the rap music industry. Songs were churned out via singles, curated playlists, snippets and low-budget music videos that could be edited and released instantly by artists direct to their audiences via social media.<\/p>\n
The most popular YouTube videos for drill songs were often shot in low-income apartments<\/a> or on street corners<\/a>, with the local crews standing behind the artist performing<\/a>, pointing weapons at the camera<\/a> and rapping about the recent events of ongoing street wars.<\/p>\n
Initially, many journalists and researchers focused almost exclusively on how youth in the drill scene used their songs to perform \u201cinternet banging<\/a>,\u201d or threatening rival gang members and planning crimes over social media.<\/p>\n