Chief Keef, Chicago and violence in hip hop

I have the most tenuous of links to Chicago, America’s third largest city. My great grandfather (the unfortunately named Peter Condon), who also had the bad luck of being a Depression-era Irishman with a taste for a drink, emigrated there and made a fortune in the first half of the twentieth century (one he’d later lose back home). I feel a special connection to the place, despite having never been there. Perhaps it has more to do with the positive impact which the music of Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco (both proud Chi-town representatives) had on my adolescence.

It saddens me then to see that this fascinating city, one in which Barack Obama once worked as a community organiser, is in turmoil. Whilst Chicago’s drill-hop scene has been embraced by the wider media and music fans nationwide, the city has been locked in a deadly drug war, with over 340 homicides committed this year already.

At the centre of a media storm developing around Chicago is the rapper Chief Keef, a 17-year-old who signed to Interscope in mid-June on the strength of local street anthem ‘I Don’t Like’, and a co-sign from Kanye West. He is a mirror to the streets, as authentic a rapper as we could have ever wished for, but he has also exposed the deadly nihilism of those left to their own devices in inner-city America for the last two decades or so. His recent hits ‘3Hunna’ and ‘Bang’ are gun-toting, kushed up anthems, a dead-eyed stare at the apocalypse Chicago finds itself facing.

Whilst indie magazines and music websites flock to Keef and other Chicago talents such as King Louie and Lil Durk, perhaps fascinated by the I-don’t-give-a-fuck aura Keef displays in his locally made videos, perhaps on the strength of grimey beats that emerge from the same milieu as Virginian producer Lex Luger, the city’s problems are deepening. On Tuesday evening, another Chicago rapper named JoJo was murdered. His crew had been at loggerheads with various rival rappers including members of Keef’s collective, Glory Boyz Entertainment. JoJo himself had made a track entitled ‘3Hunna K’ which saw his crew wielding guns as he spat over Keef’s track ‘Everyday’. As news broke of Jojo’s death, a post to Keef’s Twitter account read ‘It’s Sad Cuz Dat N**** Jojo Wanted To Be Jus Like Us #LMAO”. However, Keef denies that he made the post and claims his account was hacked. To me,  the 17-year old represents both a scary strain of current hip hop culture and a seriously alienated group within American society.

Indeed, Keef finds himself at a profound disconnect with older artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Lil Wayne, part of a small superstar minority who have emerged from black America and become (certainly in the case of the latter two rappers) part of the establishment. Perhaps there’s no surprise here. Other than the wealth he is quickly accumulating, how can Chief relate to Kanye, the Kardashian-dating backpack rapper of awards-ceremony and Paris partying fame. If Kanye dropped out of college, Chief never even made it out of Chicago’s broken high schools.

To some extent, the comfortable kings of mainstream hip hop share something in common with white reviewers, with politicians who pretend they understand the problems of Chicago and cities like it- they are now too far removed from that environment (or perceived to be too far removed) to be anything other than voyeurs, looking from outside in. I think, with sudden guilt, of my own fascination with the drugs and violence of The Wire, as a white Catholic boy from the South Coast.

The predicament, for ‘establishment’ rappers, is whether to encourage or discourage young talent from the streets. Can they dissociate themselves from the more unsavoury elements of the music of rappers such as Chief Keef without coming across as hypocritical, or without leaving angry young men to their own destruction? Should they try to be anything more than encouraging voyeurs, distant mentors?

Just the other day, Lil Wayne co-signed a 13-year old Chicago rapper named Lil Mouse, who came to Wayne’s attention with his track ‘Get Smoked’. The track’s title says it all. A little boy rap about gang violence, guns and sex. Pretty unedifying, but then who are we to blame him? Adults have left him exposed to this, adults such as Lil Wayne, who himself emerged in a society plagued by poverty, violence and misogynistic tropes. When he was 12, Wayne accidentally shot himself whilst playing with a gun to the sound of rap music.

Lupe Fiasco, one of hip hop’s most enlightened figures (and sometimes just a little bit preachy), has treated Chief Keef’s rise with ambivalence. Last night he received a vociferous backlash from Chief Keef (via twitter) for negative statements uttered in an interview with Baltimore 92 Q Jams.

“Chief Keef scares me” he said. “Not him specifically, but just the culture that he represents…. The hoodlums, the gangsters, and the ones you see killing each other and the murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing and you see who’s doing it and perpetrating it — they all look like Chief Keef”.

There are a thousand debates to be had here. Questions about authenticity in hip hop and the essential tragedy of this rich, fascinating counter-culture. The gap between the mainstream and the underground, between the poor inner city and the wealthy establishment, about how Chicago’s music has suddenly become ‘interesting’  for all the wrong reasons, and about how, in roughly five minutes, we’ll all forget about its problems and go listen to the next 2Chainz track about cars and hoes, because it’s all harmless fun, isn’t it? Forget Snoop Dogg’s early 90s criminal persona (and actions) and focus on his current incarnation as a Rastafarian. Deep down, we, the white media, will fetishize the violence hip hop sometimes endorses or reflects, because it’s something we’ll never witness at first hand, and then we’ll all go back to our safe happy homes.

Well I’ll say one thing is certain. We can’t just put our headphones in. We have to keep asking questions.

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• http://bolddebauchery.tumblr.com/ Amaterasu

  Are we fascinated by the grimy street life, or do we just like the beat and the song? In 50 Cent’s case, because he got shot 9 times and survived, we are interested and fascinated with his criminal street life, but if it wasn’t for the good songs he made, he’d be a nobody. Chief Kief’s life was never interesting. There is not an iota of interest or fascination i have in his life. I know he’s a braindead moron. I liked his song, that’s about it. The media is not fascinated by him either, they just want the hits, the views. Popularity sells. And he’s popular. It’s nothing to do with this street life in particular. It’s the music and the fans it gives him. Your line has been pushed for a while and it is not persuasive. Time to bury it.

• stonedwolf

  To me .50 cent interviews and raps like he still has a few parabellum rounds still lodged in his frontal lobes.

  Rap peaked with Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday. No finer rap album ever made. Ever.

• Deep thinker

  To keep it “One Hunn’ad” I guess, usually I disdain hearing European writers talking about things or subjects of this nature in Hip Hop, but I like this guy. You kept it real with yourself without trying to put forth an analysis, which in the end you acknowledge, wouldn’t personally effect you. I commend you for that. Huge multinational companies are making massive amounts of profit off of “Black Death” and “Urban Degeneration”. Once one begins to critique the situation, Stockholm syndrome* kicks in, and your labeled a hater. It’s understandable, but not logically based. It’s actually very silly.

  *By Stockholm syndrome I’m referring to the consciousness and the culture. The one who attacks one’s consciousness and abuses one’s very culture is also the one who is protected by the same one’s who could use a more enlightening narrative.

• DaLaconic

  artless and cockless…
  Outkast smashed the moulds a decade ago. Anyone who still makes gangster rap is a one-dimensional creative coward. Nothing can be done for the white european males who admire it.

• stonedwolf

  An aside, the actual Stockholm version of the Stockholm syndrome is an utterly fallacy.

  There was one bank-robber, Olsson. During the long long siege the robber asked for a life-long friend Olofsson (keep up!) be brought in. The police agreed to this request.

  Olofsson played no part of the robbery nor acted in the least aggressively to the hostages, as Olsson had done. Olofsson spent all his energies attempting to calm his friend down and to give himself up. The hostages of course witnessed this.

  Incredibly, both men were charged and convicted of the robbery. The victims merely asserted exactly what they saw, that Olofsson was not part of the robbery, violence, or problem. His conviction was entirely quashed on appeal.

  Another myth is one of them married one of the kidnap victims. Not true, though one of the victims did subsequently meet up with Olofsson.

  The Stockholm syndrome is genuine in the sense of traumatic capture-bonding does exist, but it simply did not happen in the actual case that gives it its name – no hostage bonded with Olsson in the least.

• http://bolddebauchery.tumblr.com/ Amaterasu

  Lol, he’s okay. He’s smarter than your average rapper, and speaks more articulately. That’s not saying much mind you.

  I never really liked B Real’s voice. Muggs knew how to make beats though. Black Sunday wasn’t even the best album that year, let alone ever. Both Tribe Called Quest’s album and Wu tang’s album surpass it for starters. If you knew hiphop you would know this. I could educate you if you want.

• stonedwolf

  Wu Tang? Zomg! Lima Oscar Lima. Tribe Called Quest? My god, Bran Van 3000 are better than them. (Actually Glee is a masterful album, the same riffs drift in and out different tracks – it’s not just a collection of songs).
  Black Sunday has the merit of spooky beats, cool-as-cucumber samples, and as much humour as drug & gun blingery.

  Homophobic men in baggy gaudy pantomime clothes with
  bingo-ring jewellery demanding rivals fellate them is is inherently deeply silly, but even so they’re all so *serious* about it. Cypress expose all that without being vaudeville themselves. They’re hilarious, but not clowns.

• yhyh

  Don’t blame “gangsta rap”. Hip-hop is merely the soundtrack for much deeper, bigger social problems in Chicago. Whether Lupe likes it or not, Chief Keef is almost a living metaphor for what is happening in his city. I’d go as far as to say he’s one of the most culturally significant rappers of recent times, Not because he’s a particularly good rapper or songwriter. He’s culturally significant because I can’t remember the last time a musical career and social events have synced up like this. At the end of the day, Chief Keef is a kid. He does what his environment shaped him to do. If Lupe wants to do something, he should focus his attention, intelligence and legions of fans on the city that created Chief Keef and not Chief Keef himself since that battles already been lost. Unfortunately I know better than to be optimistic about such a thing happening, hip-hop will be scapegoated by the media (again) and the issue will be left at that. Kids will keep shooting each other and shouting “brick squad” out of their cars, the police will deal with it case by case until it becomes the norm and something else enters the news. Great article on a tough subject.