July 29--Chief Keef has earned his fair share of headlines over the past three years, only a fraction of them inspired by his music.
There's no question that Alki David, the Greek billionaire and owner of Keef's current label FilmOn, has helped keep the rapper in the news of late, calling out Mayor Rahm Emanuel and threatening lawsuits over Saturday's controversial hologram show, which was shut down by the Hammond, Ind. police. But just because the outside world is drawn to the drama doesn't mean Keef's rise was exclusively tied to it.
To his core fanbase -- many of whom were in the audience that night in Hammond -- Chief Keef has been on something like a creative comeback since the end of last year, with his single "Faneto" garnering considerable underground buzz, and YouTube-only cuts such as "Earned It" also getting notice.
"He's who the young people want to see," said Nick Watts, CEO of Craze Productions, and the party promoter who helped bring Keef's hologram to the stage in Hammond last Saturday. "He's who they listen to." Footage from a Craze Productions party of young fans rapping along with every word of "Faneto" went viral in late 2014, suggesting Keef's career may be more than tabloid fodder to a core portion of the hip-hop audience.
In the early days of the Chief Keef media hype -- back around the time of Kanye West remixes and his emergence on the national scene -- many were dismissive of his music, suggesting that the attention he'd drawn was more about what he represented to outsiders than the work itself. For many onlookers, the idea of Keef probably did mean a lot more than the actual music. But there were those who listened and heard something there. One was funk legend George Clinton, who talked about the rapper's breakthrough record "I Don't Like" in terms of his own song "Get Off Your Ass and Jam" in a 2013 interview with VladTV.com. But more than his gift for a good hook, Keef had a preternaturally strong rapper's voice, at once laid-back in the manner of his idol, Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane, but with a more dynamic delivery that popped effortlessly from the speakers.
When Keef obtained a reputed $6 million label deal with Interscope in summer 2012, this wave of "drill" rap took aesthetic root in many different parts of the country -- particularly those parts with communities like the one Keef came from. Although drill was often described as having Southern inspirations, one city in which it had a huge effect was New York, where rappers like Bobby Shmurda -- the artist behind 2014's massive hit "Hot Boy" -- found themselves replicating Keef's arc with a similarly pugnacious approach.
"When I saw him dancing and everything in the (video)," 50 Cent said in a radio interview last year, "I was like, yo, I couldn't stop thinking of the little homie Chief Keef."
The sound of drill continues to have a hold on a new generation of New Yorkers, whose familiar-sounding (albeit PG-rated) "Milly Rock" has lit up parties across Brooklyn this summer. And New Jersey's Fetty Wap -- the newest major crossover star in the hip-hop world, who just scored three simultaneous singles in the Billboard Top 20 -- had a song on his debut tape, "Make It," that directly emulated the patterns of "Hallelujah," from Keef's 2012 debut "Finally Rich."
While a new generation of stars stole, imitated, or mutated his 2012 work, Keef spent time in jail for a probation violation, and emerged only to thoroughly reinvent his rap style, shaking many of the fans who'd followed him for his catchy hooks and party records. The new sound focused instead on grimier, more brolic styles. Some blamed the evolution -- or devolution -- on drugs (Keef entered rehab for drug addiction in late 2013), and Keef himself disowned two of his tapes from this period in a 2014 interview with Billboard.
But through his ups and downs, after he moved to Los Angeles, and even when Keef was dropped from Interscope, a large, core fanbase stuck with him. By late 2014, he began producing his own beats. "Faneto," the self-produced, independently-released single from his Halloween tape "Back From the Dead 2," had taken off, becoming a staple of Chicago-area hip-hop shows. It has since garnered nearly 10 million YouTube views, becoming one of his biggest underground hits since "I Don't Like" in 2012.
David Drake is a freelance critic.
ctc-arts@tribpub.com
