| The L.E.P. Bogus Boys & The Coroner Van | May 3, 2013 |
Will Hagle did not pump this up like Dee Brown. The rest of the world was introduced to Chicago’s harrowing new form of gangster rap when Kanye decided to remix Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like.” The song found ‘Ye firing off a barrage of names of young rappers from Chicago. Then he stepped off the […]
| Chicago Go Hard: Lil Durk’s Recent Output | May 2, 2013 |
Jonah Bromwich is the sausage king of Chicago. When it comes to music hyper-fandom, there are generalists and there are specialists. If you’re a generalist in the internet age, pretending to any kind of omniscience is a herculean task. There’s no way to keep abreast of a broad swathe of everything when everything is so […]
| Dally Auston in the Dollar Store | April 4, 2013 |
Jordan Pedersen sorta hopes the Save Money crew is a YN Rich Kids-style after-school program to get kids to save their money. Save Money crew member Dally Auston enlists the help of OJ Hays (who also did the visuals for Chance the Rapper’s appropriately named “Good Ass Intro“) for his video for “99 Cent.” Hays’ […]
| Still Adrenal: Java Starr Gets “Lost with Twista, Traxster & Yukmouth | February 27, 2013 |
Jordan Pedersen is still in love with the violin player from the “Overnight Celebrity” video. For some reason, I find that I like to scowl through my day: I try to avoid being a total dick to my coworkers, but work can be dumb, the weather in Chicago is fucking terrible, and SERIOUSLY MY LIFE […]
| Team Dope With Rockboy K9 | February 18, 2013 |
If Jordan Pedersen talked much, you’d probably think he graduated college, which he did. Prior to “Team Dope,” Rockboy K9 mostly traded in somber polemics over equally downcast beats. Whereas this one flips a comparatively breezy Mayer Hawthorne sample into the kind of dynamic obstacle course that I could see Gangsta Gibbs leaping all over. […]
| MobbDeen: Sasha Go Hard’s Third Round Knockout | February 18, 2013 |
Deen survived All-Star Weekend in Houston. One of my favorite rappers working today is Sean Price. Yes, he of the unrelenting hilarity and goonery. A little while ago on Twitter, some innocent soul asked him about his favorite female rappers or a closely related question. In pure Sean P fashion, he responded, and I’m paraphrasing […]
| Surveying the New Chicago underground | February 8, 2013 |
Tosten Burks won signing day. The most annoying part about Finally Rich, aside from “Laughing to the Bank,” was the Chicago hip-hop narrative it encouraged the blog mafia to settle for. Drill this, drill that. As if the only thing this generation listened to in their youth was Gucci Mane. As if there wasn’t a […]
Jordan Pedersen briefly considered going by the handle “URL Sweatshirt.” If you’re like me, the first thing you thought when you heard Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” for the first time was, “This shit is from Chicago?” I grew up in Chicago – the suburbs actually, to keep it one hundred – and it didn’t […]
| Sasha Go Hard: Pretty Fly | January 9, 2013 |
There is no truth to the rumor that I am the long-haired hipster in the peasant button-up whipping his hair like an American Apparel Willow Smith. But it’s nice to see that Sasha Go Hard allows the Flosstradamus set to crash her roof-top functions. If you didn’t pay obsessive attention to the Chicago Drill scene […]
| Lil Durk: Drill Rap’s Rick Reuschel | October 8, 2012 |
Lil Durk’s name sounds like it was conceived by the South Park guys during a particularly ethnically insensitive fit. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t get as much attention as Chief Keef, who has emerged as the national apotheosis of Chicago’s drill rap scene. It’s regrettable but understandable. Keef is the better narrative. He’s younger, lives […]
