Among them was Shady, whose single “Go In” became an instant street classic. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Ī wave of women helped put drill on the map before Keef arrived. (Recently, that number has encouragingly decreased.) Drill had to learn to adapt, to take control of its image, while it was in the midst of changing music. In 2016, Chicago’s violence epidemic reached a bleak milestone of 700 murders in a calendar year, the most in nearly two decades. Some were against the genre’s candid depiction of violence, but this was the real world these rappers lived, and thus rapped about, a world borne of conditions that racism helped to create. The stories were often sad, teenage rappers forced to grow up early thrust into the spotlight. RondoNumbaNine was sentenced to 39 years for murder in 2016 and Famous Dex, a year into his rise, was filmed physically abusing his girlfriend. (Pitchfork later retracted the video.) L’A Capone was killed in 2013, Young Pappy in 2015. He was jailed on a probation violation for holding a rifle during a Pitchfork video filmed at a gun range. Keef was heavily criticized for mocking the murdered rapper Lil Jojo after his death. Drill birthed a flourishing community of producers who replicated its sound and sold their beats on YouTube.Īs the music spread across the internet, so did the backlash and controversies. The production, established by names like Young Chop and DJ L, incorporated rapid drums, sirens, and church bells, with melodies straight out of a Freddy Krueger nightmare. The scene was based around singles, snippets, leaks, and low-budget music videos that could be edited and released instantly-often shot in apartments or on street corners, with the local crew pointing weapons at the camera. While the mainstream music industry was questioning the legitimacy of the genre, drill was busy setting the precedent for hip-hop for the rest of the decade.
Billboard didn’t begin to adapt its metrics until early 2013. Drill was one of the first music scenes to exist almost exclusively via videos and streaming physical CDs and iTunes downloads were irrelevant. Rather, the issue was Billboard’s methods of quantifying listening at the time. But, like Chicago rap critic David Drake points out in his essay for The Outline, drill’s popularity wasn’t fleeting. The music industry overreacted, declaring drill a fad. But, later in the year, when Keef released his debut album, Finally Rich, it sold only a disappointing 50,000 copies in its first week. Major labels invaded the city: Keef signed a $6 million deal with Interscope Lil Reese and Lil Durk, members of Keef’s GBE crew, inked deals with Def Jam and fellow Chicago rapper King Louie signed with Epic. That spring, Chief Keef released “I Don’t Like” and drill had its breakthrough moment. A teenage rapper, leading a burgeoning scene categorized as drill music-taken from the slang usage of “drill,” meaning to shoot someone-who was telling firsthand stories of the violent, gang-dominated Chicago culture that reflected a city with an ongoing history of segregation and neglect of the black community. These two videos were an introduction to the fandom behind Chief Keef. He was nothing more than a local sensation, unknown to just about anyone that didn’t attend a Chicago high school. He was stuck in his grandmother’s Southside Chicago apartment on house arrest for gun charges. At the time, Chief Keef was 16 years old, with a bubbling street single. “Chief Keef is outta prison!” he squeals. This clip featured a younger boy, profanely delirious like he’d just won the lottery. “Shut the fuck up!” Months before, another inescapable Keef-related video had been uploaded to WorldStarHipHop. “Fuckers in school always telling me, always in the barbershop, ‘Chief Keef ain’t ’bout this, Chief Keef ain’t ’bout that,’” he screamed. In the summer of 2012, as Chief Keef’s momentum was picking up steam, a Chicago teenager tearfully and angrily addressed the critiques of his favorite rapper in a viral video filmed from the passenger seat of a parked car.
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