CHIEF KEEF

Chicago Tribune, August 2013

 

Chief Keef does not want to talk to the Tribune. It’s been rumored that the first piece of advice Kanye West gave the 17-year-old rapper was to stop doing interviews, and he has seemingly heeded Ye’s word. Nonetheless, his management team pleads and cajoles. “The Tribune is bigger than the Red Eye,” says Peeda Pan, one of a fleet of managers who tends to Keef. “It’s 12 or 13 times bigger.” Keef crosses his arms and purses his lips. “It’s for the cover,” explains Peeda Pan, punting. “Jay-Z has done the cover. Kanye’s done it.” With these references to namebrand rappers, it’s hard to discern whether they’re being dropped because that’s who Keef is modeling his career after, or because he believes he merits similar star treatment. The young rapper shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, “no.” He is a petulant teen with a superstar’s largesse.

It is 6 p.m. on Sunday, the final day of the sold-out Pitchfork Festival and AraabMuzik is onstage making 18,000 people dance. Keef and his crew of 16 (approximately three managers, his publicist, recently-signed rapper Lil Reese, his sometimes-producer 18-year-old Young Chop, a bevy of friends) have just arrived. Keef and Reese are scheduled to make an unannounced two-song cameo appearance during AraabMuzik’s set; this will be the biggest hometown audience they’ve ever played to. As is the custom in hip-hop, Keef and Reese’s handlers have demanded payment in full before the two MCs grace the stage. This is not how things usually work at Pitchfork. Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber is pacing in tight circles, drawing hard on his cigarette and impatiently redialing his iPhone. The person with the money and the contracts is not picking up. For these two songs, Keef is rumored to be picking up his regular show fee of $10,000. According to Schreiber, even at that per-song rate, Keef isn’t the most expensive act on the bill today. “Not even close,” he says, smiling and shaking his head. Between his concerts and purported three-million-dollar album deal, Keef, who dropped out of high school at 15, is on pace to out-earn President Obama in 2012.

If you do not know who Chief Keef is, you will soon. Last month, the South Side-born Keith Cozart signed a record deal with Interscope Records. The deal also included his life rights for a biopic, his own line of headphones (“Beats by Keef”) and his own label to issue the records of other artists in his crew—effectively making him the youngest label head ever.

He became a phenomena via YouTube earlier this year with the low-budget video for “I Don’t Like,” a song chock full of bleak, misanthropic rhymes. It also features a few frames of the young rapper with a Glock in his grip—made all the more notable given that for the first half of the year he was on house arrest for a gun charge (he allegedly pointed a gun at a police officer).

Chief Keef is the prince of murder-capital Chicago rap, his insurgent popularity raising up the profiles of a dozen other local artists with him—a feat, given that it had been six years since the last Chicago rapper was signed to a major label deal. Since February, nine acts have announced their signings, with a handful of others in the works. Some, like King Louie, have already put years into developing their career. Others, like Lil Reese, have been signed off the strength of a verse and proximity to Keef. The last rash of outside interest in Chicago hip-hop that even broached this current level was roughly 15 years ago, when elder statesman Do or Die and Twista were fresh prospects.

Suddenly, where there was once no ladder up to the national spotlight and little evidence of an extant Chicago scene, there is a cottage industry of managers, labels and burgeoning talent putting the city on the map in a real way.

For Larry Jackson, the executive VP of A&R at Interscope who signed Keef, his initial reaction was visceral: “It scared me. And I knew it was going to be huge. It felt disturbingly powerful. Nobody really talks about Top 40 music anymore because the music is like wallpaper—it doesn’t make you feel anything. [“I Don’t Like”] pushes people.”

Jackson says that the reason they gave Keef his own label was in order to grab any other Chicago talent that comes bubbling up. “We did it to widen the net—so that anything that comes within 50 feet of Keef, we can catch it.” The label has already inked deals with two MCs who are part of Keef’s crew, GBE. Lil Reese and Lil Durk both recently signed to Def Jam; Lil Durk was released this week after serving two months for a weapons charge.

For Interscope and the other labels that were courting him, Chief Keef’s legal woes just added credibility to his swaggering image. While part of the appeal of this new wave of Chicago rappers is just that—the newness of it—hip-hop fans are eager to hear the real stories of the street, songs that are a true-to-life reaction to what’s happening in America’s murder capital. Keef’s gun charge, for better or worse, adds authenticity to the biography he relates in his songs.

“You look at the news and see who is doing most of these killings—he fits that profile,” explains Larry “Larro” Wilson, CEO of Lawless, the South Side record label that is home to King Louie and Katie Got Bandz. “Does it help that Keef is on house arrest? Absolutely.”

For 18-year-old Tavares Taylor, who goes by the name Lil Reese, it all seems a bit unreal. He’s know Keef since childhood and the two are still close; they have an air of brotherly collusion between them. Waiting backstage at Pitchfork, Reese’s demeanor stands in stark contrast to Keef—while no less a talent, he still seems like a kid, unaffected and wowed by the attention. Up until two days ago, he didn’t know what Pitchfork was or that it was even a big deal until he retweeted their review of his new mixtape and saw they have nearly 2 million Twitter followers. Backstage, he is listless, he wants pizza before he hits the stage but doesn’t know where to get it; his manager J-Boogie presents him with the show contracts, which Reese signs atop a garbage can lid. The biggest difference between Keef and Reese is that Reese didn’t expect this fame.

For Reese, the main thing that has determined his life and music is also the same thing he most wants to communicate to the rest of Chicago and the world. “I never felt safe. Still don’t.” J-Boogie arrives and begins herding the dozen-plus boys towards the stage, “It’s time.” Reese and Keef walk side by side in spotless head-to-toe white outfits, collars popped.

In these boys, Chicago has finally gotten the pop ambassadors it deserves—swaggering teenage wonders tapping into the zeitgeist like experts, telling their truth in blunt, steely lines. The first measure of “I Don’t Like” booms and approx. 18,000 pairs of hands reach for the sky. The duo are met with screaming as they walk out from the wings. For the 10 minutes they are on stage, they are magnetic, Keef’s incandescent—a natural—and suddenly they are done. Walking off stage, he finally agrees to be interviewed. Asked how it feels to have just played to his biggest hometown audience yet, he replies without pausing, “This? This ain’t shit.”