Finally Rich - Chief Keef

i even like his aggressively avant garde work that only ticktok teens can understand but still i prob wouldve enjoyed a more direct career trajectory from bang through finally rich and so on, theres def an interesting path not chosen there, particularly i really like how he used his voice early on, in some ways he became a more conventional rapper after that, somewhat compensating by adopting a loosey goosey style

UK drill & NY drill were initially impacted by Keef in obvious ways (ie the first GS9 tape has flips of Keef's post-Finally Rich song "Pull Up") but the main blueprint for the sound is Lil Herb & Bibby's "Kill Shit." Which in Chicago was kind of a brief window / angle of the sound around DJ L's production.

The way in which Keef's post-Finally Rich sound was influential is much more around Bang 2 & the loosies from that 2013-2015 period, and its influence isn't so much on 'drill' the way its conceived in ny/uk as much as rappers like uzi, kodak, 21, xxx, playboi carti, et al

imo he made his voice *more* interesting not less after "Finally Rich" -- on FR he was doing that style where his voice casually rides the beat, sounds like Gucci Mane but his voice pops more to the front of the speaker where Gucci was kind of demur. But then he did that looser more aggressive attack & that's when his voice became way more malleable & started experimenting w/ darker melodies & textures & IMO showed much more the possibilities for vocal stylings that other artists picked up and ran off with

new song is titanically great, goddamn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f36hvoQ-bCs

https://hiphopdx.com/news/chief-keef-finally-rich-10th-anniversary-reissue

aoty

Mexicans in Chicago ✅✅ pic.twitter.com/K4qDsQap4B

— El Sol Sale Pa Todos (@frijoliz) December 5, 2022

the feeling is back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dDBzZ1_XYA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cql3XELoam4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL4XT91tUmU

posted briefly in the other keef thread, on third listen... aoty

could easily list 10 or so highlights for this one. "neph nem," "grape trees," "treat myself," "i'm tryna sleep," "believe," "drifting away"

all self-produced too

lol @ chief sosa made drill, kanye think he did too

ha yeah i've been playing "drifting away" enough for the past 24 hours or so that my wife is already like "this fuckin song again"

7000 square feet n**** come from a damn cubicle!

almighty so 2 is amazing but dirty nachos was just as good imo don’t sleep on it

dirty nachos was a lot of fun, production is not on the same level tho.

he raps his ass off on both, to be sure

this is cool

Chief Keef sat down for an extremely rare interview with Zane Lowe to promote Almighty So 2.

Now 29, Sosa discusses what it was like to blow up at 16 years old and how his life has changed since. Beautiful to see. pic.twitter.com/WfuPP9Sxmq

— Andrew Barber (@fakeshoredrive) May 9, 2024

I'm mad keen to hear the new one if it's a return to his best form.

"drifting away" is incredible. i love how he references cash money, cam'ron, gucci & kanye. the first time i was listening to it before he shouts out kanye's beats it was making me think of "let the beat build," which is ofc a kanye beat. anyway keef is a pivotal figure in the history of rap and i love that despite being positioned by a lot of people w/ in rap culture as a destroyer of all things sacred he actually knows his artistic lineage better than a lot of his critics do.

truck sit up like a cowboy
i think i got more cars than every member of the hot boys
and we got broomsticks, hogwarts
and i ain't worried about the opps we don't fly the same airport

insanely good rapping on this song

first couple listens i thought he was saying he wanted to beat kanye's ass

another really good interview: https://www.grammy.com/news/chief-keef-almighty-so-2-new-album-interview

had no idea that was fabo yelling on the "almighty" intro

I love this. “I start wearing yellow diamonds, it look like I peed myself” -- lol.

very moving reading that article seeing what a good place he is and how restless his creative mindset is after the amount of terrible shit which got put on his shoulders and how patronising a lot of the early coverage of him was. love that he is still listening to mixtape gucci all the time.

posted briefly in the other keef thread, on third listen... aoty

― devvvine, Friday, 10 May 2024 15:39 (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

will double down on this too

"believe" is so cool

from that grammys interview:

From the beginning of your career, you've had this association with the word "turbulence." You use Turbo as an alter ego.

[Laughs] How do you know all this? This is some Nardwuar s— right now, man.

in fairness they aren't used to interviewers making even the slightest effort

the whole album's good but i just keep coming back to "believe"

best Cher cover

https://open.substack.com/pub/ddrake/p/chief-keef-interview 2017 interview

“Jesus” is a journey