Recently, I came to the conclusion that not enough people have heard about the artist Chief Keef- or either heard of him just never listened to any of his songs. These are the answers I get every time I try and bring him up, which brings me to make this short story about him to spread da word… Or whatever that song is called.
A little background about this artist, he is 29 years old and he was only 16 when his music career really started popping off. Making his first charting album “Finally Rich” in 2012, including multiple iconic songs by him and his biggest single Love Sosa with 789m total streams. He was locally known from “O-Block” which is located in the Washington Park neighborhood on the south side, where Chief Keef’s gang was located. After this successful album, he started to get features by other known artists such as Travis Scott, Lil pump, Zaytoven and Lil Reese. He had a feature with Kanye West as well, on his song I don’t like with 13M views but the original song still did better as it got 48M views, he also featured with Kanye again on the 5th track of Kanye West’s album “hold my liquor” in 2013.
Anyway, now that you get the gist of who this guy is we can get into why he’s better than any other artist and still is today. First, let’s just start off with the obvious- his voice and flow of the beat, I mean his vocals are just immaculate (no glaze) the way his unique voice soothes with the beat and is also always on beat.. I mean, what other rappers do you know that can; rap about macaroni time and stuff he doesn’t like and make it flow perfectly? Exactly! His ability with raw motion (and if you don’t know what that means.. basically he raps about how much money he gets and how many respected women he gets) makes the listening experience something incomparable to other rappers, especially those his age. Then the hook and captivating lyrics play a part in the greatest songs he’s made. Tracks like Love Sosa and I don’t like showcase his talent for creating catchy songs with his fans from everywhere.
Now Chief Keef is probably one of- if not the most influential artists in the game inspiring people to sound like him. By using the same type of beats and flow, such as this rapper named Sematary he gets 262k monthly listeners on Spotify and his flow is heavily inspired by Chief Keef. He also did a feature with Chief Keef, the song wasn’t a smash hit but it was still nice to see Chief Keef interact and collaborate with his fans.
He has also inspired a style that has young people trying to copycat his style to this day- and it’s always hit or miss. Another reason he’s great to spring on you, he performed in Chicago this year, somewhere he hasn’t performed since 2015 not too long ago this year he performed a song called “Faneto”- one of his biggest songs. He performed other big hits he made back then but Faneto just was on a different level of hype and about 40,000 people gathered around to hear him perform that song and other big songs he made from his first huge album. Everyone there knew the lyrics and was singing along. His fan base is one of the best out there (because I’m in it) but they are all loyal, and hype and they make all his performances litty. Not to mention Lil Yachty also pulled up to his show and he looked baffled and confused as to why his shows aren’t as hype (he should probably read the room) but anyway- backstage was his DJ, Kenn, who’s been there since he was 12. It was a crazy performance that night and definitely one of his best shows to remember and should be in the history books.
Sources: youtube (for view count) Spotify (album cover)
