Chicago Hip-Hop Murders and the Media Blackout (rap threads on SS-R)
DocMcCoy
"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Source.
On the evening of October 25, a video of Chicago ???Drill??? scene fixture (and Def Jam signee) Lil Reese savagely attacking a young woman surfaced on a number of hip-hop blogs. I???ll link to the video, with the proviso that it???s some seriously disturbing footage.
It???s not as if the video didn???t make waves in the hip-hop community: WorldStar HipHop and HipHop DX, among others, were among the first to break the story, and Complex, Vibe, and the Smoking Section provided updates as more details about the story emerged. But a number of prominent music blogs that have covered Reese???s music in the past were suspiciously silent. Indie blog Stereogum, which has been a frequent booster of Chicago???s Drill scene; Fake Shore Drive, moderated by Andrew Barber, one of Chicago hip-hop???s cognoscenti; The Fader, which at least until recently retained the services of David Drake, another influential Chicago hip-hop writer; and the indie rock powerhouse Pitchfork: the video of Reese merited nary a mention on any of these sites.
Unpacking why this is problematic requires a trip through 2012 in Chicago.
January: The video for Chief Keef???s ???Bang,??? shot by Chicago rap video director du jour DGainz, begins to make waves outside of the south side of Chicago, where it became a local viral hit after it was posted in August of 2011. ???Bang??? introduced Keef???s signature ???ad-lib,??? which involves Keef somewhat lazily imitating the sound of his gun. The lyrics to ???Bang??? are fairly self-explanatory:
Cock back ???cause there???s trouble a man???s gon??? blow
So they ass better get low
If she snitch, she can get 30 clipped
February 3: Pitchfork names Chicago-area rapper Lil Durk???s frenetic ???I Get Paid??? Best New Track.
March 31: Chicago records 53 homicides for the month of March, up from 23 in March of 2011.
April 12: Pitchfork reviews Chief Keef???s breakthrough mixtape, Back from the Dead. The album receives a 7.9.
We hip-hop fans like to have our cake and eat it too: We nod our heads to the genre???s salacious gun talk, being careful not to nod them in the direction of the victims of said gun talk.
April 21: The Fader reports on Kanye West???s announcement that he???s remixing Keef???s ???I Don???t Like.??? The remix initiates a major label bidding war for Keef???s debut, and border skirmishes for just about everyone in the Drill scene with a halfway decent mixtape. ???Don???t Like??? is essentially a litany of things Keef, well, doesn???t like, which include, among others, snitches, sneak dissers, and fake True Religion jeans. Keef has to record his verse for the remix from home, as he is on house arrest for brandishing a weapon at a Chicago police officer.
April 24: Keef affiliates Lil Reese and Lil Durk both sign with Def Jam. At the time of the signing, Durk is serving a three-month prison sentence. The cover of I???m Still a Hitta, Durk???s breakthrough mixtape, depicts a handgun and a pile of cocaine.
April 25: Chicago reaches 150 homicides for the year.
June 17: After a protracted bidding war, Keef signs with Interscope for a dollar amount that was undisclosed but rumored to be in the millions. The deal also includes a multi-picture movie deal through Interscope???s cinema arm, an imprint for Keef???s Glory Boyz Entertainment record label, and a line of headphones by Dr. Dre entitled ???Beats by Keef.??? The Fader and Fake Shore Drive report the story.
July 2: Chicago???s murder rate reaches 250. Compare that with a murder rate of 193 in New York, a city three times the size of Chicago. On the same day, Pitchfork releases an entry in their Selector freestyle video series, in which they take Chief Keef to a gun range outside of New York. The video also features Keef, then 16, smoking a blunt. The Root decries the video as exploitation, yet it remains online for the next three months.
July 4: Lil Reese releases his debut mixtape, Don???t Like, capitalizing on the success of the eponymous song, on which he has a guest verse. Stereogum names the album its mixtape of the week, and Pitchfork reviews the album and gives it a 7.4. On the same day, Fake Shore Drive names Lil Durk???s I???m Still a Hitta their favorite mixtape of 2012 so far.
August 16: Pitchfork releases another Selector entry, this time featuring a freestyle from Lil Reese.
August 22: Chicago sees 22 homicides in one week. The murder rate for the first half of the year is 39 percent higher than at the same time last year.
September 4: Joseph Coleman, 18, also known by his rap alter-ego Lil JoJo, is gunned down while riding his bike in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Chief Keef responds to the murder on his Twitter account: ???It???s sad cus ??? Jojo wanted to be just like us #LMAO.??? Following the revelation that JoJo tweeted his location hours before he was shot, the Chicago Police Department opens an investigation into a possible connection between JoJo???s murder and Keef???s comments on Twitter.
The incident goes unreported by Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader, and Pitchfork. To give some context: Both Stereogum and Pitchfork reported on the arrest of Surfer Blood frontman John Paul Pitts for battery earlier in the year.
September 6: Three months after initially posting it, Pitchfork removes the Selector entry in which Chief Keef freestyles at a gun range, calling the video a ???mistake.???
We have reached a point where Chicago???s predominantly white hip-hop press has essentially become a promotional arm of the Chicago Drill scene.
October 17: Prosecutors in Cook County ask a judge to remand Chief Keef to juvenile detention for holding a rifle in the aforementioned Pitchfork video.
October 25: The video showing Lil Reese assaulting a woman begins to surface around the internet. The video depicts the woman (later identified as Tiairah Marie) asking Reese and his friends to leave her house, at which point Reese begins savagely beating her. Reese later confirms that it was he who was depicted in the video and, after seeming initially unrepentant, apologizes for his behavior. The incident goes unreported by Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader, and Pitchfork.
The same day, Stereogum names Lil Durk???s Life Ain???t No Joke its Mixtape of the Week.
October 29: The total number of homicides in Chicago reaches 438, up 23 percent from the previous year. This is compared with New York???s 339 and Los Angeles??? 238.
In a year in which Chicago has seen its streets practically run with blood, in the year of Trayvon Martin, in 2012, this is where we are. We have reached a point where Chicago???s predominantly white hip-hop press has essentially become a promotional arm of the Chicago Drill scene, a loose generic term applied to the kind of southern ???trap??? style music created by Durk, Reese, Keef, and their ascendant in-house producer Young Chop.
But when the physical evidence of the consequences of this scene???s violent rhetoric begins to mount, these same outlets remain silent. Well, actually, they remain as vocal as ever. But for all their effusive coverage of new releases by these artists ??? searching ???Durk,??? ???Reese,??? or ???Keef??? on Fake Shore Drive reveals that the site posts a story about every scrap of material released by Glory Boyz Entertainment and Only the Family (OTF) ??? they can???t be bothered to provide the context for the music they???re covering.
Why so silent? Maybe it???s because we hip-hop fans like to have our cake and eat it too: We nod our heads to the genre???s salacious gun talk, being careful not to nod them in the direction of the victims of said gun talk.
I???m a 26-year-old white guy who spends a staggering about of time listening to, reading about, or talking about hip-hop. I belong to the modern equivalent of a tape-trading circle, and I recently posted a link to The Diamond Life Project by Styles P, a super-glossy collection of grim, dead-eyed rhymes about drugs and guns. I count guns-???n???-drugs rhymers Clipse, Freddie Gibbs and King Louie (another Chicago upstart who I???ve been vocally supportive of) among my favorite rappers.
And incidentally, I live on the north side of Chicago, which shares little other than a name with the breeding ground of rappers like Durk, Reese and Keef. And while the bodies pile up just a few miles south, I bump my gangster rap, safe in the knowledge that the murder epidemic that has gripped the city I call home has virtually no impact on my world.
But I???m not the one with the bullhorn, the one who can affect the city???s conversation regarding its music and its violence. That obligation lies with outlets like Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, the Fader and Pitchfork. (Both Stereogum and Pitchfork are headquartered in New York, but they???re both active commentators on the Chicago hip-hop scene, and Pitchfork still maintains offices in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago.) And they seem to have adopted a ???just the music??? policy (as least as far as Chicago???s rap scene is concerned).
The tragedy of this stance not only evinces itself in the hearts of such writers, who have to live with the knowledge that they???re capitalizing on the wave of violence that has claimed over 400 lives in their city, but also in the at-risk communities who are receiving exactly the opposite kind of attention that they need so badly.
The critical community aren???t the only ones who need to get their priorities straight. Are millions of dollars flowing into the hood? Yes. But they???re not going to organizations like CeaseFire, who mediate conflicts between gangs to try to discourage the use of violence*. Instead, Interscope signs a multi-million dollar deal with Chief Keef, and Def Jam follows suit with Lil Reese and Lil Durk. We shouldn???t expect major labels to do anything other than turn a profit, but the imbalance here is disturbing.
And if you???re wondering whether the success of Durk, Reese and Keef would inspire copycats, then look no farther than Lil Mouse, the 13-year-old South Side rapper whose ???Get Smoked??? has garnered more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. Is the Drill scene responsible for the epidemic of violence infecting Chicago? Of course not. But giving kids who beat up women and brandish guns at cops millions of dollars certainly sends the wrong message to kids in their communities.
When the media heap accolades on the Lil Durks, Lil Reeses and Chief Keefs of Chicago while failing to report on their transgressions, they???re pretending the violent rhetoric is mere fantasy.
In a way, the behavior of sites like Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, the Fader and Pitchfork is more damaging than silence. It???s kerosene on a bonfire.
I???m not claiming that I???m the first person to notice this correlation. The Chicago Reader, The Well Versed, Ruby Hornet, The Smoking Section and Complex (with a smart piece by abovementioned Chicago rap maven David Drake) have all weighed in on the coordinated rises of Chicago???s Drill scene and its murder rate. And while The Fader failed to report on either of the incidents mentioned above, it did post a thoughtful cover piece on Chief Keef by Felipe Delerme that featured some cutting insights on Keef???s ascendancy:
Of all the things people said about Keef during my time in Chicago, what I heard most often was, ???We???re dealing with a 16-year-old kid here.??? The statement was echoed like a mantra in an effort to process Keef???s unpredictability. He???s a 16-year-old kid who???ll soon be responsible for the livelihood of a number of full-grown adults, if he isn???t already. He comes from a broken family and hasn???t finished high school, although I am told he???s begun working with a tutor. The people around him may be trying their best, but it???s clear someone stopped raising him long before he needed to be finished being raised.
But that passage was embedded in a cover story on Keef, one that featured a gallery of professionally shot photographs of Keef and his entourage engaging in what Delerme calls ???sartorial opulence.???
And this dichotomy is indicative of why the media???s obsession with Chicago rap is so problematic: It only makes things worse. When outlets like Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader, and Pitchfork heap accolades on the Durks, the Reeses, and the Keefs of Chicago, while failing to report on their transgressions, they???re essentially pretending their violent rhetoric is mere fantasy, a series of victimless crimes meted out via chunks of workmanlike poetry set to an apocalyptic soundtrack.
But for the victims of these crimes, like Tiairah Marie and Joseph Coleman, himself clearly a practitioner of the kind of gun talk that ended up claiming his life, their rhymes are anything but escapism.
You???ll notice that I haven???t made much hay of Keef???s or Reese???s reactions to their own dustups. This is because I explicitly wanted to avoid this being a hit piece on rappers like Keef, Reese and Durk, as appalling as their behavior can be at times.
These kids are the product of a system that leaves them without the schooling, parental guidance and social safety net that would prevent them from growing into the monsters they???re already becoming. There???s a fine line between documentary realism and straight-up promotion of violence, and I don???t expect these kids to walk it with anything approaching the subtlety of Jay-Z or, more recently, Schoolboy Q.
Let me be clear: I???m not asking Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader and Pitchfork to cease coverage of Chicago???s Drill scene. I???m merely asking that you discard the foolish notion that you???re not taking a side when you don???t report on Chief Keef celebrating the death of one of his rivals on Twitter, or Lil Reese assaulting a woman as she screams for help. Your silence is an implicit stamp of approval.**
Don???t hide behind your status as a music blog. Start earning the ???journalist??? half of what you call yourselves: I depend on you guys to tell me what???s going on in the hip-hop world ??? good and bad ??? and you let me down. But more importantly, you???re letting this city down by reporting with blinders on.
And let???s none of us ??? myself included ??? plead ignorance when we bump our favorite violent rap. That violence has a face, and we know what that face looks like. And right know, we owe her an explanation.
At press time, Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader and Pitchfork failed to respond to my attempts to contact them via Twitter.
* CeaseFire is also chronicled in the award-winning documentary The Interrupters, directed by Hoop Dreams??? Steve James.
** Kevin Coval wrote a book of poetry called More Shit Chief Keef Don???t Like, which includes ruminations on just this subject.
Jordan Pedersen is a comedy writer in Chicago who just closed a show at Second City. You can read his thoughts on hip-hop on his Twitter and his Tumblr, You Need More People.
+++++++++
DISCUSS
On the evening of October 25, a video of Chicago ???Drill??? scene fixture (and Def Jam signee) Lil Reese savagely attacking a young woman surfaced on a number of hip-hop blogs. I???ll link to the video, with the proviso that it???s some seriously disturbing footage.
It???s not as if the video didn???t make waves in the hip-hop community: WorldStar HipHop and HipHop DX, among others, were among the first to break the story, and Complex, Vibe, and the Smoking Section provided updates as more details about the story emerged. But a number of prominent music blogs that have covered Reese???s music in the past were suspiciously silent. Indie blog Stereogum, which has been a frequent booster of Chicago???s Drill scene; Fake Shore Drive, moderated by Andrew Barber, one of Chicago hip-hop???s cognoscenti; The Fader, which at least until recently retained the services of David Drake, another influential Chicago hip-hop writer; and the indie rock powerhouse Pitchfork: the video of Reese merited nary a mention on any of these sites.
Unpacking why this is problematic requires a trip through 2012 in Chicago.
January: The video for Chief Keef???s ???Bang,??? shot by Chicago rap video director du jour DGainz, begins to make waves outside of the south side of Chicago, where it became a local viral hit after it was posted in August of 2011. ???Bang??? introduced Keef???s signature ???ad-lib,??? which involves Keef somewhat lazily imitating the sound of his gun. The lyrics to ???Bang??? are fairly self-explanatory:
Cock back ???cause there???s trouble a man???s gon??? blow
So they ass better get low
If she snitch, she can get 30 clipped
February 3: Pitchfork names Chicago-area rapper Lil Durk???s frenetic ???I Get Paid??? Best New Track.
March 31: Chicago records 53 homicides for the month of March, up from 23 in March of 2011.
April 12: Pitchfork reviews Chief Keef???s breakthrough mixtape, Back from the Dead. The album receives a 7.9.
We hip-hop fans like to have our cake and eat it too: We nod our heads to the genre???s salacious gun talk, being careful not to nod them in the direction of the victims of said gun talk.
April 21: The Fader reports on Kanye West???s announcement that he???s remixing Keef???s ???I Don???t Like.??? The remix initiates a major label bidding war for Keef???s debut, and border skirmishes for just about everyone in the Drill scene with a halfway decent mixtape. ???Don???t Like??? is essentially a litany of things Keef, well, doesn???t like, which include, among others, snitches, sneak dissers, and fake True Religion jeans. Keef has to record his verse for the remix from home, as he is on house arrest for brandishing a weapon at a Chicago police officer.
April 24: Keef affiliates Lil Reese and Lil Durk both sign with Def Jam. At the time of the signing, Durk is serving a three-month prison sentence. The cover of I???m Still a Hitta, Durk???s breakthrough mixtape, depicts a handgun and a pile of cocaine.
April 25: Chicago reaches 150 homicides for the year.
June 17: After a protracted bidding war, Keef signs with Interscope for a dollar amount that was undisclosed but rumored to be in the millions. The deal also includes a multi-picture movie deal through Interscope???s cinema arm, an imprint for Keef???s Glory Boyz Entertainment record label, and a line of headphones by Dr. Dre entitled ???Beats by Keef.??? The Fader and Fake Shore Drive report the story.
July 2: Chicago???s murder rate reaches 250. Compare that with a murder rate of 193 in New York, a city three times the size of Chicago. On the same day, Pitchfork releases an entry in their Selector freestyle video series, in which they take Chief Keef to a gun range outside of New York. The video also features Keef, then 16, smoking a blunt. The Root decries the video as exploitation, yet it remains online for the next three months.
July 4: Lil Reese releases his debut mixtape, Don???t Like, capitalizing on the success of the eponymous song, on which he has a guest verse. Stereogum names the album its mixtape of the week, and Pitchfork reviews the album and gives it a 7.4. On the same day, Fake Shore Drive names Lil Durk???s I???m Still a Hitta their favorite mixtape of 2012 so far.
August 16: Pitchfork releases another Selector entry, this time featuring a freestyle from Lil Reese.
August 22: Chicago sees 22 homicides in one week. The murder rate for the first half of the year is 39 percent higher than at the same time last year.
September 4: Joseph Coleman, 18, also known by his rap alter-ego Lil JoJo, is gunned down while riding his bike in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Chief Keef responds to the murder on his Twitter account: ???It???s sad cus ??? Jojo wanted to be just like us #LMAO.??? Following the revelation that JoJo tweeted his location hours before he was shot, the Chicago Police Department opens an investigation into a possible connection between JoJo???s murder and Keef???s comments on Twitter.
The incident goes unreported by Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader, and Pitchfork. To give some context: Both Stereogum and Pitchfork reported on the arrest of Surfer Blood frontman John Paul Pitts for battery earlier in the year.
September 6: Three months after initially posting it, Pitchfork removes the Selector entry in which Chief Keef freestyles at a gun range, calling the video a ???mistake.???
We have reached a point where Chicago???s predominantly white hip-hop press has essentially become a promotional arm of the Chicago Drill scene.
October 17: Prosecutors in Cook County ask a judge to remand Chief Keef to juvenile detention for holding a rifle in the aforementioned Pitchfork video.
October 25: The video showing Lil Reese assaulting a woman begins to surface around the internet. The video depicts the woman (later identified as Tiairah Marie) asking Reese and his friends to leave her house, at which point Reese begins savagely beating her. Reese later confirms that it was he who was depicted in the video and, after seeming initially unrepentant, apologizes for his behavior. The incident goes unreported by Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader, and Pitchfork.
The same day, Stereogum names Lil Durk???s Life Ain???t No Joke its Mixtape of the Week.
October 29: The total number of homicides in Chicago reaches 438, up 23 percent from the previous year. This is compared with New York???s 339 and Los Angeles??? 238.
In a year in which Chicago has seen its streets practically run with blood, in the year of Trayvon Martin, in 2012, this is where we are. We have reached a point where Chicago???s predominantly white hip-hop press has essentially become a promotional arm of the Chicago Drill scene, a loose generic term applied to the kind of southern ???trap??? style music created by Durk, Reese, Keef, and their ascendant in-house producer Young Chop.
But when the physical evidence of the consequences of this scene???s violent rhetoric begins to mount, these same outlets remain silent. Well, actually, they remain as vocal as ever. But for all their effusive coverage of new releases by these artists ??? searching ???Durk,??? ???Reese,??? or ???Keef??? on Fake Shore Drive reveals that the site posts a story about every scrap of material released by Glory Boyz Entertainment and Only the Family (OTF) ??? they can???t be bothered to provide the context for the music they???re covering.
Why so silent? Maybe it???s because we hip-hop fans like to have our cake and eat it too: We nod our heads to the genre???s salacious gun talk, being careful not to nod them in the direction of the victims of said gun talk.
I???m a 26-year-old white guy who spends a staggering about of time listening to, reading about, or talking about hip-hop. I belong to the modern equivalent of a tape-trading circle, and I recently posted a link to The Diamond Life Project by Styles P, a super-glossy collection of grim, dead-eyed rhymes about drugs and guns. I count guns-???n???-drugs rhymers Clipse, Freddie Gibbs and King Louie (another Chicago upstart who I???ve been vocally supportive of) among my favorite rappers.
And incidentally, I live on the north side of Chicago, which shares little other than a name with the breeding ground of rappers like Durk, Reese and Keef. And while the bodies pile up just a few miles south, I bump my gangster rap, safe in the knowledge that the murder epidemic that has gripped the city I call home has virtually no impact on my world.
But I???m not the one with the bullhorn, the one who can affect the city???s conversation regarding its music and its violence. That obligation lies with outlets like Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, the Fader and Pitchfork. (Both Stereogum and Pitchfork are headquartered in New York, but they???re both active commentators on the Chicago hip-hop scene, and Pitchfork still maintains offices in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago.) And they seem to have adopted a ???just the music??? policy (as least as far as Chicago???s rap scene is concerned).
The tragedy of this stance not only evinces itself in the hearts of such writers, who have to live with the knowledge that they???re capitalizing on the wave of violence that has claimed over 400 lives in their city, but also in the at-risk communities who are receiving exactly the opposite kind of attention that they need so badly.
The critical community aren???t the only ones who need to get their priorities straight. Are millions of dollars flowing into the hood? Yes. But they???re not going to organizations like CeaseFire, who mediate conflicts between gangs to try to discourage the use of violence*. Instead, Interscope signs a multi-million dollar deal with Chief Keef, and Def Jam follows suit with Lil Reese and Lil Durk. We shouldn???t expect major labels to do anything other than turn a profit, but the imbalance here is disturbing.
And if you???re wondering whether the success of Durk, Reese and Keef would inspire copycats, then look no farther than Lil Mouse, the 13-year-old South Side rapper whose ???Get Smoked??? has garnered more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. Is the Drill scene responsible for the epidemic of violence infecting Chicago? Of course not. But giving kids who beat up women and brandish guns at cops millions of dollars certainly sends the wrong message to kids in their communities.
When the media heap accolades on the Lil Durks, Lil Reeses and Chief Keefs of Chicago while failing to report on their transgressions, they???re pretending the violent rhetoric is mere fantasy.
In a way, the behavior of sites like Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, the Fader and Pitchfork is more damaging than silence. It???s kerosene on a bonfire.
I???m not claiming that I???m the first person to notice this correlation. The Chicago Reader, The Well Versed, Ruby Hornet, The Smoking Section and Complex (with a smart piece by abovementioned Chicago rap maven David Drake) have all weighed in on the coordinated rises of Chicago???s Drill scene and its murder rate. And while The Fader failed to report on either of the incidents mentioned above, it did post a thoughtful cover piece on Chief Keef by Felipe Delerme that featured some cutting insights on Keef???s ascendancy:
Of all the things people said about Keef during my time in Chicago, what I heard most often was, ???We???re dealing with a 16-year-old kid here.??? The statement was echoed like a mantra in an effort to process Keef???s unpredictability. He???s a 16-year-old kid who???ll soon be responsible for the livelihood of a number of full-grown adults, if he isn???t already. He comes from a broken family and hasn???t finished high school, although I am told he???s begun working with a tutor. The people around him may be trying their best, but it???s clear someone stopped raising him long before he needed to be finished being raised.
But that passage was embedded in a cover story on Keef, one that featured a gallery of professionally shot photographs of Keef and his entourage engaging in what Delerme calls ???sartorial opulence.???
And this dichotomy is indicative of why the media???s obsession with Chicago rap is so problematic: It only makes things worse. When outlets like Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader, and Pitchfork heap accolades on the Durks, the Reeses, and the Keefs of Chicago, while failing to report on their transgressions, they???re essentially pretending their violent rhetoric is mere fantasy, a series of victimless crimes meted out via chunks of workmanlike poetry set to an apocalyptic soundtrack.
But for the victims of these crimes, like Tiairah Marie and Joseph Coleman, himself clearly a practitioner of the kind of gun talk that ended up claiming his life, their rhymes are anything but escapism.
You???ll notice that I haven???t made much hay of Keef???s or Reese???s reactions to their own dustups. This is because I explicitly wanted to avoid this being a hit piece on rappers like Keef, Reese and Durk, as appalling as their behavior can be at times.
These kids are the product of a system that leaves them without the schooling, parental guidance and social safety net that would prevent them from growing into the monsters they???re already becoming. There???s a fine line between documentary realism and straight-up promotion of violence, and I don???t expect these kids to walk it with anything approaching the subtlety of Jay-Z or, more recently, Schoolboy Q.
Let me be clear: I???m not asking Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader and Pitchfork to cease coverage of Chicago???s Drill scene. I???m merely asking that you discard the foolish notion that you???re not taking a side when you don???t report on Chief Keef celebrating the death of one of his rivals on Twitter, or Lil Reese assaulting a woman as she screams for help. Your silence is an implicit stamp of approval.**
Don???t hide behind your status as a music blog. Start earning the ???journalist??? half of what you call yourselves: I depend on you guys to tell me what???s going on in the hip-hop world ??? good and bad ??? and you let me down. But more importantly, you???re letting this city down by reporting with blinders on.
And let???s none of us ??? myself included ??? plead ignorance when we bump our favorite violent rap. That violence has a face, and we know what that face looks like. And right know, we owe her an explanation.
At press time, Stereogum, Fake Shore Drive, The Fader and Pitchfork failed to respond to my attempts to contact them via Twitter.
* CeaseFire is also chronicled in the award-winning documentary The Interrupters, directed by Hoop Dreams??? Steve James.
** Kevin Coval wrote a book of poetry called More Shit Chief Keef Don???t Like, which includes ruminations on just this subject.
Jordan Pedersen is a comedy writer in Chicago who just closed a show at Second City. You can read his thoughts on hip-hop on his Twitter and his Tumblr, You Need More People.
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DISCUSS
Comments
There isn't a vast difference between how these websites are now discussing the drill scene and the way in which they or their peers wrote about Clipse and "coke rap" six or seven years ago. Then, as now, there was a similar anxiety over whether or not the widespread critical acclaim for Hell Hath No Fury was just more "cheap holiday in other people's misery" vicariousness. Essentially, the dilemma was, should you be even covering this music without taking a moral position on it. Is it the responsibility of music bloggers (or Def Jam, for that matter) to attempt to come up with solutions for South Side Chicago's social problems? Do they perform a worthwhile role in describing how so much drill music reflects the nihilistic ugliness of the environment that produces it? Obama's from Chicago - maybe someone should ask him.
Perhaps this guy just wants someone to tell him that, merely by enjoying this stuff, he's not actually encouraging violence towards women or gang-related murder or drug-dealing - at least, no more than Def Jam does, with the infamous "million-dollar recording contract". Because the likelihood is those kids would still be making these tunes and living that life regardless of whether or not Pitchfork or Def Jam or Andrew Barber or David Drake were there to "capitalise" upon it. Maybe he should wait a few more years, by which time it'll all have been reconfigured as a club-friendly micro-genre, completely shorn of the aspects which make it so troubling for him now.
"Is it the responsibility of music bloggers (or Def Jam, for that matter) to attempt to come up with solutions for South Side Chicago's social problems? "
I'm not sure that you were suggesting this, but I hope the implication is not that we should be holding our journalists (and our selves as listeners) to the same moral standard as profit-seeking corporations when promoting and consuming music.
I think all art is controversial by default - and not just gangster rap. Artists and entertainers implicitly and explicitly speak ???truth??? to power - potentially in a very public way - and that can get ugly and inflammatory sometimes.
In those cases, I think it ought to be the responsibility of individuals in the media to contribute to solutions in as much as you can in a music review or an artist/scene profile. It doesn't need to be activist work. But if you???re evaluating something that is loaded or requires some context to appreciate the perspective of the artist/entertainer, then those issues should be presented (if not unpacked)??? because a lot listeners don???t come from the same context as the artist. It doesn???t have to influence your evaluation of how entertaining the music is (if we???re talking about a review); but give readers the context of the music. Otherwise stereotypes and misconceptions will be perpetuated.
You may be right that there isn't much difference in how ???drill rap??? is covered relative to how "coke rap" was covered six or seven years ago. But that doesn't mean it was covered appropriately back then. I???m also not trying to imply that there is a media conglomerate that can control all of these dynamics. Journalists work for profit-seeking corporations who are in competition with each other all the time. Those that are bloggers have very few concrete or informal standards to work by (Is that true? I???m not a blogger...). Still, it???s conceivable that the whole system is a form of structural racism, if not discrimination... and that it should therefore be fixed in a just world.
Rock ??? I see the media as a key determinant of public outrage, so I think the issues are connected.
I think the national media has reported the out of control violence and murders in Chicago....I know I see stories on it almost weekly.
Very few people get their news from Hip-Hop blogs....and the outrgae should be coming from both inside and outside of the Hip-Hop community.....especially the latter.
I'm not sure why there isn't the same passion and outrage for these young people as there are for victims of war.
Because of course it's white liberal outrage pointing at the victims instead of the actual perpetrators that will stop this.
And from within the community, people have been screaming for decades that it's the feds and the local cops that are running all of these drugs and guns through their neighborhoods, but it basically falls on deaf ears.
more guns, more drugs. no solutions, no police, no outreach, no jobs.
the drugs are different, but it's the same damn shit we've been looking at since the 70s. Is anyone remotely surprised?
@Rockadelic, yes, there should be a public outcry... not just at Chicago's murder rate, but at our prison industrial complex, at our utterly failed war on drugs, and our crumbling schools. All of it matters.
Speaking of "buying the music", I'm unconvinced that anyone actually buying this shit. Aren't these companies merely monetizing youtube views and clickthroughs?
hearty chortle at the idea that any of the aforementioned "media outlets" are relevant to the kids dying out in those streets. Their only relevance is the aura of legitimacy they offer to the outside world, which is of some assistance in helping the artists get million dollar deals.
ETA2 I have no idea how I or anyone else draws that line. It's a tough one, to be sure.
ETA3 these dudes are critics, not journalists. Big difference
I agree. One idea is that our "passion and outrage" for an issue are generated by the casues that we attribute to complex problems like violence in poor, racialized communities (compared to civilians killed in war, which is more simply a function of morally poor politicians playing geopolitics). Do we think violence in communities is preventable and that someone ought to be doing something that they aren't already doing, or is it a random side effect that is just so unfortunate?
From teaching undergraduate students, I know that a lot of priveleged young adults don't follow the national media very closely. These people would improve their awareness and understanding of issues (and maintain that into their more mature years) if the media sources they do rely on were better at contextualizing the wildly popular and controversial music they listen to. So not just Hip-Hop blogs... but also Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
But I have a serious issue with dude for this:
And I'm with Harv:
Even his attempts to contact the blogs he has beef with were via Twitter. Come on, dude. If you know where Pitchfork's offices are, pick up the phone--or swing by. He makes a few valid points, but in the end, they all come off like potshots from a Northside ivory tower.
Well said
To the-breaks.com?
drawing the line... exactly...
obv for some people being a fan of certain types of hip hop has been about tourism/voyeurism as much as it's been about the music, but this seems like the time and the place where the idea of it being harmless gets put to the test...
this shit is not the same as the Clipse era Fader fawning... i don't recall so many of these white/indie rock sites being SO into gutter music before...
the Clipse were grown ass men... Chief Keef is a 17 year old kid who, as far as i know, has pretty active gang affiliations... everything about his image and his music promotes that lifestyle... right when Chicago is going thru a murder epidemic... it makes me sad when i see pictures and videos of him and i simply can't picture him making it to be 30 years old... i don't want to see him make a "stop the violence" song and i don't want him to not eat, but it gives me the creeps that his music (which to my old ass just sounds "ok") has blown up like this... will all these "fans" give a fuck about drill music in 5 years, or will be they move onto whatever ghetto scene du jour they can find on the internet?
I guess he's not still doing his alleged ghostwriting gig if he's going after someone 'Ye's working with.
nail:head
also, there's shit like this in every hood without the publicity... to a certain extent yes, it's because these folks in Chicago are writing about their own (?) scene, but part of it is certainly "ghetto scene du jour".
curious what you mean by 'ghetto scene du jour.' i think musically there's something interesting happening in chicago right now, that wasn't happening a few years ago, and that isn't happening in other cities at the moment. a few years back, it seemed like it was happening in the bay, but it got overtaken by media enthusiasm for lil b.
this is one of the most interesting stories in rap music happening this year; i guess the competing story is the dj mustard/rachet stuff although personally i dont find that music as interesting.
"will these 'fans' give a fuck about drill music in five years"
--i dont know, will you give a fuck about whatever music you're listening to right now in five years? I imagine like anything, some i will, some i wont. just like i still listen to organized konfusion but havent pulled out a cella dwellers record in forever. i dont need to pledge lifelong allegiance to drill music if its musically at its most interesting right at this moment, do i? seems like an unfair standard
I don't really have a problem with anyone who thinks this stuff isn't for them. It does hit close to home. Although I don't think it's any more nihilistic than plenty of rap that I've heard people rep for over the years on this forum, from Spice 1 to the Hot Boyz.
It seems to me that the objections assume that there's nothing special about the music here, that people's interest is pure spectacle. I'm sure that's true for some, but that makes it pretty similar to the Clipse / Jeezy stuff from a few years ago. But there's still something musically unique happening here right now. Say what you will, but Louie, Durk and Keef all sound like original voices, and aren't overly derivative of any particular artist.
imo
university educated white boys have ruined hip hop forever.
I agree wholeheartedly. While there are indeed plenty of misguided suburban clowns out there that misinterpret the worth of voices from places they will never even visit, they certainly don't make the world go 'round. In other words, whether Pitchfork or whoever temporarily latches themselves onto these sort of localized scenes and even help make them more popular to crossover audiences, their whole action remains just that, crossover i.e. secondary to the core market more closely attached to the scene at hand. And to me, it's a fools game to dismiss the core just because the crossovers are doing what they always do, which is not quite getting it.
I agree with this. There's superficial echoes of Waka on some of their stuff, but otherwise it sounds like a style that's developed in comparative isolation. There was already plenty that was weird and unsettling about Savage before I knew a single thing about Reese's personal life.
On a tangentially related note, Young Chop's beat for I Think I Like That is one of the best things I've heard all year. I may have mentioned this before.
I think it's good to separate Chicago writers covering local music (whether it's "hey this stuff is happening in our city" or "hey this is musically interesting to me") versus the kind of trend-fawn that seems to happen every few years with the aforementioned scenes. Nobody is really giving a shit about Bay Area music now to the extent that they did several years ago, as a native/enthusiast of Bay Area music this seems to be the way it always goes every few years. Contrasting a regional scene's ebbs and flows with some marginalia like the Cella Dwellas is misguided I think.
I can see the voices being legitimate and original but it doesn't add up to good music to me. I am of course a 35 y/o white dude record enthusiast and deduce what you will about my tastes from that (likes "melody", "overarching concept", "drum loops", "songwriting") [/snark]
And you're right, you know, a lot of shit like Spice 1 (whose first record is a favorite) and Clipse (the merit of whose first two albums I have argued vigorously on this site) is thematically similar but I just find there to be a much greater distance between the art and the person in those instances than I hear in this stuff. Maybe that's what makes it so affecting, to all parties.