The Summer Of Chief Keef

Last week, I couldn’t fight it anymore. Happy ignorance, by way of Chicago’s Chief Keef, crept in and I let it.

I’m an easy-going California girl living in Brooklyn who loves a good bell hooks essay and knows more about obscure Andre 3000 references than wedding etiquette — this makes me weird. I’ve accepted this. So when I see foolishness possibly disguised as fun, I usually reserve my judgement and run the other direction. Why? I’m a smart black woman who loves hip-hop and Melissa Harris-Perry, and I don’t want to have to analyze the social implications of it all, all the time. Instead, sometimes I let the new music fester in my google reader and friendly conversations until I can no longer resist. Enter Chief Keef.

Last month, I was talking with an A&R executive buddy and she said someone had recently suggested she look into a rapper that she could not sign in good conscience. “My spirit said no,” she said with a straight face while telling me of little children wielding guns in this cat’s videos and other “Hay in the Middle of the Barn”-type antics. Naturally, I died laughing at her description, but I really had no idea what she was talking about, so I went on about my life. Then my Twitter timeline began to swell with mentions of a new kid from Chicago, and I dipped in, learned his name was Chief Keef, and exited the conversation once more. Finally, Kanye West and his G.O.O.D. Music team made it so I could no longer ignore 16-year-old Keef from the Windy City. West, his band of fashionable MCs, and Jadakiss remixed Keef’s minimally produced internet hit “I Don’t Like,” where Keef’s lyrics consist of rattling off actions, people and courtship situations he doesn’t enjoy.

Damn.

Why the cursing? Well, Keef’s lyrics leave much to be desired, but that’s not the point of his music. Like Waka Flocka Flame’s early hit “Hard in the Paint,” “I Don’t Like” is best played in a dark club where one is either good and drunk or on the way to find some sort of ratchetry. The track’s producer Young Chop weaves together hulking bass lines, high keys, thick drums and, while I could’ve sworn there were gunshot noises in there, I’ll settle for the kid pointing a gun at the camera in the song’s video. In short, “I Don’t Like” is infectious, inappropriate and unexpected. I can’t stop playing West remix and it isn’t because Kanye compares himself to Michael Jackson. If the young rapper plays his cards right and he and Chop learn how to capture that energy on other records like Waka and his go-to producer Lex Luger, this could be the summer of foolishness sponsored by Chief Keef. Somehow I blame Waka Flocka Flame for this phenomenon, in a good way.

@killa_hills