Fake For Real - Tag - Drill MusicThe English written companion of Fake For Real: since 1997, reviews and articles about rap music2024-03-11T20:40:46+01:00Sylvain Bertoturn:md5:a035ff44a020bb716e18191580d6e9ecDotclearCHIEF KEEF - 4NEMurn:md5:ec1632a45b179b6e7a0b318ba4c3c4f42022-01-25T22:16:00+01:002023-07-27T17:31:25+02:00codotusylvAlbums2021ChicagoChief KeefDrill MusicGlory Boyz Entertainment <p>In the last few years, Chief Keef didn't stop being the prolific rapper we know. He collaborated with Zaytoven and he provided follow-ups to the <em>Leek</em> and <em>GloFiles</em> mixtapes. None of these, though, pretended to be an official work. The only one that can be qualified as such is the album he released in 2021, the first since <em>Dedication</em>, four years earlier.</p>
<p><img src="https://english.fakeforreal.net/public/Pochettes/2021/chief-keef-4nem.jpg" alt="CHIEF KEEF - 4NEM" style="display:table; margin:0 auto;" title="CHIEF KEEF - 4NEM" /></p>
<p>And damned… it was definitely worth the wait. Here, Chief Keef is euphoric and triumphant. He starts <em>4NEM</em> with a reminder that, in Chicago – he lives in L.A., nowadays – he was a survivor, which his grandmother confirms on the first track, "Bitch Where". And on the rest of the album, Keith Cozart proves it: he is still alive, he is even at his very best.</p>
<p>"Foenem" is some slang from Chicago that designates a clan, friends, close ones. And actually, this album is entirely that: an entrenchment into Chief Keef's old foundations. The only guests are Tadoe and BallOut, two pillars of his Glo Gang collective, and the music looks like he's back to basics.</p>
<p>Incendiary tracks such as "Tuxedo", "Say I Ain’t Pick Yo Weak Ass Up" and "Picking Big Sean Up" remind us about everything the original drill music owes to Lex Luger and Waka Flocka, with their hedonism, violence, and nihilism, and with their defiant and boisterous trap music that likes to play the same simplistic melodies over different octaves.</p>
<p>There are other influences, like Memphis, when Chief Keef uses the old production style of the city on "Shady", when he changes Three 6 Mafia's "Slob On My Knob" into “Like It’s Yo Job”, with the same pornographic approach as the original, or when he hijacks Young Buck's "Stomp", also produced by DJ Paul and Juicy J, on his own “Hadouken”.</p>
<p>Recently, some blamed J. Cole for looting hip-hop in a similar way. However, while the Fayetteville guy tries to mimic his idols, Chief Keef just follows his instinct and desires. He never sacrificed them to his career plans. And when he goes back to the sound that defined him, it's not to tread water.</p>
<p>Chief Keef doesn't make his influences look clean. Quite the opposite: he mistreats them, crudely, like with the amazing drums and brutal admonitions on "See Through", the changes of tone on "The Talk", "Hadouken", and "Picking Big Sean Up", or the peculiar flow he arrogates on "Yes Sir".</p>
<p>Apart from bland moments such as the lazily Auto-Tuned "Ice Cream Man", "Wazzup" and "I Don't Think They Love Me", this is Chief Keef like in the early days, but in 2021.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://amzn.to/3Oo2Tdr" hreflang="en">Buy this album</a></strong><br /></p>
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https://english.fakeforreal.net/index.php/post/2022/CHIEF-KEEF-4NEM#comment-formhttps://english.fakeforreal.net/index.php/feed/atom/comments/3373POLO G - Die a Legendurn:md5:2497555ec95309a12872e4edfcb88fee2019-09-14T18:23:00+02:002023-01-13T18:03:49+01:00codotusylvAlbums2019ChicagoColumbia RecordsDrill MusicPolo G <p>Polo G, as we know him, was born in a prison. Before he was incarcerated, Taurus Bartlett, like other Chicago rookies, used to deliver some generic kind of drill music. But in 2018, behind bars, he decided to change his style with "Finer Things", a melodic song with a melancholic piano, that talked about better days with limited expectations that they would come. Released shortly afterwards, the video was viewed millions of times on Youtube. And later on with "Pop Out", a duo with Lil Tjay, he became a Columbia signee and, at 20, Chicago's next big thing.</p>
<p><img src="https://english.fakeforreal.net/public/Pochettes/2019/polo-g-die-a-legend.jpg" alt="POLO G - Die a Legend" style="display:table; margin:0 auto;" title="POLO G - Die a Legend" /></p>
<p><em>Die a Legend</em> uses the same formula. Here, Polo G appropriates Lil Durk's melodic kind of drill music, and he mutates it even further. He makes it even cleaner, more pop. The drums, the relentless rhymes, and lyrics portraying the urban jungle, are still there, like on his dark "A King’s Nightmare". Declaimed in a more aggressive way, a track like "Dying Breed" looks like the original drill music, with its repetitive flow, and its depiction of lost youths, abandoned to crime, drugs and death. The ambiance is paranoid: treason is round the corner, according to "Last Strike". But instead of shrill sounds, Polo G opts for sad pianos, or comparable instruments like the acoustic guitar on "Chosen 1". And while he employs these, he hums with a resigned voice.</p>
<p>None of this alters drill music. On the opposite, these highlight one of its latent qualities. By removing all the pride and triumphalism from the formula, it shows all the despair behind the nihilism. The remarkable "Through da Storm", for example, looks like a typical braggadocio about illegally earned money, but the depressed tone of the rapper says the contrary, as well as the hook, about her mother crying and her little sister hearing him through the telephone of the prison. "Effortless", another stirring track, is not exactly optimistic when it talks about bullet hissing close to children in his neighborhood. Same with tracks such as "Battle Cry", "Finer Things", "Chosen 1", and "Deep Wounds", when Polo G fights his distress with pills of ecstasy.</p>
<p>Even when he talks about his ascent on "Picture This", even when he compares his new status with his difficult past, Polo G looks heavily depressed. The very title of the album is equally deceptive. It is not about the road to success. On the opposite, it is about his chagrin, his disappointment, the certitude that death waits round the corner, and that recognition will only happen afterwards. This is what says the hook on "BST", where he alludes to his forthcoming child: "for my family, gotta build a legacy, I'ma be the man when I'm dead". This album, indeed, is <em>Die a Legend</em>, and not <em>Get Rich or Die Tryin</em>'. Nevertheless, considering how much praised Polo G is nowadays, he looks well equipped to consolidate his legend before the end comes.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SLMQLQR/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07SLMQLQR&linkCode=as2&tag=fafore05-20" hreflang="en">Buy this album</a></strong></p>
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https://english.fakeforreal.net/index.php/post/2019/POLO-G-Die-a-Legend#comment-formhttps://english.fakeforreal.net/index.php/feed/atom/comments/3177CHIEF KEEF - Back From The Deadurn:md5:83f76e78e0c790b19880527304711af12014-03-05T23:19:00+01:002023-10-07T14:09:59+02:00codotusylvMixtapes2012ChicagoChief KeefDJ MoondawgDJ VictoriouzDrill MusicGlory Boyz Entertainment <p>It is no coincidence if, in February this year, Chief Keef announced the release of a mixtape called <em>Back From The Dead 2</em>. While titling it as the release that revealed him, the figurehead of Chicago's drill music scene probably wants to put 2013 - a year marked by his mischiefs and mediocre mixtapes - behind him. He might want to make it as successful as the original release, quite probably his best, to this day.</p>
<p><img src="https://english.fakeforreal.net/public/Pochettes/2012/chief-keef-back-from-the-dead.jpg" alt="CHIEF KEEF - Back From the Dead" class="media-center" title="CHIEF KEEF - Back From the Dead" /></p>
<p>The title sets the tone. In 2012, when pretending to be back from the dead, Chief Keef alludes to his time in prison, and more generally to the disreputable districts he is from, areas invaded by drugs, gangs, and violence, where criminality is standard and parenthood happens shortly after puberty: at the age of sixteen, "Chief" Keith Cozart already fathered a daughter, while his own mother is still in her early thirties.</p>
<p>The lyrics are the usual subject matters of gangsta rap. This is the manifesto of self-proclaimed monsters, but with a thrill of reality and danger. This is something prone to challenge and to hurt the most gentrified portions of rap music.</p>
<p>Chief Keef, though, is a man of his times. His rhymes are not sophisticated, they are mostly made of slogans and adlibs, such as his signature, the “bang bangs” he keeps on repeating. He is not a lyrical acrobat but, a bit like Waka Flocka, a rapper he’s often been compared with, he compensates this with his presence, his diction, and his catchy hooks, his aggressive and asocial personality as a boy who burned his life at both ends, his juvenile insolence, his “couldn't-give-a-damn” personality, and unstoppable beats.</p>
<p>Produced by Young Chop, the music is melodic and catchy, but it hits hard, using sirens and gun sounds ad nauseam. It bangs with the irresistible "I Don't Like", with Lil Reese, Chief Keef’s defining hit single, the one that caught the attention of Kanye, Pusha T, and other hip-hop figureheads. And it does it again, elsewhere on this first-class mixtape.</p>
<p><em>Back From The Dead</em> is short enough to be full of bangers. It is almost all good as <em>Finally Rich</em>, Chief Keef's first official album, he will release a few months later, at the end of 2012, a year he started among the dead, and he will end rich and famous, heralded as a young new hero of modern hip-hop.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://mixtapemonkey.com/450/chief-keef-back-from-the-dead" hreflang="en">Download this mixtape</a></strong></p>
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