It is no coincidence if, in February this year, Chief Keef announced the release of a mixtape called Back From The Dead 2. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Back From The Dead is short enough to be full of bangers. It is almost all good as Finally Rich, 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.