Cries of The Windy City - Chris "Preach" Smith

Chief Keef.

By now, the insanity that was the Chief Keef/Lupe Fiasco situation that erupted
on Twitter has died down somewhat. And yet, there’s a lot left to be answered
in the air out of Chicago. Cries unheeded. Because that drama speaks to the crux
of a situation that has boiled over this whole summer. And if you ask folks from
the City of Wind, longer than that.

Chief Keef is the voice of Chicago’s streets right now. Brash, unapologetic, young
and full of menace. When I first started hearing of this young dude, I immediately
thought of O-Dog from ‘Menace II Society’. The 16 year old is a rapper on the rise.
Birdman is looking to sign him, Kanye West did a remix of his most popular track
to date, ‘Don’t Like’. It’s even on the new ‘Cruel Summer’ album by G.O.O.D. Music.
Keef made himself famous, and infamous, by Youtube videos that bubbled through
Chicago’s school system shortly after getting arrested last December. If you listen
to ‘Don’t Like’, you hear the snarl, you feel that smirk you often see on corner boys
in Any City, USA. But that popularity has a dark side we can’t ignore anymore. It
used to be that we could separate the ‘hood from the MC. MC’s like 50 Cent and
others could give you the street without being overtly street as to scare away those
that would do business with them as well as listeners. You saw the separation clearly.
With Chief Keef, you get none of that.

The fact that this young cat laughed over the death of Lil Jojo, a former friend and
MC turned rival on Twitter can’t be dismissed as ignorance. And Chicago police are
still investigating Keef’s Twitter feed to see if he had anything to do with it. It’s one
murder in a summer that saw 157 others die on the streets of Chicago, but it is
symptomatic of a sickness being wrought on people out there. It’s no surprise that
outside of Los Angeles, Chicago has an extremely deep gang history with names
like the Gangster Disciples and Blackstone Rangers coming to mind. But now, the
young folk out there are losing their lives in such number that it makes you shake
your head. And there doesn’t seem to be a concerted effort by the city to combat
the issue outside of the tried and tired methods of extra police without furthering
community outreach. Even now, Chicago is dealing with a teacher’s strike. Money
is going to charter schools and public schools, mostly in neighborhoods of color are
being closed. All under the eyes of Rahm Emanuel, the new mayor fresh out of the
White House. It’s as if there’s a mood among elected officials that harks back to the
line in ‘The Godfather’: ‘They’re animals anyway, let them lose their souls.’

Is it fair to make Chief Keef the poster child for such craziness? Maybe not, but his
recent actions put him in that position. To attack Lupe Fiasco on Twitter for a simple
statement and threaten him is low class. Lupe handled it with dignity, as an elder
cat from those streets should. There are those who think he took that route because
he didn’t want to get shot. That kind of reasoning is stupid. Lupe did what most of
us grew up expecting the older cats we grew up with to do; take someone aside if
they’re acting out and pull their coat to their behavior. And Keef’s behavior after,
claiming he’s shutting down his Twitter account? More self-preservation and possibly
a nudge from a label exec who didn’t want to lose their newest cash cow over
self-incrimination.

Chief Keef isn’t the problem, but he’s shown us how deep that problem goes. Because
while the ‘I don’t give a f***’ swagger in hip hop is as old as Joe Jackson’s eyebrows,
this is a look into just how he represents the voices off of Chicago’s streets. Hungry,
brash, and trying to claw their way out. Even over their neighbors, peers and elders.
THAT’S the s*** we shouldn’t like, instead of just listening to it without absorbing it.
Because in doing so, we may risk ignoring the cries of others out there for the sake of
entertainment.