Chief Keef is an 18 year old (though his age often contested) rapper from Chicago. He is best known for his songs “I Don’t Like”—with the notorious refrain “that’s that shit I don’t like”—and “Love Sosa”; these two songs respectively have 25 and 30 million views on YouTube; many of his other songs, like “3Hunna” and “Bang,” have millions of views as well.
I have a confession to make: I’m not a hipster, especially when it comes to music. If anything, I’m a reverse hipster; I only hear about things that are popular way, way after they actually are. That’s why I have a Backstreet Boys poster in my room.
The following is a blow-by-blow of my impressions of the songs on the album, with some comments from my step-grandmother, who admits that she is a Kid Cudi neophyte.
In a directory on my computer titled “smiles” is a collection of short recordings, musical ideas I wish to return to without going through the trouble of proper notation. The longest and least interesting of them I listen to every few months to ground myself. I’ve renamed it again and again, attempting to remove it from the series of events that surrounded its recording. Now, it is simply the inconspicuous “note 2.aup.”
I don’t remember why I started listening to RadioNow 93.1, Indianapolis’ Top 40 radio station, but I know exactly when. I was nine, and it was the summer after third grade. Before this, I had basically stayed away from pop culture. I didn’t really get it, or like it, and there was a girl in my school who told me she was receiving shots to delay puberty because she had watched too much Britney Spears with her older siblings and it had somehow tricked her body into pressing “skip” over the last part of her pre-preteen years.
In the middle of the night, Drake released a yearning slow-jam called “Girls Love Beyoncé.” It plods forward, and Drake sings unsteadily over a codeine-soaked sample of the Destiny’s Child classic “Say My Name.” He laments what fame has done to his love life and ability to connect with women, so the subject matter doesn’t veer far away from Drake’s usual meditations on his fame-induced trust issues.
