Chief Keef

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Chief Keef is a rapper and producer whose work set the template for Chicago drill and then kept moving past it. His flows are short, stubbed and rhythmically unpredictable, landing off the obvious beat and repeating phrases until they harden into hooks. The productions he makes himself favour mood over density, with twinkling intros, cavernous space and beats that drop out entirely for effect, and the singing that crept into his delivery reshaped how a generation of rappers used melody. He arrived with Finally Rich and a sound that was imitated almost immediately, then went independent and released at volume, with mixtapes and albums like Back From the Dead 2 and Almighty So carrying more and more of his own production. He taught himself to make beats and used them to work in a register language could not reach, pulling small details out of other records and turning them into signatures. The influence spread well beyond the genre he started in. Live, the appeal is what made the records land in the first place: repetition, presence and a voice recognisable inside a bar. The songs are built on chant-like phrasing, so a room can hold them without knowing every word, and the productions leave enough space for a crowd to fill. It suits listeners who follow the production side of rap, and anyone who wants to hear the source of a sound that has since gone everywhere.