That productivity only represents a piece of the veritable glut coming from the scene, including Katie Got Bandz, King Louie, Lil Bibby, and Sasha Go Hard, among others.
crewmates Ballout, Capo, Gino Marley, Lil Reese, Fredo Santana, SD, and Tray Savage all released tapes of their own, presenting an almost singular (and often Auto-Tuned) vision of ill-gotten gains in America's murder capital. Yet he still managed to drop a couple of mixtapes, the relative absence of former producer Young Chop undeniably felt.ĭespite the incarcerations and tribulations of its most prominent public figure, drill blossomed. Keef didn't exactly help himself either by blowing off the video shoot for what could've been one of the year's biggest songs, 'Hate Bein' Sober'. 2013 proved altogether unkind for him, dogged by the legal system for the wanton criminality his critics fretted so much over. Indeed, the lead-up to menace to society Chief Keef's late 2012 album entry Finally Rich had been perceived by some as a new low in hip hop, a further regrettable shift away from precious lyricism.
Perhaps rap has simply gotten too frightening for some, leading them to seek out a more relatable Chi-town corrective to the drill scene's cold-blooded killer culture. (He's gotten comparatively more flack for collaborating with Justin Bieber on a new track.) Furthermore, Chance stole no small amount of Earl Sweatshirt's verbose thunder in the process, the traditional major label record release of Doris lacking the viral pizazz of a rogue online album drop. Cole, Lil Wayne, and Rick Ross all took lumps for crossing imperceptible lines. So potent was the critical consensus around Acid Rap that people seemed perfectly content to overlook or otherwise excuse his tasteless "killin' in the hood like Trayvon " line on 'Smoke Again' in a year where J. Nobody benefitted from this forced narrative quite like him, emerging from bubbling-under teen to the proverbial poster boy for the "movement" thanks to some confluence of factors real and artificial. To suggest as much is a slap in the faces of dozens of adept young rappers - including Bishop Nehru, The Underachievers, Willie The Kid, and YC The Cynic - who didn't muster the abundance of e-ink spilled for Chance The Rapper. Let's get this out of the way right now: 2013 did not mark the return of lyricism.