Chief Keef

The day that a 16-year-old Chicago kid was freed from house arrest in 2012 was the day hip-hop shifted on its axis. Chief Keef (born Keith Farrelle Cozart in 1995) had been charged with waving a gun at a cop and was posting music from lockdown: simple yet booming trap tunes full of matter-of-fact violence spit by a menacing voice with a gift for catchy repetition. When a video of a local fan celebrating Keef’s freedom blew up, people around the world started seeking his mixtapes, and the Chicago drill genre was born: gritty, revenge-seeking rap that dropped listeners into the city’s South Side wars. Keef signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Interscope and debuted with 2012’s Finally Rich, a drill-defining declaration of nihilistic not-niceness. Keef then moved to Los Angeles, adjusted his style, and declared himself the inventor of mumble rap, a slurry, eccentric sound. His 2017 mixtape Thot Breaker showcases this veer into pop, featuring him rapping over dancehall beats (“Can You Be My Friend”) and sounding startlingly romantic. Following the melodic experiments of Thot Breaker, the MC fully embraced his role as rap’s unpredictable auteur. He unleashed a torrent of projects like 2018’s Mansion Musick and the 2019 Zaytoven collaboration GloToven. 2021’s 4NEM and the long-awaited 2024 opus Almighty So 2 as well as 2026’s triumphant Skeletor cemented his evolution from teenage drill pioneer to sophisticated visionary.