7220 (Deluxe)

When Lil Durk dropped the first iteration of 7220 in March 2022, the album played as a victory lap of sorts. Over the course of some 10 years, Durk had gone from a promising young talent within Chicago’s drill music scene to one of contemporary hip-hop’s most beloved MCs, someone who’d miraculously grown his fanbase with every mixtape, album, and even guest verse. 7220 was the most anticipated release of his career, and he rewarded fans new and old with some of his most personal raps to date.

“7220, that’s where I went through it,” Durk says on the album’s “Headtaps.” “Like my first life experience, know what I mean?” 7220 is named for the address of his beloved grandmother’s home. Within it, Durk talks about the time he wished he could watch cartoons with his children when he was locked up and how news of a cousin’s passing once sent him into a state of disbelief. He mentions the real-life home invasion he suffered on “Shootout @ My Crib” and lives out a revenge fantasy for friend and collaborator King Von on “AHHH HA.” With the deluxe version, though, Durk’s moved away from the highly specific stories of the original and into another zone with which he’s intimately familiar: lifestyle music.

7220 (Deluxe) boasts 13 new tracks, and within them are even more insights into how Durk is living. And just like the rest of us, his life is full of contradictions. He’ll confess that being rich and famous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be on “So What,” but he’s hyper-aware of the differences between himself and his haters on “Huuuh.” He hangs around bad hombres on “Burglars & Murderers,” but he’s broken up about the holes street violence has left in his life on “Hearing Sirens.” He’s brutally honest about what lovers can and cannot expect from him on “IYKYK,” but his heart bleeds for young women in the struggle on “Selling Lashes.” It wouldn’t have taken this latest edition of 7220 for most fans to know that Lil Durk contains multitudes, but with it he’s done something not even diehards could have foreseen. He’s revealed even more about the most famous person to have called Chicago’s 7220 S. Halsted home.