Chief Keef has at all times marched to the beat of his personal 808s.
Since exploding into fame as an adolescent within the early 2010s, he’s eschewed apparent paths to mainstream success in favor of solitary creation, immersing himself in all his artistic yearnings as he’s unloaded a number of careers’ value of fabric and cultivated standing as a contemporary rap people hero. It feels reductive to label anybody individual the daddy of drill music, however Keef is one thing near it. Tasks like Bang (2011) and Again From the Useless (2012) canonized his and producer Younger Chop’s penchant for pummeling anthems and unabashed road raps. In 2013, he expanded the scope of his sound with Almighty So, a challenge that blended his hammering drill basis with the disembodied melodies that may assist outline mid-2010s rap. Now — 11 years, many full-lengths, and one prolonged Chicago banishment later — he’s again with the long-delayed sequel. Checking in at over an hour, Almighty So 2 is a maximalist joyride that fuses propulsive blockboy theme songs with bursts of introspection and his customary absurdist humor. Ingenious, uninhibited, and enjoyable, it’s Keef in all his prodigious glory.
Produced virtually solely by himself, Almighty So 2 sees Keef commerce within the melodic thrives of Almighty So for pure blunt power; it’s not onerous to think about Waka Flocka Flame assaulting the Luger-esque beats with reckless abandon. With a foreboding bell, gothic choir background, and harmful percussion, the G Herbo and Ballout-assisted “Neph Nem” appears like a gap portal to hell, with Keef’s emphatic flexes and Herbo’s grizzled menace supplying a soundtrack to impending oblivion.
Keef retains every little thing fascinating with shapeshifting cadences that oscillate between playful and searingly violent. “Tony Montana” is deliriously goofy; Keef’s fluctuating inflections and infantile punchlines emit all of the looseness and scattershot spontaneity of a mid-blunt roasting session. Slurred and really unserious, “Deal with Myself” is as humorous as it’s imagistic. “Diamonds shinin’ off my appeal, I believe I Christmas tree’d myself/ I begin wearin’ yellow diamonds, it’ll look likе I peed myself,” Keef raps, serving irreverent flexes with all of the artistic aptitude of ’06 Gucci Mane.
On the extra aggressive finish of issues are tracks like “Jesus.” Pairing Keef’s harsh, guttural supply with a distorted choral pattern, it’s an unrestrained viciousness designed to destroy your audio system. He laces the aggression with cartoonish imagery, turning an op right into a sufferer of batting observe after giving a sidepiece recommendation on faith; “Don’t look as much as Chief Sosa, look as much as Jesus Christ” feels prefer it belongs on a T-shirt. The endearingly sophomoric humor, the dynamic tonal inflections, the flexibility to generate unrestrained fury — it’s all quintessential Keef.
For “Banded Up,” he transports Tierra Whack from her usually neonic playgrounds to someplace hellish, mixing a symbolic, infectious hook with a beat that’s without delay militaristic and otherwordly. His hoarse shouts and gunplay discuss are an attractive foil to Whack’s agile double-time verse, which might be essentially the most technically spectacular couplets on the entire challenge. After all, she manages to inject her personal Crayola-colored creativeness into the combo, too: “Did every little thing that they mentioned that I couldn’t/ Did every little thing that they mentioned that I wouldn’t/ I’m going bananas like cookies and pudding/ I’m ’bout to bubble like soda when shooken.”
Elsewhere, he reunites with Sexyy Crimson, a fellow Midwestern spitter who appears like one in every of his non secular successors. Their collaboration, “Grape Timber,” is a ratchet duet extracted from the material of mid-2000s mixtape ephemera, and it appears like an indication that they need to go forward and do an EP collectively. Sexyy matches Keef’s dismissive playboy ethos with informal confidence, and the hook carries heavy anthemic stature; suppose “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life For Me)” for the entice.
Threaded by exceedingly juvenile however entertaining Michael Blackson skits, mixtape DJ adlibs and unfiltered power, Almighty So 2 is as unhinged as Keef’s creative compulsions. However between the menace and hedonism, there are added layers of humanity (and fewer layers on his vocals). On “Jesus,” he raps concerning the non secular value of life within the trenches, utilizing spurts of irony to contextualize the battle: “I executed received my fingers soiled tryna hold ’em clear.” Coasting over a pixelated beat for “Consider,” he recounts his fractured childhood with informal resignation and simple immediacy: “I’m that child, I ain’t get to be a child/ Early age I began promoting dope like my folks did/ I used to be out and in my folks fridge/ Sensible as shit, more often than not needed to be an evil child.”
Chief Keef regrets his misplaced innocence, however regardless of quite a few courtroom circumstances, road beefs, and life within the proverbial quick lane, there’s at all times been an understated purity to his craft. For years, he’s created with out regard for hip-hop’s altering hemisphere — he was too busy being influential to fret about traits. As enjoyable as it’s nakedly trustworthy, Almighty So 2 is each a transparent distillation of pure Chief Keef the artist and the person he’s grown to be. Tethered to nothing however his personal artistic impulses, he simply retains on marching, with a brand new era following proper behind him.
