But five years later, with Keef matured and mellowed, it’s easier to listen to his current music and pick up on the charisma that caused one of his deeply passionate Chicago fans to threaten to beat the hell out of anyone questioning his reputation back in the day. In his hometown paper’s good-faith review of his major label debut, Finally Rich, the writer Greg Kot asserted that Keef’s sole innovation had been to appear colder than any other contemporary gangster rapper, and dismissed his mumbled verses as “robotic, deadpan, stoned.” It was a fair assessment, if a stingy one.
Keef’s unconstructed approach to rap has earned him ferocious critics, in addition to those who would summarily dismiss him for being simply a bad influence, a media spectacle, or both. It’s a worthy capstone to a year in which Keef has released four solid-to-great solo projects, resurrecting his reputation and career. His latest full-length, Dedication, is a testament to how much he’s grown-not necessarily as an artist (though that’s there too), but as a person. But Cozart is 22 now, and in industry terms, his arrival might as well have been a decade ago. The lightning to the thunder that was “I Don’t Like” was a WorldStar video of a kid excited that Keef, who had been sentenced to house arrest for unlawful use of a weapon, had been released-the first hint of the enthusiasm that would accompany the rapper’s initial rise. He was 16 years old then, and for many, he was inextricably linked with the crisis of gun violence in his native Chicago. Keith Cozart has been known to the public as Chief Keef since 2012, when his first hit, “I Don’t Like,” vaulted him into the national consciousness.
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