★★★★★
It's unfortunate that the narrative surrounding Chief Keef is bigger than Finally Rich, the record containing the haranguing street single I Don't Like that shot the Chicago rapper to fame. Even if the music isn't all that good, the tangential dialogue distracts from the fact that at the centre of it all is Keef, a 17-year-old facing very real, troubling circumstances (including 60 days' jail time for violating probation). This makes it difficult to listen to the music dispassionately...
- nowtoronto.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
There were almost 500 homicides in Chicago in 2012, mostly shootings, mostly gang-related, and mostly involving young African-American men. The local street rap that eminates from Chicago's most violent districts is called drill music. Drill is slang for revenge, and revenge factors heavily into many of Chicago's homicides...
- rapreviews.com
2013-01-08
★★★★★
Chief Keef: 'distressing, elementary and samey, yet utterly unignorable'. Photograph: Johnny Nunez/WireImage Although the benighted lives of young black people in the poorer boroughs of the US remains one of the most shocking failures of the first world, it has been a while since hip-hop as a genre has felt genuinely alarming...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-01-05
★★★★★
"Ha, ha, ha": 17-year-old Chicago drill rapper Chief Keef's syllables land like lead weights on concrete. Deliberately defining a song titled Laughin' to the Bank by its absence of any mirth is entirely in character for Keef, who wears his perpetual screwface like a badge of pride across Finally Rich and never once lets light in...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-01-03
★★★★★
For a 17-year-old YouTube champ with a co-sign from Kanye West (who refashioned the Chicago rapper's viral hit "I Don't Like" for radio), Chief Keef is weirdly lacking in irony. Beyond "I Don't Like," which inverts the Facebook thumbs-up for snitches and shitty weed, his label debut hops from one homely declaration to the next, whether it's "Hate Bein' Sober" (with a bemused 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa) or "Laughin' to the Bank," with its hollow "ha ha ha" punctuation...
- www.rollingstone.com
2012-12-28
★★★★★
The line between reality and fantasy in rap music has blurred so much it might seem like a blessing to some, a tapering-off of an unreasonable double standard that demanded every bar out of a lyricist's mouth to be rooted in truth. One need only look at the improbable ascent of "Officer Ricky" Ross to see that some talent, an unwavering dedication to a narrative, and corporate music business backing can trump an otherwise inopportune smoking gun...
- thequietus.com
2012-12-19
★★★★★
"Finally Rich" is Chief Keef's long awaited debut aiming to capitalize on hoopla that spectators find puzzling, disturbing and compelling. Perhaps 2012's greatest viral success story, Chief Keef's rambunctious antics captured through video and social media have made him a troublemaker and an unassuming branding expert simultaneously...
- www.hiphopdx.com
2012-12-18
★★★★★
"Finally Rich" is Chief Keef's long awaited debut aiming to capitalize on hoopla that spectators find puzzling, disturbing and compelling. Perhaps 2012's greatest viral success story, Chief Keef's rambunctious antics captured through video and social media have made him a troublemaker and an unassuming branding expert simultaneously...
- www.hiphopdx.com
2012-12-18
★★★★★
December 17, 2012|Greg Kot | Music critic Rating: 2 stars (out of 4) Chief Keef's major-label debut, "Finally Rich" (Interscope/Glory Boys), caps a year in which he started out living in his grandmother's home under house arrest for a gun charge and ended up with an Interscope contract, his own record label, and a national stage as Chicago's latest hip-hop star...
- articles.chicagotribune.com
2012-12-18
Loading...
