Writing for NBC, veteran Chicago political journalist and author, Edward McClelland, described “Don’t Like” rapper Chief Keef’s debut album on Interscope Records, Finally Rich, as a “minstrel show.”
According to McClelland, author of the books “Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President” and “Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland,” the 17-year-old Chicago rapper is nothing but a “real live South Side thug” whom he hasn’t “the stomach for” in the wake of the horrifying massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza brutally murdered 20 children and 6 adults with a semi-automatic rifle, after killing his mother in her bed.
McClelland wrote that Keef’s, real name Keith Cozart, violent past and gang affiliation should have stopped him from listening, but his curiosity was “piqued”:
It should’ve been enough to put me off his music, which, from what I’ve heard of it, is pretty lunkheaded: simplistic rhymes, primitive beats. But it’s also a window into the world that has made Chicago the murder capital of America, and that piqued my curiosity.
Since last week’s murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, though, I haven’t had the stomach for any violent entertainment. While I was watching this Sunday’s Bears game, ads for the movies Gangster Squad and Django Unchained came on TV. Both ads packed two or three shootings into 30 seconds. I don’t want to see either. A culture that glorifies the sexiness of the man with the gun is one reason we have 300,000,000 guns in America. I also don’t want to pay $14 for the minstrel show of listening to a real live South Side thug. I don’t want to support a scene that makes gangbanging a resume builder for music success.
Retaliation for the unsolved September 4 murder of Lil JoJo, 18, real name Joseph Coleman, has possibly led to multiple deaths that Chicago police are currently investigating. JoJo’s distraught mother, Robin Russell, said she doesn’t believe Chief Keef pulled the trigger, but she does believe that he hired a hitman and she also fears for her life.
JoJo taunted Keef, and associates Lil Durk and Lil Reese, in a diss track posted on YouTube. In a separate video, JoJo can be heard antagonizing an alleged Keef associate, who clearly responds, “I’ma kill you!” The tension escalated and threats were exchanged on Twitter, culminating with JoJo’s death mere hours later after he tweeted his location.
Chief Keef has continuously denied involvement, even after mocking the murder on Twitter.
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