I don’t think anybody else who was offering him a deal at that time was going to Englewood to sit at the foot of his grandmother’s bed and talk to her about my vision for her grandson.”Īfter a bidding war that found Birdman, T.I. “I shouldn’t have been in the belly of the beast to the degree that I was,” remembers Jackson, who’s now the head of content at Apple Music, “but I loved the music and I was such a proponent of wanting to be the conduit for the culture that I put myself arguably in harm’s way to really get it done.
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Under house arrest for months after a gun charge in December 2011, Keef shot his first viral videos at his grandmother’s place, including “John Madden,” “It’s Cracking,” “Everydays Halloween” and “3 Hunna,” plus “I Don’t Like.” Unaware of how dangerous Chicago’s South Side was at the time but cognizant of the impending bidding war for Keef, Jackson flew to Englewood to meet with the teenage rapper while Keef was still living at his grandmother Margaret Carter’s house. This looks like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’” “The feeling that I had within me was like… holy shit. “I saw the new face of hip-hop,” Jackson remembers about watching that video for the first time. Jackson pulled up the “I Don’t Like” video, which he says only had about 1,000 plays or so at the time, and proceeded to watch in awe. But when Valentine asked if Jackson had heard of Chief Keef, the A&R vet’s ears perked up his younger brother had sent him a link to the Chicago rapper’s music earlier that same day. At the time, Jackson was the executive vice president of A&R at the label, and that same night he’d been blown away after hearing Maroon 5’s “Pay Phone” for the first time. One night in March 2012, Larry Jackson was sitting in his office at Interscope Records with singer/songwriter J. A year later, Keef was one of only two rappers featured on Yeezus. Yet his widespread importance was immediately obvious: less than three months after Keef dropped “I Don’t Like” in 2012, Kanye hi-jacked it as the lead single for his upcoming G.O.O.D. His grasp of melody and catchy songwriting helped him elevate the homegrown drill sound to a national level, but most people outside Chicago had little understanding of how strong Keef’s grassroots support was within the city. His original 2012 video for “I Don’t Like,” which was deleted from YouTube because it had too many guns in it, set the standard for gun-heavy, no-frills music videos moving forward, and the critical acclaim of his debut album, Finally Rich, from “hipster” publications like Spin and Pitchfork caused some to wonder whether rap’s moral center had moved too far to the White. Rising out of Chicago’s rough Englewood neighborhood with a hit single at the age of 16, the rapper, born Keith Farrelle Shantique Cozart, quickly became the most controversial artist in the industry. Five years ago, Chief Keef was hip-hop’s next big thing.