Chief Keef and crew @ Pitchfork Festival 2012 (more by James Richards IV)

According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago rapper Chief Keef has been sentenced to 60-days of juvenile detention for violating his probation by visiting a gun range (and other things). His sentencing hearing was just earlier this afternoon. Stay tuned for more information.

Chief Keef (center) and crew @ Pitchfork Festival 2012 (more by James Richards IV)

Chicago rapper Chief Keef was jailed Tuesday after a judge found he violated probation.

Keef, whose real name is Keith Cozart, appeared in Cook County juvenile court. Cozart, 17, is on probation for pointing a gun at Chicago Police officers.

Judge Carl Anthony Walker found Cozart showed a "willful disregard" of the court. He's being held until Thursday when the judge will hold a sentencing hearing.

Prosecutors said he violated his probation in June when he visited a gun range in New York. He was prohibited by the judge from having contact with firearms. His attorney Dennis Berkson argued Cozart fired a rifle on private property as part of a promotional video. He said that didn't violate the spirit of the judge's order. [Chicago Sun-Times]

Chief Keef welcomed his debut LP, Finally Rich, on December 18 via Interscope.

King Louie tops the list with "Val Venis"

Chicago-based hip hop site Fake Shore Drive have listed their picks for the 100 best Chicago rap songs of 2012. King Louie tops the list with his track "Val Venis," and Lil Durk, Chief Keef, Lil Reese, Chance the Rapper, Giftz, Kanye West, and L.E.P. Bogus Boys are all in the top 10.

There are a few very interesting things about this top 10. Young Chop produced four of the 10 tracks, two of which are Chief Keef's "I Don't Like" and "Love Sosa." Lil Reese is featured on Keef's "I Don't Like" and also makes the list with his own "Us," which was produced by none other than Young Chop. Tree co-produced Chance the Rapper's "Hey Ma," and handled full production and was featured on Giftz' "Nino. Lil Durk is featured on King Louie's "Want It All," which is the fourth track on the list that Young Chop produced, and also made the cut with his own "L's Anthem." (It's a lot to take in at once, huh?)

Check out Fake Shore Drive's entire 100-song list HERE.

As we mentioned back in October, Pitchfork's video of Chief Keef at a gun range, which they retracted after the news of possible connections between Chief Keef and rival rapper Lil JoJo's murder, may potentially land Keef in jail. Chicago Tribune now reports that Pitchfork is being ordered by a judge to turn over the footage to the court:

A media company that shot an online video showing South Side rapper Chief Keef holding a rifle at a gun range must turn over the entire uncut version of the footage to Cook County prosecutors so they can determine whether the teen violated his probation, a judge ruled today.

Lawyers for Pitchfork Media, an Internet-based music publication, had objected to turning over the footage, claiming an order to do so would violate First Amendment protections.

But Judge Carl Anthony Walker, who sits in Juvenile Court, ruled the footage must be turned over by next Wednesday because prosecutors had met their burden of showing the material was not available through other means.

The video was shot earlier this year when the 17-year-old rapper did an on-camera interview with Pitchfork at a gun range in New York. In the video, Chief Keef, whose real name is Keith Cozart, is reportedly seen with a rifle.

Prosecutors have argued that by holding the rifle the rapper violated the terms of his probation following his conviction last year for pointing a gun at a Chicago cop.

A hearing on the probation violation was scheduled for Dec. 17, the day before the his debute record on a major nationwide label is set to be released. Cozart could be locked up if the judge finds he violated his probation.

'Chicago Hip Hop Insider' David Newman posted a list of the top 20 Chicago rappers of 2012. rubyhornet reposted that list with reasons why they do not agree. Chief Keef tops the list and is followed by King L at #2. Check out the whole thing HERE.

"The haters tryna see a mf Dwn lol Dey gotta b broke and bored wanna upload sum shit from years ago damnn we winnin it's 2 late...#3hunna" - Lil Reese

A video just surfaced of Chief Keef affiliate Lil Reese violently beating a woman who is allegedly the mother of his child (via HipHopDX). Lil Reese confirms on twitter (quoted above) that it is him in the video, but says that it's an old video posted by "The haters tryna see a mf Dwn lol."

This video surfaces not long after news that Chief Keef too may end up in jail. You can watch the very violent event go down in the video below...

Continue reading "violent, upsetting video surfaces of Lil Reese beating a woman"

Menomena @ Music Hall of Williamsburg earlier on tour (more by Greg Cristman)

today in Chicago
* Menomena, PVT @ Metro
* Black Prairie, Shelley Short @ Schubas
* Native, My Dad, Droughts @ Beat Kitchen
* Abigail Washburn, Prince Florence @ SPACE
* Smashing Pumpkins, Anberlin @ Allstate Arena
* Old 97's, Salim Nourallah, Rhett Miller @ the Vic
* Vamos, Mondo Drag, Moonrises @ The Burlington
* WHY?, Naytronix, The Black Swans @ Lincoln Hall
* Yakuza, Dysrhythmia, Helen Money @ Empty Bottle

Yakuza celebrate the release of their new LP, Beyul, with a hometown show at the Empty Bottle tonight. Take a listen to Beyul in its entirety below.

The Smashing Pumpkins play what Billy Corgan said "might end up being biggest show of tour" at the Allstate Arena tonight.

Menomena and PVT are playing Metro.

Naytronix (aka tUnE-yArDs bassist Nate Brenner) plays Lincoln Hall with WHY? and The Black Swans.

Chief Keef, who's looking at some jail time for possibly violating the terms of his probation, has a new video for "Love Sosa." Check it out below.

Local Natives have shared a track called "Breakers" from their forthcoming LP Hummingbird. Take a listen to it below.

Follow @bvChicago on Twitter, "Like" us on Facebook.

Follow bvChicago on Instagram.

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Friday?"

At one point Wednesday, he was chided by his probation officer for signing court papers "Chief Keef" instead of his real name.

He wore baggy fatigues, a white T-shirt, an oversize gold watch, new Michael Jordan gym shoes and a blue down vest to his hearing. As he waited for his case, one woman scolded him, saying, "Young man in the blue jacket, pull your pants up!"

He is serving 18 months of probation for pointing a gun at a Chicago cop. He was also found delinquent on two other felonies.

Prosecutors argued he violated the probation by holding a rifle in an online Pitchfork video.

Prosecutors pointed to the recorded promotional interview the rapper did in June at a gun range in New York, where he can be seen with a rifle. That's a violation, prosecutors said, because his probation bans him from having any guns or illegal drugs or associating with gang members.

Chief Keef also didn't get his GED by the August deadline set in his probation -- another violation, prosecutors said.

Chief Keef's attorney, Berkson, acknowledged the gun range video was "stupid" but argued it was not his client's fault because he was simply listening to advice from adults. [Sun Times]

Lupe Fiasco @ Firefly Music Festival 2012 (more by Dana (distortion) Yavin)

From an article by Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune:

"...So when upstart Chicago rappers like Keef began waving guns and chronicling street violence in their music, Fiasco told a radio interviewer this summer, "Chief Keef scares me. Not him specifically, but just the culture that he represents." Keef responded with an epithet-laden message on Twitter.

"My first comments were to express concern about the incubators of violence," Fiasco says. "I was more distraught and concerned about what causes all this violence to happen in the first place. Many of my friends are gangsters. Some of my best friends in the music business are gangsta rappers. I'm not flinching at a gun in a video, or a song about selling crack. I talked about the same things in my older records. It's not like this is brand new. My concern, and what everyone's concern should be, is that the circumstances that create a culture like that haven't changed. There have been no real solutions. So why wouldn't you expect a new crop of music like this from all cities?

"The mimicking of the culture you see now, the style of the music, originated in Atlanta, imported from (Atlanta rappers such as) Waka Flocka and Gucci Mane. Where did that come from? Detroit, Oakland. It starts to go around the map. It's the same venting in the music, how it sounds, its attitude, the callousness and aggressiveness. Underneath, what's there? I'm afraid Chicago is becoming Detroit. I'm afraid Chicago is dying. There is some semblance that society is running as normal. But as soon as you go two blocks outside the downtown radius, it's a wasteland."...

BONUS: check out "A Rational Conversation: Fake Shore Drive's Andrew Barber on Chief Keef and Chicago's Murderously Successful Rap Moment..."

Watch Lupe's video for "Bitch Bad" below...

Continue reading "Lupe Fiasco is "afraid Chicago is dying""

From the NY Times:

"Hip-hop has long been associated with unvarnished truth, both by insiders looking to traffic in supposed authenticity and shock value and by critics looking to keep it at arm's length from polite society. But that's an outmoded value in contemporary hip-hop, which skews heavily toward the triumphant, the fantastical and the unattainable -- Drake and 2 Chainz talking about stealing girlfriends, Rick Ross boasting about wealth and so on. No one's struggling, everyone's celebrating.

What's notable about Chief Keef and much of the Chicago music scene that he's come to symbolize -- known locally as drill music -- is how those elements are all but absent. With rare exception this music is unmediated and raw and without bright spots, focused on anger and violence. The instinct is to call this tough, unforgiving and concrete-hard music joyless, but in truth it's exuberant in its darkness. Most of its practitioners are young and coming into their creative own against a backdrop of outrageous violence in Chicago, particularly among young people -- dozens of teenagers have been killed in Chicago this year -- and often related to gangs. (There's a long history of overlap between Chicago's gangs and Chicago's rap.) That their music is a symphony of ill-tempered threats shouldn't be a surprise."

To quote BET:

Chief Keef has found himself mired in a discussion about the perils of gangster rap after one of his rivals, 18-year-old Lil JoJo, was gunned down in the street last week. But according to Keef's grandmother, with whom he lives in Chicago, the buzzed about rapper isn't the thugged-out gangster he portrays in rhyme. Rather, Keef, neè Keith Cozart, is just an ordinary 17-year-old who spends his time playing loud music, raiding granny's refrigerator and hanging out with girls.

"How can he be doing all that gang stuff when he's always home and when he's not at home he's out of town with me or his uncle?" Keef's grandmother Margaret Carter told the Chicago Sun-Times in a recent interview. "And where's this gang at? In my kitchen? In my basement? Where they at? In my refrigerator where he go all the time?"

"Look, I'm Granny. That's what they call me and I didn't grow up with none of that mess. That don't go in my godd--- house," she added. "Let's be real, I'm always saying, 'Cut that down, turn that off, that's too loud' when he's doing all that music... And girls is his thing. Girls, girls, girls. I get sick of all them girls."

Continue reading "Chief Keef is no gangster, says his grandma"

That all said, he did not actually quit Twitter.

PREVIOUSLY: Police looking at Chief Keef's tweets & gang connections in Lil JoJo murder case

a screenshot from the Pitchfork.TV episode

Pitchfork posted the following earlier today:

"Selector" is a Pitchfork.tv show in which we interview rappers and watch them freestyle over beats. We often try to conduct these shows in unusual locations, and several months ago we interviewed Chief Keef at a gun range in New York City. This concept was rushed and never should have happened. We're proud of the "Selector" series as a whole and its production will continue, but this particular episode was insensitive and irresponsible.

Pitchfork's roots are in Chicago and many of our employees and several contributors live in the city. The horror of the gun violence that has plagued our hometown is something we all take very seriously. Many people have pointed out that this episode could be seen as trivializing gun violence, and we feel they have a good point.

Given recent news regarding the shooting of Chicago rapper Lil Jojo and the investigation of people involved in Chicago's rap scene, this seems like the right time to express our regrets regarding that episode. We apologize for this mistake and have removed the video from our archives.

As we posted on BrooklynVegan last night, 18 year old rapper Lil JoJo was slain in Chicago the other night and rival 17 year old Chicago rapper Chief Keef (who played Pitchfork, and Lolla and is on the cover of FADER) made light of the situation on Twitter. The Sun-Times now reports:

Keef's manager, Rovan Manuel, told the Sun-Times he was unaware of the controversy. It wasn't until being told about the Tweet by the Sun-Times that Manuel realized why his phone rang incessantly Wednesday. His number was posted on Chief Keef's Twitter page.

But Manuel told the Sun-Times he didn't believe the message meant "anything personally." He said Keef had a beef with JoJo only because "that kid made songs like Keef."

"A lot of the stuff Keef does, that's just cause he's a kid," Manuel said. "People forget that he's a kid, a teenager ... and kids make mistakes. He makes mistakes the hard way."

Chicago police officers were on the street Wednesday night looking for Coleman's killer. Police are looking to see if his murder is connected to an ongoing conflict in Englewood between the Gangster Disciples and Black Disciples street gangs that has been playing out in a series of threats on social media sites.

"Two gangs are fighting each other, going at each other all over the Internet and this is all stemming from that," a police source said.

Police are also looking into whether Coleman had gang affiliations, and whether Keef or any of his associates are connected to the gang conflict or Coleman's murder, the source said.

Many of Chief Keef's Tweets include a hashtag notation "#300" -- a known reference, police say, to the Black Disciples street gang. And Coleman appears to have been warring online with the Black Disciples for months...

Catch Chief Keef at Lollapalooza this weekend.

by Andrew Sacher

Chief Keef w/ Araabmuzik at Pitchfork Fest 2012 more by James Richards IV)

Chicago rapper Chief Keef's single, "I Don't Like," off of his free Back From The Dead mixtape, is virtually everywhere. When I'm not playing the song myself, I'm hearing it in stores, in passing car stereos, and playing through the PA at shows, like at Purity Ring's recent NYC show, where it was played multiple times. Plus there's the Kanye remix, Schoolboy Q and Ab-Soul covered it live in Chicago, and Keef just came out on stage at Chicago's Pitchfork Festival during AraabMuzik's set to play the song with Lil Reese (who's featured on the track) and Young Chop (who produced it). A video of that is below.

Now, anyone who grabbed tickets for this year's Lollapalooza, which goes down in Chicago's Grant Park this weekend (8/3-5) will get a chance to hear that song (and his others) because Chief Keef has been added to Lollapalooza. He'll play the Perry's stage at 12:15 PM on Saturday (8/4). The updated schedule can be viewed HERE.

Keef recently inked a deal with Interscope, who will be releasing his major label debut album at some point, though some are already speculating that he might be a one hit wonder. What do you think?

Video below...

Continue reading "Chief Keef added to Lollapalooza; guested w/ AraabMuzik, Lil Reese & Young Chop at Pitchfork Fest (video)"

King Louie

MTV2's Sucker Free, Fake Shore Drive, and others are throwing a huge Chicago hip hop show at Adrianna's in Markham, IL on Sunday, May 20. The lineup, featuring over 20-local rappers and DJs, includes King Louie, the L.E.P. Bogus Boys, Treated Crew, Chief Keef, Katie Got Bandz, Fredo Santana, Lil Reese, Sasha Go Hard, and many more. Scope the full lineup at the bottom of this post via a show flyer. Tickets will ONLY be available at the door.

This show is a pretty rare collection of some of Chicago's rising hip hop. For instance, Treated Crew (to our knowledge) haven't exactly performed live... ever. 16-year old rapper Chief Keef, who is still on house arrest, is slated to make his first live appearance since his controversial set at Spring Fest 2K12. Katie Got Bandz' surprise hits "I Need A Hitta" and "Ridin' Around & We Drillin'" (recently remixed by King Louie; listen below) haven't particularly faced a proper crowd yet either.

Some videos and a show flyer below...

Continue reading "King Louie, L.E.P. Bogus Boys, Treated Crew, Chief Keef & others are playing a BIG show this month in Markham"

Schoolboy Q @ Reggie's on Tuesday (5/8) (via)

On Tuesday night (May 8), Schoolboy Q and Ab-Soul brought The Groovy Tour through Chicago for a show at Reggie's. Where you there? How was it? Maybe you went to his meet and greet at Jugrnaut earlier in the day? Check out two videos from the show at the bottom of this post, one of which is an eight-minute clip of Q's "There He Go," "Hands On The Wheel," and a cover of Chief Keef's "I Don't Like."

Watch below...

Continue reading "Schoolboy Q & Ab-Soul played Reggie's, covered Chief Keef (videos)"

Kanye West, Pusha T, Jadakiss, and Big Sean have remixed young and up-and-coming Chicago rapper Chief Keef's track "I Don't Like." Take a listen over at Fake Shore Drive. Chief Keef's original in video form below...

Continue reading "listen: Kanye, Pusha T, Jadakiss & Big Sean's Chief Keef remix"

King Louie

Spring Fest 2K12 is set to take place at the Congress Theater this Friday (April, 13). "The biggest concert house party in Chicago history" will feature Meek Mill (who heads out on tour with Drake in May) and The Untouchable Maybach Family, Twista, King Louie, Bo Deal, and KP. Advance tickets are on sale.

Chicago rapper King Louie (pictured above) is currently in the studio working on a collaborative mixtape with Chief Keef. Check out a new track of theirs, titled "Ignorance," over at Fake Shore Drive.

Some videos, below..

Continue reading "Spring Fest is taking place at the Congress this weekend - (Meek Mill, King Louie, KP, Bo Deal & more)"