The rapper, who has lived in California for the past several years, thinks for a moment, and then confesses to missing the city in its entirety. In a recent interview, Snoop Dogg asks Keef what he loves the most about being from Chicago. Glimpses of his school days surface on “Keke Palmer,” where there’s an early reference to blue books on “Text,” he recalls toting a BB gun in his lunch bag in second grade and on the fearsome throwback “Glory Bridge,” he’s thinking about how fly he looked at school. There are several indications of Keef’s growth on Dedication, but nostalgia is the principal element that unites the record’s grab bag of styles and approaches. 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.
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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. It is now a word to generally describe full-length albums released for free, which is the modern form of mixtape that was made a popular following by 50 Cent and his group G-Unit in the early 2000s, sometimes containing all original music, other times composed of freestyles and remixes of popular tracks.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. In the hip hop scene, mix tape is often displayed as a single term mixtape. Also since the 1990s, it describes releases used to promote one or more new artists, or as a pre-release by more established artists to promote upcoming "official" albums.
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Blend tapes became increasingly popular by the mid-1990s, and fans increasingly looked for exclusive tracks and freestyles on the tapes. Ron G moved the mixtape forward in the early 1990s by blending R&B a cappellas with hip hop beats (known as "blends"). In the mid-1980s, DJs, such as Brucie B, began recording their live music and selling their own mixtapes, which was soon followed by other DJs such as Kid Capri and Doo Wop. (who later became known as Whiz Kid) and DJ Super V would create personalized House Tapes which would eventually circulate throughout New York City. In the late 70's into the early 80's DJs began recording mixtapes out of their homes, referring to them as House Tapes. As more tapes became available, they began to be collected and traded by fans. Hip hop mixtapes first appeared in the mid-1970s in New York City, featuring artists such as Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa.
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In hip hop's earliest days, the music only existed in live form, and the music was spread via tapes of parties and shows.