Chief Keef 2015

Album Review: Chief Keef – Nobody

chief-keef-nobody-albumIt’s easy to snicker about Yeezy’s star due to his collaboration with Chief Keef turning into an entire Chief Keef album.  Still, it’s more likely that Nobody is an album because he’s still relatively fresh off of the end of his tenure at Interscope Records.  Now independent, Keef is free to release as much as he wants, as evidenced by mixtapes past, album present, and mixtapes future.  The pleasant surprise is Keef’s album, which reaches some of the high points that its predecessor, Finally Rich did.

Nobody shows that Keef’s emphasis on rapping on October’s Back From The Dead 2 was a ruse, as the album is a concise hook fest.  His gravitation toward auto tune weaves into bop territory, essentially making Chief Keef a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  And while all the kids love the robot voice, Chief Keef using auto-tune isn’t  novel concept, and he doesn’t abandon drill entirely either.  Even the album’s most tender moments are liable to be accompanied by its rolling hi-hats.

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Chief KeefEvidence that this is analogous to 808s & Heartbreak is only theoretical, as the Kanye-assisted title track is a “Bound 2 The Leaves” number, as Chief Keef raps in front of a trap beat and Kanye harmonizing with a sample of Willie Hutch’s “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out.”  The result is messy, but it’s possibly one of his best tracks yet.  Fortunately, the rest of the album keeps from being mere filler that surrounds this gem.

“Nobody” notwithstanding, the album is front loaded, weaving between the confident pop he’s become renown for and some of his most unlikely experiments.  It’s a pleasant surprise that this album isn’t a sledgehammer.  Keef’s in a weird position considering that he’s independently releasing an album that was presumably recorded on a major label dime, while being one of rap’s biggest names.  It’s clear that Keef is more unhinged than Finally Rich here, as a result, but, fortunately, not as unhinged as some of his mixtapes.  The problem here is despite Keef’s unprecedented focus, he hasn’t fleshed out his vision.  Chief Keef had the right idea keeping the album under 40 minutes, but could have afforded to cut a few songs off the album to get everything he can out of the album’s early highlights like “Aint Just Me” and “Fast N Furious.”  While it’s obvious he’s not throwing ideas against the wall to see if they stick, Chief Keef remains sporadic when it comes to the finer points of his releases.  On Nobody, that works for and against him.

Album Rating: 3.5/5

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