I’m as averse to mid-year “best of” lists as I am to year-end lists, which is to say I try and steer clear of most of the ones I find. But there’s always a few good ones to pick through, and, as usual, Fake Shore Drive is the source of one of them. The site’s “Best Songs of 2014 (So Far)” offers an encyclopedic overview of the city’s expansive hip-hop landscape and all the overlapping microscenes within it. As local rap icons release compelling material and spotlight-grabbing youngsters take up much of the oxygen reserved for Chicago MCs on a national level, a quick peek at this list shows that there’s a rich world of rappers honing their craft far from the gaze of the rest of the rap planet.
No matter how closely we all listen to new tracks and artists there’s always going to be something great we’ll all miss on a first pass (or second or third), and, in my case, I very well could’ve not heard a single bar from local MC Goody had I not combed through Fake Shore Drive’s list. The site included Goody’s recent “All I Know” on the list, and the tune’s gossamer, 80s-pop keys and punchy, sparse percussion won me over pretty quickly. I’ve been playing catch-up with Goody’s small catalog, which keeps expanding. A couple weeks ago he released a digital single called “Shawty Swing” with a posi B side that’s captured my attention; on “The World (What If)” Goody raps about the possibilities of a Chicago free from gun violence, vibing off of a feel-good beat that sounds like it leapt out of a time capsule from 1994. He’s working on a longer project called ToAnyOne (21), which is supposed to come out sometime this year—these tracks will certainly suffice until then.
Leor Galil writes about hip-hop every Wednesday.