Last month drill giant and Chicago rap royal King Louie dropped his first full-length in six years, Life With Louie (Man Up Band Up/Machine Entertainment Group). I hadn’t really reckoned with what that long gap might mean for the world of rap. Louie’s string of early-2010s mixtapes gave rappers around the city (and the world) […]
Tag: Machine Entertainment Group
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G Herbo uses his own journey toward healing to help Black youth treat their trauma
Chicago rapper G Herbo wants to normalize therapy for people who’ve suffered like he has—and he’s giving away hundreds of sessions.
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Chicago rapper G Herbo gives his reflective raps new shapes on PTSD
I wish the right-wing miscreants in the federal government were as dependable as Chicago rapper G Herbo. For close to a decade, he’s released albums and mixtapes of rapid-fire drill with reassuring frequency, and even his most run-of-the-mill offerings benefit from his pragmatic empathy and lucid descriptions—he brings a distinctive emotional gravity to his detailed […]
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Queen Key demands what she wants—and that matters
Queen Key’s outsize confidence sends a message of support to black women who know the odds are stacked against them.
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It’s G Herbo’s time to give back
Lately it seems like G Herbo can’t even play a show in Chicago, but the city’s favorite street rapper has found another way to give back: he’s joined a project to turn part of a shuttered south-side school into a media lab and music incubator.
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Chicago rapper Queen Key is gonna need a bigger crown
With this summer’s Eat My Pussy, Chicago rapper Queen Key proves herself a star in the making, ready to carve out a larger role for women in the city’s hip-hop scene.