Back in April east-side rapper Keith Cozart uploaded a video to YouTube, “Chief Keef Tweaking Off Soulja Boy Gold Bricks SONG,” that would help make him the most polarizing teenage cultural export Chicago has ever seen. Filmed with a computer camera and set in a room littered with clothes, the video features a dreadlocked 16-year-old brandishing a messy stack of bills, peeling off one after another and waving them in front of the camera—first the Benjamins, then the Grants, then the Jacksons—as Soulja Boy’s Auto-Tune-plastered track leaks out from the computer’s speakers. Cozart half mumbles, half sings his way through the song, taking breaks from flashing his cash to show off his white tank top and iPhone, and to strike a variety of hard-looking poses. This kind of flaunting is pretty common in an age when any kid with an ego and Internet access can upload braggadocio to his preferred social media site; what sets Cozart apart is that just a few months after recording the video he swung by the Pitchfork Music Festival for a cameo performance—in front of a thunderous crowd of thousands of surprised attendees—that became a highlight of the weekend.
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Cozart has actively invited and engaged controversy on his rise to fame thanks to his violent and anarchic songs. On his breakout hit, “I Don’t Like,” he boasts that he’s “pistol toting and I’m shooting on sight” and “I done got indicted selling all white.” The backlash against Cozart reached new heights after his flippant and reckless (alleged) response to the death of 18-year-old Joseph “Lil JoJo” Coleman, who was gunned down earlier this month while riding double on a bike with a friend on 69th and Princeton. This was hours after Coleman publicized his whereabouts on Twitter—and months after he released “3hunna K,” a track that disses Cozart and his GBE crew. The next day, a series of tweets in response to Coleman’s tragic demise showed up on Cozart’s feed (he claims he didn’t type them), sparking a police investigation into a possible connection between Cozart’s crew and Coleman’s death, jump-starting rumors of an intense rivalry between the pair, raising speculation that Interscope might drop Cozart, and launching a new wave of anti-Cozart fervor. One of the tweets on Cozart’s feed particularly captured the public’s attention: “Its Sad Cuz Dat Nigga Jojo Wanted to Be Jus Like Us #LMAO.”
Yes, Cozart’s songs are cruel and treacherous, but so are the Chicago streets that inspired them. A loyal legion of young fans from the city’s most blighted neighborhoods took to him long before Kanye West and Interscope came calling. This time last year Cozart’s name didn’t register outside of the south side, but he was a superstar to the thousands of Chicago Public Schools students who listened to him on YouTube. Tremaine “Tree” Johnson, a 28-year-old rapper who lives in Englewood, works outside the drill scene—the locally grown, apocalyptic spin on the gangster-style trap music that Cozart and company are known for—but he understands why the sound is popular among south-side teens. “He looks like us, he sounds like us, and his lingo is what we say and how we talk,” Johnson says.
Last month Gawker’s Cord Jefferson asked why Chicago’s deadly summer had largely been ignored by the country. Now the national media has found a hook—and a face—for its coverage of Chicago violence. And as Cozart has exposed the bleakest parts of our city, he’s lifted himself out of obscurity. His ascent has been stuck in hyperdrive, and as a result, more eyes have fallen on Chicago’s rap community—eager to find the next big thing.
