In his 1994 single “Juicy,” the Notorious B.I.G. turned the 1993 World Trade Center bombings into a punch line (“Time to get paid / Blow up like the World Trade”), and after 9/11 you could feel a lot of MCs fighting the temptation to do something similar. Maybe because that tragedy was so much larger, most had the good taste to steer clear. Even eight years later, the extended 9/11 metaphor Jay-Z attempts on The Blueprint 3—proposing an analogy between the crack game and the WTC attacks on the third verse of “Thank You”—feels pretty tacky. So it seems like a safe bet that the Clear Channels and MTVs of the world aren’t ready for the trio of Chicago rappers who call themselves Bin Laden Blowin’ Up.
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BBU make some of the best dance-floor hip-hop in Chicago, though, thumping with the restless energy of juke and Baltimore club, so they’d better get used to having their tracks mistaken for party-rap shit. Not everybody is going to pay attention to their lyrics or pick up on the touch of punk prickliness in their delivery. If you’ve only heard one BBU song, it’s likely the lethally infectious juke-hop anthem “Chi Don’t Dance,” recorded last year and a steady-growing phenomenon since the spring. And it’s a case in point: over a hazy, weirdly melancholy minor-key synth figure and a stripped-down beat that’s almost double the tempo of a laid-back G-funk cut, a chanted mob vocal worthy of a So So Def Bass All-Stars comp tells us that “Chi don’t dance no more / All we do is juke,” and between choruses the three MCs trade double-time raps a la “Bombs Over Baghdad.” It’s such a simple, addictive track (and spends so much time talking about dancing) that you might be surprised by the content of those rapid-fire rhymes: “BET taught me to hate me,” “Red black green / Let’s get free,” “No bitches, no hos / We ride with queens.”
BBU came together two and a half years ago in a relatively politicized corner of the city’s underground hip-hop scene, a loose circuit of DIY spaces where rappers and spoken-word artists tend to spit their diatribes about social injustice to other rappers and spoken-word artists. Both individually and as BBU they were regulars at Quennect 4, an activism-minded arts space near North and California, and until recently—maybe nine or ten months ago—they stuck mostly to DIY shows for ideological reasons. Now they’re trying to bring the conscious message of Bin Laden Blowin’ Up out into the larger world. They’ve put out all their songs for free through MySpace and other online outlets, and that’s also how they plan to release their first mix tape, which they hope to have finished in November.
“A lot of cats can MC or whatever,” says Wallace, “but can you turn out a beat that’s at 180 BPM and spit some conscious shit?”
