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Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the death of Rodney Kyles Jr., a philosophy student at Roosevelt and an aspiring MC who rapped under the name In Rod We Lust. Kyles was 19 when he was stabbed to death in Lincoln Park in front of his friend Chancelor Bennett, who is better known as local hip-hop phenom Chance the Rapper. When I profiled Bennett before he dropped his breakout Acid Rap mixtape at the end of April, he talked about how Kyles’s death had had a major impact on his life, and that influence shows in the rapper’s music—Kyles has been a constant presence in Bennett’s tunes, from the opening moments of #10Day to Acid Rap knockouts such as “Juice” and “Acid Rain.” Bennett isn’t the only MC who has rapped about Kyles; when Dikembe Caston (aka Kembe X) heard his friend had passed away, he forwent sleeping and wrote a tune called “The Wager (In Rod We Lust),” one of the best tracks off his Self Rule mixtape.
