Chief Keef: 5 Things To Know About The Rapper & His BET Awards Performance

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Image Credit: Vikram Valluri/BFA/Shutterstock Chief Keef (b. Keith Cozart) is an American rapper. He is champion known for his songs “I Don’t Like” and “Love Sosa,” which helped popularize the drill subgenre. In 2023, helium was listed arsenic 1 of the BET Awards performers.

Time heals each wounds. Almost a decennary aft Chief Keef was banned from the BET Awards, the influential rapper volition instrumentality portion successful the 2023 ceremony, taking spot connected June 25 astatine 8 p.m. ET. The prohibition reportedly began successful 2013 erstwhile helium released a video astir the network. “Man, f–k BET!” Keef said successful a societal media clip, per XXL. “We retired here, man. If we spell to the BET Awards, chains getting took. B—hes getting f–ked. They mommas getting f–ked. Steal, pregnant, everything.”

(Vikram Valluri/BFA/Shutterstock)

Keef added substance to the rumors successful 2014, claiming helium was banned from the web and the awards due to the fact that helium didn’t be an variation of the network’s 106 & Park show. He said helium skipped connected the amusement “[because] I ain’t f—king consciousness similar it,” per XXL. Bow Wow later confirmed the ban, saying helium was “fighting to get [Keef] connected 106. It was a no-go from the uppers. They truly black-balled him from [the] mainstream. It’s crazy.”

However, Keef (born Keith Cozart) returns to the web aft helping make the dependable associated with drill rap. Keef, a Chicago native, began rapping arsenic a youth, utilizing his grandmother’s karaoke instrumentality to grounds his aboriginal raps. He dropped retired of precocious schoolhouse to prosecute his career, resulting successful him being hailed arsenic 1 of the astir influential voices of his generation. Get the scoop astir Keef below.

Chief Keef Loves True Religion.

In 2012, erstwhile Chief Keef was starting out, helium declared himself a “True Religion Fein” connected his critically-acclaimed mixtape, Back From The Dead. The opus included lines similar “We don’t privation nary witnesser / Move it similar its fittingness / My True conception ridiculous,” and “I’m a True Religion fein / I got connected True Religion jeans /Trick, what the f–k you mean? / Suck my True Religion jeans.”

Ten years later, Keef and True Religion teamed up for a collab that included jackets, jeans, shirts, and different True Religion pieces elaborate with flames, cartoon skulls, hearts, and different designs.

“It’s ever been a imagination to enactment with True Religion since backmost erstwhile I made the song,” helium told Complex about the collab. “I told them I started designing and wanted to bash a collab and enactment connected immoderate stuff. And they was down to fto maine bash it. They gave maine afloat creativity to bash it all. I conscionable went to work.”

He’s Had Some Issues With The Law.

Chief Keef is nary alien to the police. One of his archetypal incidents was erstwhile helium was apprehended connected charges of heroin manufacture and organisation successful Jan. 2011. He was lone 15 then, truthful helium was considered a juvenile offender and labeled a “delinquent” alternatively of being blameworthy of the charges. Due to this, helium was enactment connected location arrest. At the extremity of that aforesaid year, helium was charged with 3 counts of aggravated battle with a firearm connected a constabulary serviceman and aggravated unlawful usage of a limb aft helium was approached by a constabulary serviceman portion holding a loaded gun. He ran distant and allegedly pointed the weapon astatine the officers chasing him earlier helium was caught. He was besides sentenced to location confinement astatine his grandmother’s location for the incident.

(Jeff Moore/ZUMA Wire / SplashNews)

Other arrests a fewer years aboriginal included 1 for allegedly smoking cannabis successful nationalist and for disorderly behaviour and different 1 for speeding portion driving. He was released from situation connected enslaved and was fixed months of probation and a acceptable magnitude of hours for assemblage work and regular cause testing. He returned to jailhouse a fewer times months aboriginal for a probation usurpation erstwhile helium tested affirmative for marijuana. Two antithetic companies person besides sued Chief for not showing up to 2 concerts helium was expected to execute at. For 1 of them, helium was ordered to wage $230, 019 by default for ignoring the lawsuit.

His Career Took Off With Some Help From Kanye West.

Chief started making mixtapes which led to section popularity and occurrence astir 2011. His aboriginal opus “I Don’t Like” became a deed successful Chicago and caught Kanye’s attention, starring to Yeezy making a remix of the opus with different rappers Pusha T, Jadakiss, and Big Sean. By 2012, his fame had accrued connected a bigger level. He yet signed with Interscope Records soon aft and released his debut album, Finally Rich, in Dec. 2012. The medium featured galore salient rappers specified arsenic 50 Cent, Wiz Khalifa, Young Jeezy, and Rick Ross.

He Is Credited With Pioneering The Drill Subgenre.

“It’s nary longer archetypal to suggest that Chief Keef ended up being much influential than astir expected erstwhile helium burst from obscurity successful 2012,” wrote David Drake for The Outline in 2018. Since his arrival, Keef has been credited with being 1 of the pioneers of the Drill subgenre of rap, mixing the sounds of trap euphony with gangsta rap lyrics. “Keef’s emergence was a paradigm displacement that marked the accomplishment of a caller generation, a oversea alteration successful the music’s sound, successful however it was covered, wherever it came from, and however the manufacture marketed their artists,” writes Drake.

Keef “developed a complex, cohesive, evolving aesthetic language, a benignant of some euphony and marketing, which was readily emulated implicit the adjacent 5 years astatine location and crossed the country,” per Drake. “Keef is, of course, influential, perchance the astir influential hip-hop creator of his time. There’s a bully lawsuit to beryllium made he’s his generation’s foremost rap songwriter, spinning disconnected much styles than immoderate of his peers, which would enactment him astatine the forefront of his procreation successful fashionable euphony writ ample — adjacent if that originative occurrence isn’t reflected by plaques connected the walls.”

He Was Shot At In 2018.

Keef was changeable extracurricular the W Hotel successful New York City’s Times Square successful June 2018. Thankfully, his assailants had a lousy aim. ” Chief Keef, who was successful New York for an event, on with his squad and the different members of Glory Boyz Entertainment (GBE) that were traveling with him, are safe,” Keef’s representative, Portia Stamps, told Billboard.

A twelvemonth later, Kintea McKenzie, a rapper known arsenic Kooda B and an subordinate of arguable rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine, pled blameworthy to the shooting, per Pitchfork. In November 2018, TMZ published a video, ” what appeared to beryllium 6ix9ine ordering a deed connected Keef’s cousin, Tadoe,” per Pitchfork.

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