Chief Keef

Chief Keef—born Keith Farrelle Cozart in Chicago in 1995—began his career as a teenager, earning regional recognition with early mixtapes in the early 2010s. He would go on to be credited with bringing drill, the hip-hop subgenre, to wider mainstream audiences and is considered a progenitor of its sound. His fifth mixtape, Back from the Dead (2012), spawned “I Don’t Like,” featuring Lil Reese, which became his first Billboard Hot 100 entry. The bidding war that followed led to a deal with Interscope, which commercially re-released the track alongside “Love Sosa”—now RIAA quintuple-platinum. His debut album, Finally Rich, followed in 2012 and remains his only major-label release.

From there, Chief Keef shifted into an independent model. His later studio albums—Bang 3 (2015), Bang 3, Pt. 2 (2015), 4Nem (2021), and Almighty So 2 (2024)—each reached the Billboard 200, while his deeper catalogue, from Chiefin’ Keef to Any Opponent, stayed prolific and restless. Guest appearances on Lil Uzi Vert’s “Bean (Kobe)” and Drake’s “All the Parties” returned him to the Hot 100’s top 40, less as pop accommodation than as confirmation of how completely his approach has shaped contemporary rap. Chief Keef’s position as a progenitor remains secure; his influence is now a foundational texture in the genre.