Long Live The King

Or: Why King Louie Deserves All The Flowers

On Friday January 14th, I went to see one of my all-time personal favorite artists: the man, the myth, the legend, King Louie. The iconic Drill godfather was headlining a small, but intimate concert at Hyde Park’s Promontory. While on stage, he performed fan favorite hits like “To Live and Die in Chicago,” “Til I Meet Selena,” and “B.O.N” all while taking swigs of Jameson straight from the bottle in between songs. With a mob of people behind him on stage, as well as everyone in the audience raving and rapping along to every word of music, it was abundant how much love there is for the man the streets call Tony. Standing right in front of the stage, I just stared in awe with a big ass smile beneath my mask, trying to record as much as I could on my phone to savor the memory while also remaining present in the moment. It’s almost hard to believe that in an alternate timeline, this moment wouldn’t have happened at all. 

I think a lot about how King Louie was almost taken from us. On December 23rd, 2015, the then 27-year old Chicago rapper and Drill pioneer was shot in the head, an experience that almost certainly could have resulted in the premature death of one of the most influential figures in all of rap music. One of the heartaches that comes from not only being an avid hip-hop fan, but also as someone who covers the culture as a journalist is that hip-hop has to be the only genre of music in which these premature deaths of artists happens way too frequently. These tragic losses of life certainly happen across across all genres (see: the 27 club), but the rate at which it occurs within hip-hop has to be much higher than any other, and a large part of the fact that it’s not only instances of drug overdoses that occur, but murder as well. This has been an unfortunate part of the culture for decades. I mean, it’s the cause of death for both 2Pac and Biggie, arguably the two greatest and most impactful rappers to have ever lived. Since 2019 alone, we’ve lost important names like Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, King Von, Young Dolph, and as of most recently, Drakeo The Ruler. And these names are just the more famous ones whose headlines sent shockwaves.

It need not matter whether these artists were respected industry veterans and established legends within their community, such as the case with Nip, Dolph, and Drakeo. They were all tragically murdered in cold blood in their own hometowns in front of the very people they loved. It also need not matter that the artist was at the very jumpstart of their career and had moved out their hoods (a well-intentioned, but unfortunately unproven solution that's typically offered for this issue), as the New York-born Pop was killed during a home invasion in his LA mansion, while the Chicago native Von’s life was taken after an altercation in an Atlanta hookah lounge. Death doesn't care who you are or where you’re from. It doesn’t care what stage you are in life, or whether you have a family on Earth to take care of. In the words of my mother, “when it’s your turn, it's your turn.”

It’s unfortunate reminders like this that make it important to give flowers to those who are still here to smell them. That is why it is so critical for me to give those flowers to someone like Louie whenever I can. Despite his incredible impact, he might very well be one of the most underappreciated rappers of all-time. What makes me make such a bold claim, you might ask? The answer is quite simple. While Chief Keef is often named as one of the most influential rappers of the last decade (and deservedly so) due to his opening of the floodgates for Drill to become the cultural phenomena it is today, Louie was the guy that paved the way for Chief Keef in the first place. Without King Louie, today’s popular rap music might not even look or sound remotely close at all to what it does today. Allow me to give you a brief lesson in history.

Contrary to popular belief amongst kids these days, Drill was not invented by Chief Keef nor was it birthed in the O’Block community. That claim can only be credited to the late, great Pac Man of the Dro City neighborhood in Woodlawn. Pac Man's own life was tragically cut short due to gun violence, but it was Louie who was the one to carry the torch that was left behind. King Louie is credited with coining the term “Chiraq,” the now infamous nickname that was given to Chicago during a time where the amount of gun violence that occurred here in the city was being compared in mainstream media to the warzones in the Middle East during the U.S. military’s illegitimate occupation over there. Louie has been rapping since 2007 and was certainly a local celebrity, but it was his 2011 mixtape Chiraq, Drillinois that helped legitimize the subculture within regional boundaries, as well as the national underground scene. Songs like the project’s eponymous track, “Bang,” “Too Cool” and “Intro” helped lay the foundation on just what Drill is; not just a niche musical genre, but an entire culture with it’s own language, style, and swagger.

The following year in 2012, the year in which Drill broke through in the mainstream after Chief Keef’s viral sensation “Don’t Like,” Louie dropped Drilluminati. It was around this time that as a child where I can recall being consciously introduced to King Louie’s music in between graduating middle school and starting my freshman year of high school. His song “Val Venis” was one of the hottest records of the year, and was in constant rotation on local radio stations. The C-Sick produced record features Louie rapping over a chilling and hypnotic 3-note loop mixed with booming bass kicks and horns. The song’s hook has him matter-of-factly declaring “I’m the man, little did they know,” and it remains to be one of his signature songs till this day, and arguably his best in my opinion. Also featured on the project is the classic “My Hoes They Do Drugs” that included a pair of rap legends in Juicy J and Pusha T, further adding credibility to his resume as a star in the making.

It was also during this year that Kanye West had tapped into Chicago’s bubbling Drill scene for musical inspiration during the creation of Yeezus. After remixing Chief Keef’s “Don’t Like” in which he also shouted out King L, Ye gave both Keef and Louie features on his album. Louie’s appearance comes on the penultimate song “Send It Up.” He actually opens the track with a verse that he literally freestyled off the dome. This is the type of stuff that legends are made of. By this point in time, King Louie was one of the country's hottest new names in hip-hop.

Flashing forward to 2014, King Louie dropped what could be his strongest overall body of work with Tony. When discussing the great album openers in rap history, “B.O.N” has to be included in the conversation. It was actually this song that Louie closed his set with at the Promontory, and it remains as powerful today as it did eight years ago. Opening an album with a record just that raw can sometimes be detrimental because it may raise the bar too high for the rest of the project to follow. Amazingly, he ups the ante literally two tracks later on “Til I Meet Selena,” comparing himself to Michael Jordan in between gun ad-libs on one of the best DJ L beats in existence. Also featured on Tony is “Live and Die In Chicago.” While “B.O.N” and “Selena” feature hyper-aggressive beats, Louie slows it down and spits that real to listeners saying: 

“Murder capital of America, no murder rate like Chicago
My city influenced my country, can't get away from Chicago (can't)
They ask me, "Louie, you gon' leave?" No, I'm gon' stay in Chicago
I'm the heart of Chicago, I go hard for Chicago
Big Pop' of my city, get popped in my city, 2Pac of Chicago
But I'm still alive though, turn a white tee Piru
Don't you come to Chicago, you'll get lost in Chicago”

Louie makes it clear that the place he once dubbed Chiraq is still his home at the end of the day, regardless of the danger that lurks in the shadows. He accepts that he may very well get gunned down in his own city, a dark and ominous revelation that almost came into fruition the very next year in 2015. I was still a senior in high school when the news broke that Louie had been shot in the head. I’m just gonna be real and say I really thought we lost him. He had previously cheated death before, surviving multiple shootouts and a crippling car accident, but just how many times can one cheat death before the Grim Reaper just says “fuck it, you’re coming with me this time.” I mean, how many people can say they survived a bullet to the head? By the grace of God, he did. On the 2017 Mulatto Beats produced track “Long Live The Kings” featuring King L, the song ends with audio from an interview in which he’s asked how he feels after being released from the hospital after this near-death experience. He simply states “I feel blessed.”

It was also around this time that his mainstream popularity began to wane down. This is not to say his quality of music dropped at all. His 2016 follow up to Tony, the appropriately named Tony 2 is still impeccable. It was just around this time though that major labels, media publications and the average rap consumer began to shift their attention away from Chicago’s Drill scene in favor of the trap music that was coming from Atlanta, or the underground movement that was happening in Florida. The nationwide fascination/fetishization of Drill simply shifted to other regional sounds and subgenres. 

In the words of A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip though, “don’t you know that things go in cycles?” 10 years after Chief Keef and Louie helped bring Drill to the forefront of popular music, the subgenre is in the midst of a thriving second life after being adopted by other regions, namely New York, the UK, and even Puerto Rico. Chicago Drill still remains a force to be reckoned with though, as artists like Lil Durk and G-Herbo who’ve been here since the beginning are at the height of their careers, becoming bonafide superstars with extensive catalogs. Chief Keef’s latest album 4NEM became a buzzer-beater addition for many year-end best music lists for 2021. King Louie himself even seems primed to ascend to new heights, dropping a really underrated gem last summer in “Smokin Cali” and just dropped a brand new joint last Friday that’s a remix to B-Lovee’s “My Everything” that previously dropped last October.

I’m optimistic that King Louie’s best days are ahead of him, but regardless, he’s already done what he needed to do to change the game. He’s undoubtedly on the Mt. Rushmore of Drill (fwiw I have that Mt. Rushmore as Louie, Keef, Herb, and Durk) and he essentially influenced the influencers. That’s the type of legacy that 90% of rappers can only dream about. So please, if there’s anything I want you to do after reading this article today it’s this: play some King Louie, and just appreciate him while he’s still here in any way you see fit. Whether that’s by @’ing him on socials to show love or putting someone you know on to his music. In a time where virtually everyone and their mama calls themself the goat, there can only one King. 

Long Live The King.

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