Song #34: Chief Keef - "Savage"

Song #34: Chief Keef - "Savage" (2012)

Finally Rich

"My young boys clap heat, my young boys don't care. Yeah, them O'Block boys savage, boy, don't go over there. They shootin' shit on sight, guns bangin' like a snare, and if you think that you is tough and you get popped, oh well."

Chief Keef's "Savage" was my motivation for writing my first blog on the teenage rapper that took Chicago by storm with his incredibly violent lyrical content, bombastic production, and blatant gang affiliations. "Savage," in my opinion, is Keef's defining track in terms that it illustrates exactly who he is, where he comes from, and what he's about. The song is a brutal and heartwrenching song, existing in the "drill" subgenre of rap defined by the characteristics above, and tells of Keef's life when he lived in Chicago and was a regular, petty-gangbanger.

The opening lines of the song, quoted above, are the coldest and most telling of the song, basically saying that Keef's friends are all armed with guns and behave like complete savages. They'll shoot things when they first see them, so much so that you constantly have gunshots wailing through the streets of the neighborhood, and if you think you are tough and you can handle them, but you wind up dead, oh well. The fact that the lyrics come from a seventeen-year-old are all the more frightening and potent.

"Savage" isn't an impressive song in terms of rhymes, flow, and variety, being that most of the song sounds the same and Keef's guttural, sometimes indistinguishable lyrics are distracting on the first listen or so. However, the ideas behind the song are the kind of unfiltered, cold-hearted honesty you can't hear on the evening news (which, believe me, if you live in Illinois, you've heard a great-deal about shootings and kidnappings on the evening news). "Savage" is Keef's most underrated song, detailing a harsh reality in such a bold and defining way.

Give "Savage" a listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IduVvrgKiqc