Chicago rapper FBG Duck was killed the other day in Chicago. I’m willing to bet most people reading this aren’t familiar with him, but his death is a tragedy beyond any metric of notoriety. The thing is, rap fans should probably have been more exposed to Duck. The reason that they weren’t is a four-way intersection of fucked up.
Duck was signed to Columbia at the time of this death, but for a long time, he and his peers had a hard time getting industry shine because they were rivals of Chief Keef, Lil Durk, Lil Reese, and their close peers. When those guys blew up, anyone on their bad side found it hard to find opportunity. Duck had spoken about feeling like he was being blacklisted before.
In a “those who commit the murders write the reports” (c) Ida B. Wells sense, it’s always been wild to me that the same people who sustain the environment that breeds gang violence can then make money selling violent music, then not offer certain artists opportunities because of which gang they affiliate with.
That’s a hard prospect, especially when the drill scene is one too intimately connected with gang violence. A lot of the drill artists who couldn’t get signed stayed in their cities and fell prey to gun violence or incarceration.
Duck could’ve left Chicago, but he didn’t want to. His logic was that he was just as susceptible to facing violence in other cities, which is a sad reality. It’s no love anywhere. That’s why it can’t be about leaving your community to be safe, it’s about improving the community for the people living there.
I didn’t listen to Duck’s music extensively, but I recognized he was talented and deserved a shot in the game. As a Black music journalist, part of my coverage factor is: would writing about them help contribute to their progression, to getting them out of the hood? I know I’m overstating my place in the grand scheme, but my point is that it’s never just face value music coverage with me cause I know a lot of artists are rapping about lives they’re really living.
I tried to cover Duck when I could. I remember when he wrote “Chicago Legends,” a song that celebrated everyone who died in Chicago last decade, including his enemies. It looked like he was trying to focus on the bigger picture and quell the beef.
But his enemies didn’t feel the same way, kept dissing him, his dead friends, and his brother FBG Brick who was killed in 2017 (at the same time as his cousin). Eventually, Duck was back to the dissing himself. Would he have a different mindset if the industry had given him a shot earlier? Would he have been based in LA or Atlanta like Chief Keef, Durk, or Herbo? Who knows, but it’s sad to think about.
A lot of people see gun violence and ask questions like “what’s it gonna take,” or try to shame Black activists for not condemning gang violence. The thing is, those activists have devoted their life to uprooting the systemic oppression that causes gun violence. Next time you see someone sarcastically saying “I thought Black Lives Matter,” tell them to support a local chapter or any other organization in their area that’s trying to uproot the system. It’s not about blaming rap or blaming kids for being conditioned, it’s about the system and the people who designed it for us to fail because they benefit from our destitution.
The anti-gun violence argument needs to be framed that way so people can all fight against rampant gun violence, a racist banking system that denies loans to Black people trying to leave certain neighborhoods, and police forces that let shot people bleed out on the ground for minutes at a time without trying to aid them like the CPD did to Duck. Most importantly, the fight is so mothers like Duck’s won’t have to surmise, “I’m so glad it’s over with, I ain’t gotta worry about him no more.“
quick takes
Foregoing the takes this week because the first passage was particularly long and plenty takey.
bars of the moment
“it's not "white privilege", it's white power and should be named as such”
“Rather, Afropessimism sketches a structural map of human experience. On this map, Black people are integral to human society but at all times and in all places excluded from it. They are in a state of “social death,” a concept that Wilderson borrows from the sociologist Orlando Patterson.”
- Vinson Cunningham in The Argument of “Afropessimism” piece
“It's rarely considered that Southern rap sounds the way it does as an aesthetic decision rather than due to inability, and its practitioners are saddled with the burden of disproving that assumption rather than the privilege of showing up on their own terms.
- Briana Younger in The South Is Rap's Past, Present And Future piece
“Who hears a Black woman’s cries of fear and pain if their personhood is stripped away? If Black women are no longer regarded as human, then their bodies are deemed deserving of disproportionate amounts of pain. If Black women are no longer granted femininity, then their bodies are subjected to transphobic attacks in an attempt to validate the violence they endure.”
- Taylor Crumpton in What The Meghan Thee Stallion Memes Teach Us About Misogynoir piece
artifact
You know how fucked up it is that the Chicago drill scene won’t be able to tell its own story? Already, there aren’t gonna be many around to reflect on their time like veterans of other regions and scenes get to. ZackTV was probably the best person equipped to offer insight for (or produce) a documentary on Drill music, and he won’t even be able to. Zack went into just about every Chicago hood, talked to any rapper, from just about any gang, which allowed him to chronicle their scene better than any journalist ever did. Unfortunately, he was shot and killed in 2018. Here’s an interview he did with Duck in 2017. If you’re easily triggered, don’t watch. It’s everything you’d expect from a young drill rapper. But it’s also a glimpse of what their corner of the world looked like. It’s the kind of authentic journalism we need more of. Sadly, several of the people in this video, including Duck, are gone.
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