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With some notable exceptions, a lot of famous rappers, even the ones from genuinely rough neighborhoods and who maybe even sold street level drugs for a few months, are usually not gangsters or killers and making pretty much everything they say up (ie Tupac was a college kid and professional actor who turned his acting abilities into creating a badass persona that's nothing like early footage of him).
Von and his peers, in contrast, are part of a recent subgenre of rap called drill, where authenticity of violence is seen as inseparable from the quality of music itself (which is usually really bad). The characters you see there are so bad it's nearly unreal and part of the appeal for their fanbases is a horrified-but-can't-look-away novelty of watching people act out real, literal gang wars in music form. For Chicago in particular it's all the more strange because almost all of the nationally famous artists grew up on the same street, a lot of them in the same housing complex. Imagine being a sixteen year old recording songs in your closet where you talk about the petty squabbles you've had with the kids who grew up a few doors down from you, but thousands of people across the country follow closely and weigh in.
I want to make an effort post about the weirdness of the genre and its cultural implications but don't really trust people here to be decent about it.
I'd love to see an effort post on this.
I had never heard of drill before - but even if you're not a rap fan I think there's something to appreciate here.
The concept of neighborhood beefs escalating due to YouTube fame, and the soundtrack of this becoming internationally famous feels amazingly cyberpunk.
It really is. It's simultaneously a story of the way modern technology allows anyone to create their own music and gain a vast internet audience, combined with a bizarrely anachronistic story of teenagers waging blood feuds in major American cities and creating literal war music about it like vikings.
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