Chief Keef: “Fuck The Mayor With A Sandpaper Dick!”
Chief Keef's Instagram
Chief Keef aka Keith Cozart is one of the foremost rappers in Chicago’s thriving drill scene. He’s also a 19-year-old from the South Side Englewood neighborhood with outstanding warrants in a city widely known for its racial tension. So when Keef planned to perform a free benefit concert to memorialize his associate Capo and one-year-old Dillan Harris, who were casualties of a drive-by shooting and a hit and run respectively, the police and mayor of Chicago resisted. That’s despite the fact that his accompanying message for the event is “Stop The Violence Now.” Coming from one of the most popular rappers in the city, you’d think the powers that be would recognize this as the best marketing they’re going to get for that kind of message, but no.
Originally, Keef planned to perform via hologram from his current home in Los Angeles and be projected into Chicago’s Redmoon Theater, but Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel banned that. In compromise, Keef continued his plan to project the hologram at a secret location, which ended up being last Saturday night in Hammond, Indiana at the Craze Fest hip-hop festival. Police shut even that down after only one song — and it’s not even in the city of Chicago.
Keef and his associate, billionaire heir Alki David, paid for the funerals of both Capo and Harris. They hoped to donate all the funds raised from the concert to the victims’ families. Keef wasn’t even setting foot in Chicago, and his hologram appeared at a festival several miles outside the city, so why this militant response from the mayor? Keef finally spoke to Billboard on the subject, and naturally, he had some choice words for Mayor Emanuel.
I was really shocked. [City officials] just be hating. They don’t want to see a young black man be successful and try to do something good. It’s crazy. If you ask me, man, fuck the mayor with a sandpaper dick! Say it like that.
You’ve got to hand it to Keef, even in the heat of anger he is a wordsmith of an impeccable caliber. Hammond Mayor Thomas M. McDermott Jr. told Billboard he had nothing to do with the performance being shut down, then said some flatly stereotypical things about rap music, gangs, and violence:
In my opinion, he glamorizes gang-lifestyle, anti-cop, anti-women, pro drug-use. This was a public venue and surrounded by a residential neighborhood. We don’t want to invite the possibility of some of the gangs that are terrorizing Chicago right now to come to Northwest Indiana.
(Remember, this was a hologram performance for a benefit concert to raise money for two funerals scheduled as part of an already established hip-hop festival.)
On Monday, Chief Keef announced he would be running for mayor of Chicago. Godspeed, Cozart; I’d gladly write you in.
