Why Juice WRLD believed Chicago was just as influential as Atlanta
There’s no question that Atlanta, Georgia, is a hugely important centre of rap music. This is a city that’s produced Outkast, Gucci Mane and Future, after all.
New York City and Los Angeles are, historically speaking, the two most important cities of hip-hop, but the culture has moved on since then. It has spread to every corner of America and, indeed, around the world, and there are numerous cities that can now claim to be vital hubs in their own right. Atlanta, certainly, is one of them.
But Chicago, too, has a rich hip-hop heritage, although it’s probably not as celebrated as Atlanta’s. But one person who advocated strongly for Chi-Town’s place in rap history was the late Juice WRLD, who grew up there and took inspiration from some of its greatest artists.
Speaking on The Breakfast Club in 2019, only months before his untimely death at the end of the year, Juice was keen to shout out his home city and its rap scene, focusing particularly on the drill it had been producing in more recent years. All in all, he believed Chicago had matured into an extremely important rap city.
Highlighting Chief Keef, King Louie, Lil Durk and Chance the Rapper in particular, Juice insisted that, like Atlanta, Chicago had been enjoying “a wave” of innovative rap artists at that time. Chicago, too, had a distinct sound.
He spoke specifically of the significant impact Chicago drill music had left upon the contemporary hip-hop scene. Even artists who don’t specifically fit into the label of drill, he claimed, have often been inspired by it in some way.
“All the dark synths and people rapping auto-tuned about killing — it’s drill music,” he insisted.
Drill music began as an evolution of Atlanta’s own trap sound, and the two subgenres certainly share similarities. But they have become distinct over the years, with people like Juice WRLD adamant that drill and Chicago’s role in developing it deserve credit on their own terms.
Chicago has also had much more to offer the hip-hop world besides strictly drill, of course. Kanye West, Common, Chance the Rapper and many other significant rappers emerged from the city, to say nothing of Juice WRLD himself.