Chief Keef at Lollapalooza 2012 | Photos and music review

Chief Keef | Lollapalooza | August 4, 2012

Photo: Ryan Bourque

Phony rappers, that's that shit I don't like. I'll say it right out: This might have been the worst thing I've ever seen.

In terms of presentation, performance, energy and professionalism, this one gets an "F" and a "See me after class," no question. After a sloppy and mostly disruptive cameo during Araabmuzik's Pitchfork set, Chicago's should've-been-kept secret made his Lolla debut this afternoon. Chief Keef and his bigass posse bounced around in front of a humongous digital display of his name, displayed three times across Perry's stage in some font you'd find on the box of an action figure, complete with Photoshop flames and 3D embossment. If you can imagine music that sounds like such a display, we're halfway there.

Chief Keef might well be the name of this teenager's whole posse. If you didn't already know what he looked like, you wouldn't be able to pick him out onstage. Like most everyone else these days, Keef raps over a track of himself—but also he mostly neglects to do even that.

The six hundred members of his entourage pick up choice words like "fuck," "nigga" and "bang bang," constantly causing feedback on the mics they seemed unaccustomed to holding. There's a reason all of this guy's videos are just him and his boys dumbing out in a house: I don't think they'd left it until today.

The DJ failed to beatdrop on time at least once, but I arrived about ten minutes late, so I can't even imagine how this shitshow started off. After a truly baffling set that somehow entertained an onslaught of CamelBak-wearing, tank-top-sporting, pale young men, Chief Keef and his posse stood onstage, twiddling their thumbs and shrugging as some cheesily ominous rumble sound effect played for about fifteen seconds too long. 

A lot of artists and academics think we live in a post-ironic world, that our lives have become so saturated with the concept that it doesn't hold any weight or artistic merit anymore. If Lil B is the be-all, end-all of irony in hip-hop, Chief Keef is whatever comes next: a humorless ignoramus who seemed just as confused onstage as I felt in the audience. His music might well be a joke, but he's certainly not in on it. I miss irony already.