The Blues are at the core of Chicago culture. Their musical DNA has been passed down and has evolved across generations and genres, but their bare-souled perspective is what shows most phonetically in the city’s modern hip-hop scene and overall identity – a pride in yourself and your surroundings, even when it isn’t reciprocated. Modern backpack mainstay Defcee’s latest album, Other Blues, frames his everyman struggles through this rich Chicago heritage.
On the album’s intro “Chicago Famous”, Defcee raps “Broke a branch on my family tree and now I’m writing with it”. The truths he is about to share for the next 30 minutes are inherited and shared across his own loved ones and decades of other artists in the scene before him. Few other rappers can broach down to Earth topics with as much honesty: being a great artist but not making any money off it (“Broke”, “You Still Rap?”), the commodification of his quickly passing years (“Casket Races”), and the pressure of being a rock for his family (“Ben Grimm”). These are worries that most of us deal with in some form everyday, regardless of where you come from.
An experience unique to Defcee, however, (but deeply relatable for me), is his work as a teacher outside of rapping. What’s with so many Chicago rappers also being teachers? We need the Noname collab.
Anyway, while he might be an outsider in hip-hop at a glance, being Jewish and making such thoughtful music in a city currently dominated by drill, he is direct witness to the struggles of the city’s next generation and has the opportunity to shape it’s future. Easier said than done:
“You ever try to convince a teenager to write a poem in the first month of a twenty year stretch?
I thought not, so you don’t know what hopelessness looks like just cause you caught those long looks on the wrong block”
He has such an impressive way of building hope within a bar, only to tear it right out from under you. You feel it in your chest. How could music like this be anything but some sort of 21st Century indie rap Blues? On a lighter note though, check out that rhyme scheme.
Defcee includes plenty of other more traditional nods to the city, giving a tour to make Ferris Bueller proud on “66 to Navy Pier”, personifying it a la K*nye on “Graduation Picture”, and reminiscing over the intimate arts scene on “Open Mic Nights”. Compared to his previous opus, the Messiah Musik produced Trapdoor, Other Blues is relatively easy listening, grounded in memorable hooks, simple, yet evocative bars, and relatable themes rather than the density of his Backwoodz debut.
Aiding in this is Parallel Thought’s production, uniquely percussive and simply layered. Every song has a subtle, standout sample that rings through above all else and they all harmonize together across the project. Recognizable samples from the likes of Mach-Hommy and Navy Blue (probably others too, pull my card) keep Defcee grounded in the scene, and it’s no small feat to go toe-to-toe with MC’s like them. This might be many listeners’ first exposure to Parallel Thought, and you have to wonder how they aren’t more revered and utilized in underground circles. As frequent collaborators of the late great Tame One, they’d fit perfectly alongside many other Backwoodz rappers.
In only a few years he’s done so much, I can only hope he keeps linking with more dope producers to soundscape his special, valuable perspective, because Other Blues is Defcee at his plainest, yet most powerful; showing his most character yet, while humanizing himself amongst the listener and generations of Chicagoans.