October ended with a flurry of engrossing Chicago rap releases, in some cases separated by just a few hours. Last Wednesday night, Saba dropped Bucket List Project, which makes Chicago’s neglected west side feel as big as the rest of the city, and by the middle of Thursday it had landed in the top spot of the iTunes Store’s Hip-Hop/Rap chart. At midnight last Thursday, Air Credits (aka rapper ShowYouSuck and mashup mavens the Hood Internet) released the dystopian sci-fi opus Broadcasted. On Friday DJ Rude One’s Onederful, the local hip-hop veteran’s first album in 12 years, appeared on major streaming services and digital retailers. And that’s just a fraction of what came out last week, never mind the rest of the month. Washington Post pop critic Chris Richards recently made the case that this might be rap’s real golden age, and the output of the Chicago scene makes it hard to argue.
Saba and Lud Foe both come from the west side, but their careers don’t intersect—nor do their sounds. But Lud Foe’s music is as much a part of the air here as Saba’s, and less than 24 hours after Bucket List Project came out, he dropped his debut, No Hooks. Lud Foe’s grim, nonchalant swagger can get exhausting over the course of the lengthy mixtape, but when his shifting flow caroms off a chattering beat, the tracks can seriously swing. Toward the end of the surging, ferocious “A Lot of This,” he speedily delivers details about growing up with few opportunities and resources—subsisting on ramen, cuffing the pants of his jeans as a kid because they were too long, dreaming of “making it” in the face of rejection.
