ILL Brown – “What’s Happenin'” (Video)

ILL Brown touched on the violence in Chicago on his debut release a few months ago, titled Return of the Hardcore, and late last week he unveiled the Chicago-coined drill track from the project.

When this track pops up on his Return of the Hardcore album, it’s not something that you would necessarily expect from Brown. At least I didn’t. Sure, it’s heavy on the production and lyrics side, but homie isn’t a drill rapper. I can’t lie, at first I was a little confused. But, having time to listen to his whole project multiple times in the last few months, I found it’s place in it all.

Besides the hypnotizing sounds, I came to see “What’s Happenin'” as a Ill’s own “paraphrase” to the violence and mind-state of a lot people coming up in the violence we see and hear about on the south side of Chicago. Add a bit of “you rappers are also garbage” in the mix and you have a whole handful of messages and textures. At least that’s what I take from it. Being said, I hit him up to see if he could talk about his idea a bit, and this is what he said:

My idea for the song and video was to create awareness at the street level what’s going on with the elevated gun violence and gang activity in Chicago. The song and video is very vivid and depicts the mentality of our youth. These very songs are partially responsible for the retaliatory crimes that are often broadcast nationally… The video is grim reality, it’s exactly what’s happenin’…

You can bump the rest of his tracks from ROTH by hitting this link.

seangevity

I'm just trying to make my art and do what's smart. Cake donuts are clutch.

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