Chief Keef - Nobody (Album Review)

Chief Keef is the kind of rapper that can make some interesting music, some duds, and some headscratchers. While on Interscope and after being dropped from Interscope, some of Keef's shenanigans as well as a lot of his more recent music has come to find the artist receiving some really heavy handed criticism. Keef decided to drop his album Nobody independently on December 16. I really did not know what to expect in terms of quality.

First off, some might think this album starts and plays through terribly on the first time. It just sounded awful with a capital A the first time I listened to this album. It's hard to get into. It feels like way too much stuff just doesn't work and it just lacks all the catchiness that you could find on some of the better standout songs from Chief Keef's earlier material. The beats are mostly mellow and they feature a ton of auto tuned vocals.

The first listen is rough, but I think it does get better on repeated listens. After a few listens I started trying to dissect what exactly Keef was trying to do with Nobody. I think he was trying to take a step in a different direction and trying to make a more mature piece of music for Keef's standards. This album is more the sum of its parts and not just a few catchy singles. You've seen Kid Cudi and Lupe Fiasco do similar things with their career. Their experimental work has also yielded some success and some head scratching moments. The album as a whole creates a vibe. There are some aspects that can be appreciated.

I think this album is heavily influenced by Kanye West's experimental album 808s & Heartbreak. "Hard" is a good example of where some of this music works. The most anticipated track "Nobody", a song that features Kanye West, is one of the songs you might have to listen to a few times to find any enjoyment in it. The song sounds pretty rough on first listen. It's hard to understand why this song would even exist let alone be able to get a Kanye West feature. After a few listens I feel like the track gets a little more catchy and in the overall scheme of the album it works better. The beat helps make the track a lot more catchy on repeated listens. I ultimately came out really enjoying the beat of the song. It samples "Brothers Gonna Work It Out" which is cool, but we already heard Chance The Rapper use the sample on his project Acid Raps. Keef's odd sounding auto tuned singing/rhymes also get better on the third or fourth listen. It's definitely a letdown when I think of how good it could have been and also to think of how good almost anything with Kanye on it was at one point and time. Kanye was always someone who could make a song better. I think his guest spot adds very little to "Nobody", but it is interesting regardless. He adds some auto tuned background vocals and he does fit what the song is doing and the song fits the style of the album...so I guess it succeeds in that respect. "Hard" on the other hand creates more of the atmospheric quality a lot of this album seems to be going for and excels while doing so. The way Keef's vocals flow over the beat also work a lot better on this song. The album is basically full of that contrast of moments and songs where it works and moments where it doesn't. 

I do think there is a method to Keef's writing on this album. If you give that method a few shots and the album a lot of listens it does become more clear. I just wish it wasn't such a labor to pick through what I enjoyed and what really doesn't work. I think this album does work better than some of his more recent mixtapes so if you're a Keef fan and haven't enjoyed much or anything he's released recently then this album might be for you. I don't think it will recapture people waiting to hear songs like he had on Finally Rich. Like I said earlier it's not an immediately pleasing album and doesn't really live up to some of the hype he received early in his career. I probably came out of this enjoying more of it than I thought I would while still feeling like it could have been a whole lot better.