The Chicago Sound

Chicago is where the term drill took on new meaning, first as slang for shooting and killing and then, with Pac Man’s “It’s a Drill” in 2010, for music about witnessing both. The branding stuck not just because the songs and raw videos of Chicago’s Chief Keef, G Herbo, Lil Durk, and Lil Reese centered such themes with captivating power, but because these productions musically embodied the dreadful ambience of a city dominated by gun violence. Surgically slow tempos of 65 to 70 beats per minute allowed an unhurried delivery of speech-rhythm threats over booming bass with synthetic snares, snaps, or claps anchoring the backbeat. The heavy, almost martial drums—Chicago producer DJ L cites marching-band cadences as a cornerstone in his snare patterns—moved in lockstep alongside foreboding melodic loops indexing horror films (eerie one-finger piano lines) and big-boss battles (church bells and crashing cymbals). As the sound of Chicago drill crested from 2011 to 2013, it owed a large debt to Atlanta, especially the muscular pomp of second-wave trap, popularized in 2010 by producer Lex Luger with Waka Flocka Flame. Influential Chicago producers like Young Chop took strong sonic cues from Luger and other trap beat-makers. Many of drill’s biggest productions at the time were nearly indistinguishable from the bounce of trap, but they shifted the mood and attitude. As they tended toward slower tempos, more space started to creep in: room for ad-libs, for tension to build, for cavernous pauses between bass kicks and long stretches with no drums at all. But while its sound offered an alluring template, Chicago’s unhurried approach could feel plodding, airless.