Keith Cozart was 16 years old, under house arrest at his grandmother's apartment in Englewood, when he recorded "I Don't Like" with a producer named Young Chop. The year was 2012. Chicago logged 506 murders that year, the highest count since 1997. The song cost nothing to make and sounded like it. That was the whole point.
Young Chop, born Tyree Pittman on November 14, 1993, grew up on the same South Side streets as Keef. He taught himself FL Studio in his mother's room over two or three years of high school, building a production template so specific it became a genre definition: dark minor-key synth lines, sparse trap percussion, 808 bass that felt like it was coming through a wall. He met Chief Keef through Facebook. From that connection came "Bang" in 2011, Keef's first viral track, which accumulated millions of YouTube views before a single label executive had processed what was happening. Then came "I Don't Like."
"I Don't Like," featuring Lil Reese and produced by Young Chop, dropped on March 6, 2012. The video, shot in Keef's grandmother's apartment, showed a teenager with no obvious production resources rapping in his living room. That rawness was the appeal. The track peaked at number 73 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 15 on the Rap Songs chart. By spring, Kanye West had remixed it with Pusha T, Big Sean, and Jadakiss. Young Chop was furious. He threatened to sue West for changing the beat without consulting him first. The matter was eventually resolved, but the friction said something true about what drill was: a sound built by specific people in a specific place, and the industry was already trying to absorb it before it understood it.
The Kanye co-sign pushed Keef from South Side teenager to the most discussed rapper in America. A bidding war followed. In mid-2012, Interscope Records signed him in a deal reportedly worth six million dollars, establishing his label imprint, Glory Boyz Entertainment, as a joint venture. GBE was already active, releasing mixtapes since 2011, but the Interscope deal made it a full record company. The collective around Keef, including Lil Reese, Fredo Santana, and Young Chop, suddenly had a platform.
The debut album, Finally Rich, arrived on December 18, 2012. Young Chop served as executive producer, handling the bulk of the production alongside contributors including Mike Will Made It and K.E. on the Track. The tracklist opened with "Love Sosa," the October 2012 single that would eventually go diamond, and moved through "Hallelujah" before landing on "I Don't Like" at track three. "Hate Bein' Sober," featuring 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa, sat at track five. The guest list read like a label showcase: Rick Ross, Young Jeezy, French Montana, Master P, and Wiz Khalifa all appeared. The album was a document of a scene that had gone from grandmother's living room to major-label rollout in under twelve months.
Pitchfork later named "I Don't Like" the 13th best song of the 2010s. "Love Sosa" went diamond. Those are not small numbers for a record made in a South Side apartment with no budget and a producer who learned his craft in his mother's room. The critical establishment caught up eventually, but the audience had already decided in real time, through YouTube views and WorldStar shares, before any review was written.
What Young Chop built was a sonic environment so coherent that it could travel. Drill spread to London, where it displaced grime as the dominant form of UK rap. It spread to New York, where it reshaped the city's entire rap identity in the 2010s. Artists from 21 Savage to Lil Uzi Vert have cited Keef's melodic, slurred delivery as a direct influence. GBE itself dissolved in January 2014, when Keef announced the imprint was "no more" and rebranded as Glo Gang. But the music it released in that two-year window had already done the work.
The story of Chicago drill is often told as Chief Keef's story, and Keef is central to it. But the sound came from two teenagers on the South Side, one rapping under house arrest and one building beats in his mother's room, who found each other on Facebook and made something that the rest of the world spent the next decade trying to replicate.
