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The Economist

September 5th 2020

71

1

T

wo

cars

, one silver and one black,

pulled up in a busy shopping street in

the Gold Coast, Chicago’s glitziest neigh-

bourhood, one afternoon last month. Four

passengers, weapons drawn, stepped be-

tween shoppers and fired off a hail of bul-

lets. Their target was a chubby man in a

blue tracksuit who stood outside a luxury-

goods boutique. The 26-year-old slumped

to the ground as shop windows shattered

behind; his two companions were wound-

ed. Passers-by filmed the aftermath of the

shooting, posting footage online as he lay

dying in the road. 

The murder was unusual. Gun deaths

have surged of late: by the end of August

500 killings had been counted in Chicago,

as many this year already as in all of 2019.

Overwhelmingly these occur when gang

members intrude on each other’s turf in

troubled districts on the South or West

sides. Bullets rarely fly in Gold Coast. For

participants in gang conflict, excursions to

such wealthy, central places had previously

seemed relatively safe.

Nor was the victim run-of-the-mill.

Carlton Weekly was a minor celebrity who

performed drill, a form of rap music that

arose in Chicago a decade ago and became

popular in London, New York and beyond.

Performing under the moniker FBG Duck,

his tracks were ominous, repetitive and

catchy; his last music video, “Dead

Bitches”, released in July, has 11m views on

YouTube. As with many drill videos, the

star posed in a shadowy room, flanked by

gun-toting friends, smoking joints while

waving wads of cash.

Some speculate FBG Duck was killed for

the music, as that last song was a “diss

track”. His lyrics crudely celebrated the

murders of several members of an infa-

mous Chicago gang, the Black Disciples. In-

sulting other rappers—and the gangs they

associate with—is not new, nor unique to

drill. It is a means to digital notoriety,

though it may invite a bloody response.

Such musical clashes online are amplified

by bloggers who relish details of these ver-

bal conflicts because they mirror real-

world gang confrontations. FBG Duck had

abused others in song for years, beginning

with insults of Chief Keef (pictured), an

early star of the drill scene.

Social media probably helped cause FBG

Duck’s death. Chicago’s mayor, Lori Light-

foot, suggested his enemies monitored his

posts on Facebook as he carelessly bragged

to fans about his shopping sprees. Rivals

routinely “lurk on” others—studying their

social-media feeds and hoping, in the

words of gangster rappers, to “catch opps

lacking”. That means getting a chance to

shoot or humiliate a rival, for example by

forcing him, on camera, to diss his own

gang or fellow rappers.

For years police in Chicago have said

this online sparring, often expressed

through music, spurs deadly violence.

Confirming that is hard. How could anyone

prove FBG Duck’s songs directly led to his

death, asks Forrest Stuart, an ethnographer

at Stanford University who embedded with

drill rappers on Chicago’s South Side for

over 18 months. The musician had ties with

the Tooka gang, an outfit linked to the

Gangster Disciples, which has long vied

with the Black Disciples. His elder brother,

another drill rapper who worked as FBG

Brick, and a cousin were shot dead on the

same day in 2017. As a rapper he was a

tempting target, but he would have been

one anyway, even without uttering a word.

Mr Stuart’s recent book, “Ballad of the

Bullet”, is an often gripping account of

what he learned from his association with

teenage members of an up-and-coming

drill group—he dubs them the Corner 

Violence and music