At over 16 million views is “ Fool Ya,” my favorite of Keef’s covert arsenal of semi-recent hits, from his 2015 tape Almighty DP. 2014’s self-produced “ Faneto,” the biggest underground record of Keef’s career, has more than 22 million views for an audio track played over a still image of the Bang 3 cover. By far the most popular video on his official channel is for “Earned It,” a 2014 loosie that ballooned into a massive Chicago street hit, with nearly 50 million views in less than two years. Keef’s YouTube stats, meanwhile, tell a different story. Were there really no songs people wanted to hear that Keef recorded in the four years since his major-label debut? Was that album, recorded when he was 16, the rapper’s magnum opus - or was it just the one everyone knows the words to? It was a fun idea, and appeared to be a fun performance, but something about the concept gave me pause. Last November, Keef headlined ComplexCon’s Pigeons & Planes stage to perform the entirety of his 2012 album Finally Rich with a few longtime associates, as though he, Fredo, Ballout, and Young Chop were Pink Floyd doing Dark Side of the Moon. Perhaps, instead, you’ve been waiting for the second coming of “Love Sosa,” or anything resembling a traditional hit record from the now-21-year-old rapper, in which case I hope you brought a good book to read in the meantime. That in itself wasn’t especially unusual if you’ve been following the last three or so years of Keef’s output - or, more likely, if you haven’t been. Camp GloTiggy, his full-length collaboration with Zaytoven and sole release of last year, came and went without much notice in May. The first day of the New Year, Chief Keef released a new mixtape - matter-of-factly titled Two Zero One Seven - after slipping through 2016 unusually quietly.

New chief keef albums 2016