A couple months ago Vice’s music site, Noisey, debuted an eight-part video series about the local hip-hop scene (or, more specifically, the drill scene) called Chiraq; it’s the second major extensive, embeddable film about Chicago rap to come out this year following World Star Hip-Hop’s documentary, The Field, which tried to focus on the intersection of violence and rap in this city. The people behind Chiraq had the same lofty goal, or at least that’s how they’ve pitched the series, which places Chief Keef at the narrative’s center and moves out from there to cover a few of his pals while occasionally jamming in a “big picture” question about drill’s relationship to Chicago’s ongoing struggles with crime, poverty, and segregation. It’s a weighty proposition, and I have a lot to say about how Noisey handled it—given my thoughts I decided not to embed any of the episodes in this post, though the trailer is available to view above. Reader film critic Drew Hunt also has a lot of feelings about the series, and we took to Gchat to assess Chiraq:
LG: What’s kind of odd about that is Morton and company spend so much time reinforcing this idea of the mythos of Keef. They get all sorts of quotes from sources who aren’t exactly authorities about how Keef is a gangster—and rather disgustingly in the third episode they use a passerby’s comments about Keef being a killer while showing footage of Keef posing with fans, which just pushes this idea that he is dangerous with no real evidence—and yet when we actually see him on camera he’s chowing down on McDonald’s (which, jeez, the last episode just felt like an ad for McDonald’s and ATVs) or smoking weed—like he’s the only teenager to ever engage in those activities.
LG: Absolutely! Morton and the rest of the crew seemed to do the amount of research necessary to support their agenda—I don’t use that word lightly, and they may disagree with that statement, but Chiraq reeks of a scheme informed by tunnel vision. You can pick a single moment in every episode that shows it. There’s the moment in the second episode where Morton parties with a rap group he presents as one that has strong gang ties and the following morning he says it had been a good night because no one got shot—which shows he was expecting violence to break out, and he sounds both disappointed and relieved when he mentions it. Then there’s the sixth episode where he takes Young Chop to Cloud Gate (also known as “the Bean,” which is what Morton calls it and doesn’t appear to realize it’s not actually supposed to be a bean) and Chop says he’s never been to the sculpture, Morton uses that as his prime example to show that Chicago is segregated—you know, because a kid from the south side has never been to a tourist destination. I don’t know, how often do people from New York go and hang out at the Statue of Liberty? At that rate, why didn’t he just take Chop to the top of the Willis Tower to eat some deep dish and watch a Cubs-Sox game?
DH: It really is useless. In fact, it might even be harmful, ultimately. Like the World Star doc, this is another cursory look at an incredibly multifaceted situation that pushes an illusory narrative further. I don’t necessarily want to assume ill intent on the behalf of Vice, as some might, but I’m definitely dubious of their methods. And their creative integrity. These ethical quibbles aside, this series was so simplistically made. It’s very low grade, formally. All these web docs prove is that high-quality cameras don’t automatically produce high-quality images.
Drew: Yeah, they really started to scrape the barrel there.
