Queen Key Demands What She Wants And That Matters

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with The TRiiBE that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them.

Queen laughs mischievously, flashing her signature dimples. “Damn. I did use to kick y’all niggas out of y’all shit,” she admits. “But that’s just because when I write my songs, I really do it in private.”

“I was taught the same thing everybody else was taught in this world—to just be regular,” Queen said. As kids, she explained, we’re all force-fed the same bullshit: stay in line and don’t talk back. “At H-F or just in life, period, I just follow my own rules,” she said. “I was always tardy. Always absent. Always ditching. Always whatever.”

Queen personifies her swaggering, take-no-prisoners lyrics. On the Eat My Pussy single “My Way,” for example, she raps: “I’m a spoiled-ass bitch, I’ma get what I wish / If that nigga got a problem, he could suck his own dick / I got my own shit / I think I’m on, bitch / I’m 21 years old and I got my own business.”

G Herbo, Southside, Queen Key Wed 11/21, 8 PM, the Forge, 22 W. Cass St., Joliet, $35-$105, all-ages