As other pioneers of drill’s first wave, like G Herbo, have expanded their sounds and become chart fixtures, Chief Keef doesn’t shy away from putting unexpected and even flat-out weird flourishes on his hometown sound. A romance album with Afrobeats touches and a song where he assures his main squeeze he loves her over his side piece? Sure. Dalliances into 2000s mixtape culture soundtracked by maudlin Zaytoven pianos and Mike WiLL Made-It’s blown-out minimalist trap? Tight. What about Almighty So 2, which brought the gothic influences creeping on the edges since at least Back From the Dead to the fore with soul samples and candy-colored electronics bordering on PC Music-core? A day that ends in “y” for Mr. 3Hunna. His 2024 run of the Mike WiLL-produced Dirty Nachos and Almighty So 2 in particular was a cogent one-two punch; Keef embracing the Trapaholics sound of his blog-era forebears before re-re-defining the sound he helped popularize in operatic fashion. Skeletor, Keef’s latest, isn’t nearly that ambitious, which isn’t inherently a problem. But what it lacks in new and captivating ideas, it makes up for with some spirited retreads and the occasional jaw-dropping spectacle.
You can’t say Keef isn’t growing as a producer. Skeletor’s best beats stand as intricate, explosive little worlds that build on ideas he’s been toying with his entire career. The flitting keyboards and sticky 808s on “Mark of Buddha” give the talk of bust-down bracelets and feeding a woman pickles the allure of a Castlevania score reimagined by Lex Luger; the pristine vocal sample at the center of “Only for the Night” meshes with plucked mandolins and pounding drums that could soundtrack a night out in Newark or the assault on Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings.
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“Only for the Night” is Skeletor’s apex both lyrically and musically. Keef toes the line between maturity and wilding like only he can: He’s looking into his young son’s eyes and smiling one second, and just three bars later, he’s making a pussy joke: “Bae pulled up, I got the cat, it said ‘Meow,’ bitch.” Memories of gang violence from his youth cloud his decision about whether to jump in the Porsche or the Ferrari today (he settles for the Rolls). There’s real tension between his street-punk days and his current millennial rap superstar status, amplified by the dense churn of the beat and occasional silly references delivered with deadpan severity (“I’ma do my tang, nigga, poot”). It’s the most fun and most reflective song on the album.
The rest of Skeletor doesn’t quite rise to those levels, and while the good songs are solid, a handful fall flat in comparison. “Number 2,” which directly follows “Only for the Night,” is a synthy soup that aims for simmering menace but plays more like a demo. On “Video Shoot,” Keef links with white enfant terrible ian, whose third-generation Lex Luger and Gucci Mane worship is even more tasteless and boring stacked next to Keef than it is by itself. “Ian, wake yo ass up, always smokin’ weed/I was late to my last show ’cause I was smokin’ weed,” is a line Keef could sell in his sleep, but as ian’s intro, it lands with a thud. Keef’s opener packs more personality while feeling run-of-the-mill for him: “So much mud in my cup, bitch, I’d probably leave a stain.” “Slide” is another team-up with longtime collaborator G Herbo that isn’t much better than “Neph Nem” from Almighty So 2, but features just enough jewelry so icy it’s “like I wasted a slushy” to keep things interesting.
Several tracks end with Keef repeating phrases, like on “The Real Chief Keef,” where he cribs the question from Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” to plead his own case as an endlessly imitated icon. But more often than not, these refrains wind up feeling like filler, as if he’d run out of ideas before the song finished. It works fine when there’s more variety to the chorus, like on “24Hrs,” but “Good” is the worst offender, its hook “Nigga you good? I’m good,” wearing out its welcome after the first round and slurring into nonsense as it repeats for the last 40 seconds. That’s Skeletor as an experience, especially following the delirious pomp of Dirty Nachos and Almighty So 2—Keef spinning his designer wheels and only occasionally touching road.
