Last month drill giant and Chicago rap royal King Louie dropped his first full-length in six years, Life With Louie (Man Up Band Up/Machine Entertainment Group). I hadn’t really reckoned with what that long gap might mean for the world of rap. Louie’s string of early-2010s mixtapes gave rappers around the city (and the world) something to aspire to, and 2014’s Tony in particular will go down as one of the best full-lengths from the first wave of drill, a movement that’s since inspired some of the most exciting MCs to emerge from the UK and NYC. Life With Louie hit me like I’d been stumbling through the desert and finally had my first sip of fresh water from an oasis. Louie saunters through smoky samples (“Mind Yo Business”), bass-heavy collages (“Si Si Senor”), and twilight-calm synth melodies (“Restless”) with the same nonchalant flair. The way he tosses off his neat, blunt verses will convince you that these tracks were built from the ground up to hang on his every syllable. The 25 minutes of Life With Louie fly by, and the King makes the most of that brief run time. Atop the clobbering, spiky bass of “Kisses,” Louie claims he can persuade a car to buy an ignition or sell the ocean to fishes, surreal boasts that in a brief moment light up an already hot track. He’s impressed me plenty of times already, but on Life With Louie he wins me over again and again.
King Louie Do or Die headline; King Louie, DaWreck, and Psycho & Pazzo open. Sun 10/30, 7:30 PM, the Forge, 22 W. Cass, Joliet, $30, $70 reserved balcony, 18+
