Chi City on His Journey, Kanye & Artists Using Their Voice for Good

The higher you go, the more you meet people with their head on straight and solid plans for the future and learn that success doesn't just happen by chance. Chicago's Chi City just so happens to be one of these people. With a sharp mind, kind soul and banging music, it won't be soon before long that everybody knows what time it is.

Late last year, I had the honor of chatting with the multi-talented artist to learn more of his journey, his thoughts on Kanye West's impact on the culture and of course, chop it up about one of my favorite subjects, books! Tap in below or hit the transcript afterward, if you have extra time. And oh yeah, don't forget to follow up @iamchicity.

Keish: For those unfamiliar with your story, describe your come up and how you got your start in Hip Hop.

Chi City: I would say actually doing music since I was a kid is like night and day. I always wanted to do music, but I always thought it would be something I would do when I got older. So actually, I used to draw. Like, I was dope as f*ck at drawing... So, I was still doing music but at that time. But, I never really saw any kids out actually rapping. And then I remember seeing Bow Wow's "Bounce With Me“ video and I was like damn look at this little kid on tv! 

And from that moment, I was you know what, I can actually start rapping now. So, I started from that moment, writing a lot. I would get karaoke machines for Christmas, and then I would figure out how to record on them. I would dub one side and do the verse, put a blank tape on the next side and do the hook. And I'd go back and forth from tape to tape until I was able to do ad-libs and everything, on a karaoke machine. I was creative as hell back then.

So, as time passed, a lot of my friends that I grew up with started poppin' in music. Like Lil Durk, that's a childhood friend, like family. So, they started blowing up and gave me a taste of seeing how quickly the music and everything can take off. So, I started pushing online and everything, seeing how they were doing it... and I released this song called "Thug Life". It was like this Bone Thugs-N-Harmony influenced record. Because Bone Thugs were my favorite anything growing up - artist, group, whatever. That was just my vibe at that time. 

I didn't have too much of anything on SoundCloud. Like, I was dropping stuff but not nothing too serious. And I remember I dropped that record and I will say that's when me actually getting into the music business started because I started getting emails and calls and like Lyor from 300 Entertainment, Def Jam and all these cats... And it started coming so fast that I was like damn like I didn't know what to really do at that point.

So, from there I got a couple of cats around me and we started making it happen. I ended up doing a couple of tours at that time. I did like three college tours. Mickey Factz was hot at that time. He's from New York, he was poppin’ at that time, that's my dog... So, I did a couple of college tours with him. I also did two 33 day tours with this artist from the West Coast, Lil Debbie, and sh*t just started going up… 

I would always go back and forth to LA, just to kind of network and I had a close friend that I knew for years that lived out here. He was a songwriter. And when I used to come, he would be like, "man you just need to move out here. Sh*t lit out here". And I would be like "Nah or whatever”. I was just cool coming to visit". And I said f*ck it one time and I put my all into it. Then, I released a couple of more things that led to me get booked to go on tour with Juicy J. I was talking back and forth with Live Nation.

Long story short on that: Live Nation had this new kid, this Asian they just signed out a college. He was fresh. But, he was hating and didn't allow me to go on the tour because you know, Live Nation pays artists upfront. So, Juicy J and his manager were kind of co-signing like we want y'all on the road to open up. And the dude was like it was like, wait 'til we get X, Y and Z and your merch and sh*t like that. And so I guess from the small buzz I had going on, he figured I was lacking in dope. But I still wasn't, I was still grinding. So, I'm like I can't afford to give you a percentage of my merch… So, he kinda hated and didn't allow me to go on the tour. And at that time I had saved up so much money, around $25,000-30,000, no lie. 

Because the tour was going to be for two months and I had an idea of like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. So, I said if I hit the road, I'm going to give my all and I don't plan on coming back home. I really want to just launch my career and continue on. So, literally the tour was supposed to start in the month of May and by like half of May they decided they weren't going to allow me to go on the tour. And I'm like, damn, everybody expected me to be leaving. And then my friend just so happened to call me, “like bro you need to come to LA to live for at least 2 weeks”. So, I just got online and found a spot in LA and moved out here.

Like I hadn't even planned on coming, only because people were expecting me to be on tour at that time. I'm like, I can't stay home now. And my friend was already real heavy in the industry, songwriting for artists like Mariah Carey and things like that. And then he pulled me like into the song songwriting shit. And then that sh*t took off, you know. And surprisingly that took off quicker than my actual music as an artist because he just put me up on so much game with, you know, the placements and all that sh*t. So, that led to us getting our first placement. Then we started working with Flo Rida, then that led to working with Rihanna, Nicki Minaj... Even though the records didn't make the album, it still was dope actually be in the studio working with these artists.

That just allowed me to gain a lot of relationships and so forth, to just kind of put back into my own music. And you know, the story pretty much started from there. We have actually been seriously in the music. It just kinda happened in a way I didn't expect, you know. I never thought like I'd actually be writing from other artists. So, when I moved down here, I just took a turn and it was a lot of ups and downs, you know. It was my first time living out on my own. I made it work, you know. For the present time, a lot of things were going on... 

We were just working on Trolls 2, the movie. And my friend that I was referring to actually ended up passing away recently in April from an unfortunate event. And that put a big ass toll... I took the backseat for a minute because we had so many things in the works and so much stuff we were working on. New songwriters, his debut project with Atlantic, I was working on my debut project with my label and it just kinda got paused too, like a standstill, and just like wow. 

People feel like they're meant to do something or it's meant for them, and when he passed away I was like, damn. Even when you got like what I consider all the talent in the world and all the opportunities people dream of and that still gets taken away from you. Like you really can't take life for granted, you know what I'm saying? 

So, it just kinda changed my perspective. Like, I know that's a lot, but that's pretty much what the journey was. It just started as something to do for fun that I didn't expect to I took it serious to open up a door to took a course in the songwriters sh*t. And that's what actually helped me get inside of the industry and you know, and now I'm here in a dope situation with EMPIRE, you know, just getting ready for the new year, and kinda make this journey all make sense.

Keish: That's a dope story. How'd you get your name?

Chi City: I got it on accident... so in Chicago, everybody used to have these dark ass names and sh*t. It's just like a different culture in Chicago. You know you had the Crucial Conflict, Do Or Die, Psychodrama… and I was still trying to figure out my name. One of my homies from Baltimore and I was chopping it up and he was just like, man, you got to have a name that's going to represent your whole city. Like it's about Chicago, but you gotta do it for not only Chicago. And he was like, man, you got to do for Chi City. And see, Chi City is like a nickname in Chicago. And at that time Kanye had just dropped that “Homecoming” song with John Legend. And that's was the beginning of that song: "And you say Chi City. Chi Chi...". Then when he said that I was like damn, that's my name then. And then I kinda ran with it a little bit and then I never stopped running.

Keish: Speaking of that Kanye song, which three Kanye albums have had the most impact on your life and how you view things?

Chi City: I would say a ‘Graduation’. Graduation definitely was a big impact. Just to see someone from Chicago make an impact on that magnitude with their first album was incredible. So, that album kind of represented that everything is possible. And then I'll actually say his recent album, ‘Jesus Is King’. Because that just goes to show in reality, you kind of just gotta do what you feel regardless of how people view you or how they take it. And strangely for me, that album doesn't sound different from anything I've ever heard him do because he's always talked about God in his music, he always talks about uplifting. So, for me as a fan of Kanye since that very first album, I was like this is still Kanye. He might not be cussin', but this still sounds like Kanye to me.

Keish: Your visuals, from your photography to your videography and images, everything, is always on point. Where do you draw your creative inspiration from?

Chi City: I draw from people, honestly. Like I, I kinda get all my inspiration from people I run into when I'm out. People I just might see and pass and different stories I hear. Because in reality, that's really the reason I do music. Like music is a way to express who you are. But at the same time as an artist, your job is to help others make sense of who they are and make them feel better about themselves by sharing your trials and tribulations. So, all my shit comes from people. We all go through different things, so those are the best things.

Keish: I agree with you on that one. I never really heard anybody express that before. You know, so that's really dope. You just released the pack of songs ‘Side A/B’. Can you give us some insight into how the project came about?

Chi City: So, we've been at it for a minute. Just to backtrack real quick, when I mentioned that I had been locked in with so many great artists on their projects. And the thing about songwriting I actually don't enjoy it as much being an artist. It's dope and it's fun and you get to work with cats you've always wanted to work with that you're a fan of, but in reality, you spend so much time helping them that *inaudible* your own.

I started off as an artist. In the midst of me recording or writing, I'd always still be recording but I would be like ahhh, I don't want it. So, those are actually 2 records that Johnathan loved. And he was like bro, we gotta drop something. And I'm like I don't really want to drop anything, I’m working on this project that I want to drop. I want this to be like, this it what the absence has been you know to kinda make up for me not dropping full projects in a while.

And he was like man, just put them out for me. And I put them out and people actually fuck with them. I didn't like them. Like I don't really sing, I harmonize and sh*t like that. So, that was like the first time I ever attempted, but I put it out and surprisingly people were like, yo that sounds dope! And I'm like, what? That sh*t sounds wack to me.

That just goes to show the actual beauty of music, like one man's trash is someone else's treasure. Like just because I view it that way doesn't mean it resonates with someone else the same way. I think that was the fun part about releasing those records that it was something I didn't want to do, but it actually helped out a lot cause I had a lot of different producers that like I've been waiting to work on reach out. And it's like, damn, I didn't know something that I didn't even want to go out would be the thing that kind of helped out a lot.

Keish: Are you going to do any visuals for any of the tracks?

Chi City: For those? No. So right now, I've been working on something for like a very long time. I wasn't able to figure out fully exactly what I wanted to do. And as artists, sometimes we get lost in the sauce in this sh*t. You know, we go through that phase of like we're doing music for what we believe in and what we love and we get caught up in the hype and trying to chase singles and trying to chase what everybody else is doing because you're trying to keep up and this and that. You start to kind of fade away and start to let go of what you actually believe in. So, living out here and being in the music industry, I've experienced all of those emotions. So, I was never too attached to any of the work I was putting out.

There were some dope records and they were getting some nice attention and everything like that. But, I feel that everything was kind of leading up to this moment that I'm in right now. Which is just to get back to the core, why I even started to do music and whatnot. When I first said I wanted to do music it was because when I first heard the artists that I loved going up, they used to give me a feeling and I used to be like, man, I want people to feel that exact same way. So, a lot of this stuff that I've put out visual-wise, I don't have a story for those. But, the music that I'm getting ready to put out. That's where the story is going to begin visually. So you know, right now I'm just having fun with it. Just really developing me more. You know, you can never stop that regardless of what you have done or everything else. Every day is a new learning process.

Keish: Yeah, I agree. Your perspective is dope. Do you read a lot?

Chi City: Yeah, or at least I attempt to like more-so when I'm at the gym. Like, I'll try to listen to audiobooks and sh*t more than music. I be having so much sh*t running through my head that like literally my thoughts will be louder than the damn music. So, sometimes I'll find myself working out to no music. Because like damn, I can't stop thinking and listen to the music at the same time. So, I'll just turn on a book. I'll go to Audible and find a dope ass book that I have on my wishlist and then I’ll just turn it on and that really helps a lot, you know?

Keish: What is your favorite book?

Chi City: I don't think I have a favorite at this point. I would say one book that I kind of use for just not business, but life as a whole is “48 Laws of Power”.

Keish: Yeah, I have that one too.

Chi City: Yeah.

Keish: There’s this book I just finished. It's by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. It's called Success Masters. It's really good. I know you probably read “Think and Grow Rich” already.

Chi City: Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. His collection is crazy.

Keish: Yeah, and I have another one, “The Science of Getting Rich”. That's another good one too.

Chi City: Yeah, I'm familiar with them for sure.

Keish: Yeah.

Chi City: I plan on racking up on some for Christmas. I have a lot of recommendations from people. Most of the time, even when I'm out and having conversations with people in the industry, I'll ask them about different books and different things that they read. So, I have a lot of books I'm going to tap into soon.

Keish: Have you heard of Scribd? You can read or listen to pretty much any book you want to. It's like $9 a month. They have all the books on there. It's like Netflix for books.

Chi City: Oh wow. Nah, I haven't heard of that.

Keish: Yeah, it's dope. I like it better than Kindle Unlimited and Audible. But the thing is if you cancel your subscription, you can't keep the books like Audible has.

Chi City: Yeah, I'm going to have to check that out.

Keish: So, where do you want to take your career in the 2020s?

Chi City: Honestly to just stay locked down. I have sessions every day for the rest of this month. To complete this project and finish my business plan for the new year. Because once the new year starts I want to do less waiting and more action. Because I really don't want to wait to do anything. I kinda want to do all the thinking and brainstorming now. And as soon as that clock counts down, just hit the ground running. So, get my mind wrapped around the business side of things and just move forward.

Keish: I feel you. What's that one thing you wish more people knew about you?

Chi City: Maybe that I'm not shy. Like, most people that meet me think I'm actually shy. But I just don't be talking to people, honestly. Like, I observe people so much... I'm not not one of those people that talks for no reason.

Keish: Yeah, I'm the same way. I pay attention to what's going on around me too. So, I feel you on that one.

Chi City: Yeah, for real

Keish: Is there anything else you want us to know before you go?

Chi City: Absolutely. I have some dope music coming out at the top of the year. I have some incredible visuals. I'm masterminding the ultimate takeover for 2020. I have a lot of great, great things coming. Check out the projects I have out on my SoundCloud. My Twitter and Instagram is @IAmChiCity