Over the past couple decades, Chicago has established itself as the country’s top export city for nearly all forms of entertainers, from comedy to rap. While it’s no longer churning out ludicrous Hollywood comedies about a couple of guys on a mission from God instigating police chases and car wrecks through the Loop, for example, just about every big-budget contemporary title within the genre boasts at least one Second City alumni raised in the Greater Chicago Area.
Meanwhile a considerable faction of household-name rappers living it up in LA came of age both personally and professionally in Chitown before chasing their dreams out West—a pilgrimage that the new LP from rapper Defcee and producer BoatHouse seemed to have in the backs of their minds when constructing their debut collaboration For All Debts Public and Private, which they officially released yesterday. Not only does Defcee’s gruff flow and BoatHouse’s cold production recall a turn-of-the-century underground rap sound much more closely aligned with NYC than LA, but the record consistently mulls over this sort of middle-child syndrome before explicitly ending with a call to arms for their Chicago peers to “stake a more permanent claim in rap.”
The album’s guest list makes a convincing case for Chicago’s current scene, with Mother Nature, SolarFive, and greenSLLIMe all stealing the show on each of their verses, while Cleveland’s Kipp Stone and New York’s Armand Hammer pull the record even further from the Left Coast and deeper into a grimy, graffiti-splatter sound abandoned by Def Jux 15 years ago. With a near-competitive mindset driving Defcee to hold his own with such powerful contributions to the record, the result is one of the strongest collaborative rap records of recent years alongside those of Armand Hammer and Mother Nature.
We asked both Defcee and BoatHouse to take us through the project track by track to get a sense of how each song was forged between each of their contributions. Hear the record below, and read on for their words.
1. “Even (Intro)”
Defcee: One of the things I love most about underground hip-hop right now are rappers who can cook up some wild style cadences over beats that have no drums on them—people like ELUCID, Koncept Jack$on, Sir E.U, Theravada, and Estee Nack come to mind. When I heard the intro for the album, it was originally just the vocal samples BoatHouse had laid over the instrumental, but the beat was so crazy I knew I had to rhyme on it—and I knew that my flow had to be unorthodox, which is why I took one percussive element of the beat and wrapped the lyrics around it, instead of just aiming for the typical 4/4 pockets that I heard in the beat.
BoatHouse: This track came super late in the game. Matter of fact, it was the very last song we put together. I was in the studio really late the night before we had to turn the album in making edits and putting the final sequence together. I’d run through the album a handful of times that day, and I said to myself after the last listen, “This needs an intro.” I found this sample chop, expanded on the initial idea, and sent it to Defcee who promptly told me to hold off because “this needs bars.” He sent me the verse the next day and we weren’t late in turning the album in.
2. “Ragnarok” (feat. Kipp Stone)
Defcee: I named the song “Ragnarok” as soon as I heard BoatHouse playing around with the sample. He added those drums in and the verse just ran out onto the paper. When I heard Kipp’s verse, I was so floored that I asked Boat to add another 16 bars of instrumental to the beat so I could redeem myself. At a certain point, I just resigned myself to the fact that I got cleaned up on my own song, and accepted fate for what it was.
BoatHouse: Creating this song is one of my favorite moments of the process of making the album. I had a slot booked out at the studio for Defcee and I to record a few verses for some of the other songs. Both of us like to work fast—we’re both of the mindset that we want to get something dope quickly, so however we can accomplish that is how we move within our creative space. We knocked out all the recording we had to do and I just pulled up a new session and started making a beat. Drums, sample, that heavy 808, and it was over. Defcee wrote the verse on the spot, we recorded it, and then sending it off to Kipp was a no-brainer.
3. “Recollect” (feat. SolarFive)
Defcee: I wanted this to be a statement record on a statement album, one that people could learn the words to and rap along to at shows while not being so complex with the cadences that people wouldn't be able to keep up. Originally, I’d recorded the hooks for “Recollect” and “Rossi” by myself, but Curly Castro heard the roughs of those songs and encouraged me to find someone else to rap the choruses. SolarFive’s voice is the perfect match for the lyrics in this specific hook, and it pushed the song up by at least one letter grade.
BoatHouse: With this song, I really wanted a minimal beat that left a lot of room for the artist. Some of my favorite B-side rap songs from the past 10 years have an interesting sample with a bunch of subtle additions to it and just let the artist do their thing over it. Overcooking a beat is a very real thing. The sample on this song is very repetitive at first, but it gets deeper the more you listen to it. We put a lot of thought into making this album highly re-listenable. I feel like this song is one that grows on you the more you come back to it.
4. “Dunk Contest”
Defcee: Every cypher is a dunk contest. This was me in my 2000 Vince Carter bag, especially in that second verse. I want to be universally respected as a rapper—for people to rock with me the way they do with the names of the best and brightest in the artform. Sometimes you just gotta show up and show out to prove you can hang with anybody. That’s what I did here.
BoatHouse: Defcee and I have known each other for a while, and both of us share a love for a very specific type of hip-hop. Which is one of the main reasons why I think the chemistry on this album is very clear. The dark sample, heavy sub, and hard drums—this is one of those types of songs cut from the fabric that made us fans of hip-hop in the first place.
5. “Rossi” (feat. Armand Hammer & greenSLLIME)
Defcee: When I was a kid, I would listen to rappers brag about drinking champagne, and as someone who neither drank nor understood the difference between high-quality alcohol and...affordable alcohol, I would just assume that if a label had a fancy name, it must be pricey and therefore expensive. So hearing Prodigy mention Asti Spumante on Mobb Deep’s “Eye for an Eye” meant I thought it was top-shelf alcohol...which it can be in a pinch if you are legally old enough to drink. My first time recording with Jyroscope, we stopped at a liquor store first so that they could buy alcohol (again, I didn’t really start drinking ’til it was legal for me to do so...long story) for the session. I remember them buying Yellow Tail and letting me know it was an efficient wine—tasted good and cheap as hell.
I miss the innocence of those times as a kid, when I was learning how to rap and record with people I admired, and the minute I heard the beat I started writing that specific hook to it in my head. I knew I wanted Armand Hammer on there—they’re my favorite rap group and, individually, two of my favorite rappers—and not only did they understand the assignment, they bodied their verses. It’s difficult for a four-verse song to feel compelling in 2022, but this one does because of their contributions. And SLLIME's voice is perfect for the hook—he makes it seem like it time-traveled here from a late-’90s D&D Studios session.
BoatHouse: We had big plans for this song since we got the first verse recorded, and it just kept growing and evolving. We knew we wanted to tap woods and ELUCID for the assist on this one almost instantly and they came through with some incredible verses. Really captured a different perspective of the concept of the song. I feel like the idea is battling with yourself creatively and in life. Putting up our own roadblocks and self-sabotaging ourselves. It’s something most people can relate to. Big shouts to greenSLLIME on the hook.
6. “Summer 06” (feat. SolarFive)
Defcee: This beat is one of my favorites on the album. It does a lot of heavy lifting with a minimal amount of elements—it brings out nostalgia, love, wistfulness...and made me want to write about being a kid and being totally stunned whenever I saw someone beautiful. SolarFive is one of the most talented people I know—he wrote the hook and his verse is crazy, too. It’s a showcase of his talents as a rapper and a songwriter.
BoatHouse: I’ve always been a fan of the type of production that can put you back in a specific time. This beat gave off a nostalgic vibe to me the second I heard the sample. Trust in each other’s skills is a crucial element to collaboration, in my opinion. As with every song on the album, going into it I wanted to leave room for Defcee to say what he saw fit. He caught the nostalgic feeling in the guitar and the drums instantly and doubled down on that. SolarFive was the perfect choice to pick up the assist on this one.
7. “QTNA”
Defcee: The title is a hashtag from social media I’ve seen quite frequently—Questions That Need Answers—and it came from the hook, which questions whether I was enjoying life or just trying to get by from day to day in my early twenties. As I address in the song, I’m still pretty terrible with money, but it used to be much, much worse when I didn’t have the determination (or long-term planning skills) to budget for myself. I would spend all my money on rent, bills, and junk food, then wait for my next paycheck. I’m still learning how to be more disciplined financially, so for as much authority as I may rap and write with, I still have so much to learn about life and adulthood with the stakes higher now that I have a wife and family. That’s the urgency that drove the song.
BoatHouse: For me, the type of questions that need answers are always the ones that have to do with the path in life I’m on. Things like, “Am I doing this right?” “Am I meant to be doing this?” Pretty big questions that, as I get older, I try to remind myself to not think on them as harshly when it comes to creativity within my career. As time goes on, I think the paths we choose in life are neither wrong nor right—they’re just different. [One should] stop putting so much pressure on choosing the perfect next move and just doing something and understanding that you’re here to learn along the way.
8. “Bubble Coat”
Defcee: As the hook suggests, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Raekwon and Ghostface for my style, and this beat planted me in the center of that space. I spent hours in high school studying Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... and Supreme Clientele trying to figure out what was going on, and it changed how I approached practicing and understanding the craft of writing. The verses are just me applying what I’ve learned from Ghost and Rae.
BoatHouse: This is one of those beats to me. I made this beat summer 2020 quarantining at home and knew instantly the type of song it should be. I think the name of this beat was actually “Bubble Coat,” which goes to show that it really gave off that classic, grimy hip-hop feel so much that Defcee had to just double down on the name. This beat is cut from the Supreme Clientele type of cloth, my favorite GFK album, so it made sense that Def name-dropped it in the hook. Matter of fact, the album that got me into hip-hop was Enter the 36 Chambers. After I heard that I went into a frenzy downloading as many classic hip-hop albums to my iPod Classic. Supreme Clientele was indeed my homework.
9. “Boxing Bullets” (feat. SolarFive & greenSLLIME)
Defcee: When I brought these two in to work on their pieces for the album, we built a new joint from scratch with BoatHouse. That beat is insane—permanent mean-mug music. As per usual, I finished my verse first and immediately regretted it after Solar and SLLIME laid theirs. I hate how much I love how good those two are at rapping, so I definitely rewrote and revised pieces of my verse until I felt like it was ready. Solar’s verse is a master class in cadence and subversive writing—the bars in there are crazy, but are delivered so slickly that you’re not even impacted by the punchlines until you listen to the verse over and over again. And SLLIME’s verse is a highlight of the album. I don’t know anyone who’s able to flex as many moods, tones, and styles in one verse as well as SLLIME does, while still being clever in his writing and, of course, hilarious.
BoatHouse: It was cool to see how these three friends competed and challenged each other in the studio. Def and Solar finished their verses and immediately started talking about how SLLIME—usually the one to finish his verse last—was gonna be the one to say some shit. “The beat float like a house on a boat.” All three of them got off on this one and neither rapped like the other. That session was literally sitting around and joking and a song got made in the meantime.
10. “Shuriken” (feat. Mother Nature)
Defcee: Truth and Klevah are two of the best rappers out there. Mother Nature has impeccable IQ when it comes to rhyming—they always have cool shit to say, and the delivery is always effective and unexpected at the same time. I’m grateful they hopped on the album, and that BoatHouse gave me such a fire backdrop for this specific song.
BoatHouse: I was scouring my emails to see whether this beat was one I sent early on in the process of this album or not. Turns out this was one of the ones we cooked up together. Now that I think about it, I think we started and finished this one in the same day. I usually start my process by first digging for a sample to mess with. Where we go in the session is pretty much dependent on me—if I find a sample I think is cool then I start chopping it. Once I get a nice sample chop pattern, that usually warrants some type of positive response from Defcee. Then we’re in business. That’s how this one went, and after he recorded his two verses, he says, “We gotta get Mother Nature on this.”
I produced the entirety of Mother Nature’s previous project SZNZ. They’re family at this point, so once I reached out with this record to see if they would jump on this I knew it was a done deal. Like I’ve said before, trust is a huge thing for me with collaborations, and I always can trust Klev and Truth to deliver something crazy.
11. “Moving Targets”
Defcee: I’ve always loved Pimp C’s verse on “Knockin Doorz Down,” where he”s 100 percent honest and transparent about what needed to change in Houston hip-hop in order for that city to stake a more permanent claim in rap. I feel like it’s about time for Chicago to do the same. I’ve been guilty of resentment and jealousy toward rappers who are younger than me and more successful. This story certainly isn’t exclusive to me, so I wanted to address it honestly and openly, especially as a final statement on this album.
As a city, Chicago hip-hop has the best artists in every subgenre of the music, but we haven’t unified in the ways that we could have because we’ve been worried about things that aren’t deeper than rap. It’s time for Chicago to build and show the world what the city is capable of before it takes over like it should have years ago.
BoatHouse: This record puts a nice bow on the end of the album. Both Defcee and I have been active in the Chicago music scene for a while. When you’re active like that, you see people grow, some people fall back, you take some wins and take some L’s. One of the things that can stifle growth for the artist scene anywhere is a lack of collaboration, or looking at each other as competition instead of comrades. I feel like this song is about growing up and seeing that the enemy isn’t your peers just because they do the same thing as you. The best thing to do is to make your community stronger and get after the bag. Plus that guitar sample is epic.
