Fuse Q&A: Sasha Go Hard On Her New Mixtape & the Chicago Rap Scene
The Chicago rap scene is in the midst of a moment. Established Chi-born artists like Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco have new albums out but, more interestingly, a new and very young scene is exploding on city's Southside. The best known of these young artists, commonly lumped together and considered part of a scene called called “drill,” is 17-year-old Chief Keef. Starting last spring, he's had a meteoric rise on the national rap scene, thanks in part to “I Don't Like,” a driving banger officially sanctioned and remixed by Kanye West on his GOOD Music compilation Cruel Summer. But the scene extends beyond Chief Keef.
There are several other notable artists – Lil Reese, Lil Durk and King L among them – but none have made more of an impact than 20-year-old Sasha Go Hard, who released her second mixtape Do You Know Who I Am?, this summer.
In person, Sasha Go Hard is charming and has a quiet, almost shy, presence. It's different than her stage and on-record persona, an energetic, brash, loud, and, as her name implies, hard style. Her show at Santos Party House in New York City several weeks ago, her first outside of her native Chicago, was a prime example.
“Oh my God,” she said enthusiastically. “We turned up. They was really feeling it.”
The show was the centerpiece of her recent trip to New York City, itself the cap of a rush of publicity for the 20-year-old rapper. In between sold-out shows and video shoots, Sasha sat down with Fuse to talk about her rise to fame, the violence in Chicago and what's next.
The Santos show was your first show in NYC?
Yeah. My first show outside of Chicago.
How was it compared to your shows in Chicago?
The crowd was interacting better. So I felt better. The shows in Chicago, they interact too but they turned up yesterday.
How'd you get into music and rapping? What was your introduction?
When I was young, I always liked to rap for some reason. I used to just put words together. And as I started growing, I started listening to music and I was like, "I want to start doing something more." Because I got tired of just rhyming with just like four sentences. So I started making more words and learning new styles and stuff. At 16, I started recording off my phone. My friends were with me and were like, "Man, you cold." Then they told me, "Keep going. You should get serious." But I ain't really know how.
One day, I saw Chief Keef posting his stuff on Facebook, so I asked him where he recorded and went to his studio and recorded my first song. After that, people in the studio were like, "You go hard!" Chief Keef and all them. I was like, "I know I got to keep going because everybody keeps telling me." After that, I started going to the studio every day.
How long was it between starting to rap seriously and your first visit to the studio?
I would say a few months. Last year was my first time getting into the studio. I didn't really know what to do to get in the studio because the music scene wasn't really popping then. So when I got on Facebook that's when I saw Chief Keef uploading his stuff, so I just asked him.
What do you think made the scene get so huge?
Grinding. Making good music and just doing stuff that people like. Not just being negative. And like the type of sound we bringing, like, Chicago is bringing a different sound. It's like a drill sound; like a drill and a sound that'll pop. So when you hear it, you get in the mood. I ain't necessarily going to say drill, because a lot of music I make is not drill but it's like that type of music you hear...it puts you in the zone.
10m
2m
20m
55s
9m
20m
3m
20m
21m
1m
2m
21m
30s
46s
51s
1h 39m
1m
20m
2m
14m
20m
20m
1m
1m
9m
3m
20m
22m
44m
45m
22m
22m
2m
2m
1h 21m
21m
1m
1m
43s
6m
1m
16m
2m
12m
2m
21m
8m
52s
1m
21m
2m
21m
1h 39m
2m
1m
1m
56s
20m
45m
3m
1m
1m
20m
1m
9m
44m
8m
41m
46s
5m
46m
1m
1m
21m
22m
1m
5m
2m
5m
1m
10m
20m
2m
22m
18m
2m
9m
20m
1h 13m
44m
20m
21m
43m
44m
44m
1m
1m
1m