Kevin Coval came to hip-hop in a very Chicago way: through the city’s vivid house music scene. As a teenager growing up in the suburb of Northbrook, Coval viewed house music’s “notion of radical inclusivity” as a treasured anomaly in an “intentionally segregated” city. From there, b-boy battles and emcee events didn’t seem such a stretch. Inspired by KRS-One, Queen Latifah, and Chuck D, rap eventually led Coval to the library, where he uncovered the texts of Malcolm X and Lerome Bennett, Jr., Howard Zinn’s APeople’s History of the United States and Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets. By the time Coval moved back to Chicago in the mid-’90s, following college and an overseas stint playing basketball, he found himself in the middle of an emerging spoken word scene, where the same spaces used to showcase rappers also were used by poets.
“I’d been writing for like five years at that point, and eventually I was just the white dude in the room, and people were like, ‘my dude, are you gonna...read, or...?’” Coval tells Pitchfork. “There was interest and confusion and eventually I got put on the mic and became a practitioner. I thought of myself as a poet, but I wanted to rhyme, too.”
Two decades later, Coval has bridged that particular gap better than anyone else in his city. As the founder of the Louder Than a Bomb poetry festival and the artistic director for Young Chicago Authors, Coval has mentored and created safe spaces for some of the city’s brightest young creatives, including now-blossoming YCA alums Chance the Rapper, Noname, Saba, and Jamila Woods. He has released several books, including More Shit Chief Keef Don’t Like, Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica, and the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, which brought together four generations of rap writers from across the country.
Now Coval takes inspiration from Howard Zinn with A People’s History of Chicago, his forthcoming poetry collection highlighting hidden histories within the dramatically segregated city. His goal extends beyond chronicling the city’s cultural innovators (from Sun Ra to Ron Hardy) and great political thinkers (from Ida B. Wells to Jane Addams). “I also wanted to share some of the stories where working people have organized and defeated great odds levied against them in order to achieve the benefits that we reap and receive now,” Coval says.
“Part of what I wanted to do in the book is tell how we got to this point in Chicago hip-hop culture, which is why I include the poem about the Molemen beat tapes, why I have an ode to Common’s Resurrection, why I talk about [King] Louie and [Chief] Keef,” he adds. “Prior to this moment there was a generation of Chicago emcees and producers that I was privy to and around, and in part this moment stands on the shoulders and in the legacy of that moment.” Certainly there’s an artistic through-line that holds, even as generations pass. “When Twista is on Saba’s record, what a victory for the West Side, what a victory for the whole city, and what a continuation of this poetic lineage that has very much to do with one another.”
In keeping with this hip-hop undercurrent, Chance the Rapper wrote the book’s foreword, which you can read below ahead of its April 11th release. Chance and Coval have been crossing paths at workshops and open mic nights for nearly a decade, and Coval booked some of Chance’s earliest shows. “Chance is not an overnight success—I met him when he was 14, so it takes 10 years to become an overnight success,” Coval says. “If you ask people in Chicago, they would say he was dope before 10 Day [from 2012]. There’s a slew of tapes with his friend Justin [J-Emcee] as Instrumentality that people in these youth cultural spaces vibed with and loved. One of those songs helped me through the mourning of my aunt Joyce… For me, one of the most powerful things about him is that from very early on I saw how serious he was about the craft.”
For Coval, it’s all linked—the artistic and the civic, writers from Wells to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks to the late Brother Mike, and onto musicians like Chance, Noname, Chief Keef, and Mick Jenkins. “If you are an artist or writer in Chicago, you are essentially an inheritor to the legacy of Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks,” he says. “Part of what she talked about is that the artist and writer should tell the stories that are directly in front of their nose. Whether it’s Mick or Noname or [Lil] Durk or Sasha [Go Hard] or King Louie, I think everyone is beginning to really understand that there is a power in saying what is in front of them, and that collectively we can begin to paint a broader picture of what the city of Chicago is actually like.”
From where Coval’s standing, the view cannot be considered without looking back at what hooked him in the first place: the radical inclusivity of the Chicago house scene, where sharing perspectives was key. It’s something Coval thinks the current generation of local emcees is mastering. “Young people in Chicago are getting a much broader representation of what it’s like to love, struggle, and fight to have Chicago be more just for you, your family, and your community.” A People’s History of Chicago hopes to trace the lineage of the city’s loudest voices—and the voices of tomorrow.
Chance the Rapper’s foreword
We got the cheat codes.
There’s no other place on earth where you can go to a centralized space and see thirteen-, fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-, seventeen-, and eighteen-year-olds who want to conquer art and music. I left Chicago for a little and went to L.A. But have you ever seen a raw-ass tree or a raw-ass plant that’s beautiful, that’s fully bloomed and growing? It can’t fully bloom if you uproot it. If you take it somewhere else, out of its natural environment, it’s not gonna grow the same way. If you take a tree out of the dirt, a Christmas tree, and move it into your crib, it’ll stay that exact same tree for a little while before it starts to wilt, but it won’t grow anymore. You can’t uproot a plant. You have to let it grow. If I were to have grown in LA, I might’ve grown into some shit I’m not supposed to be or just not grown at all, or just peaked. I can reach my peak in Chicago cuz that’s where I was planted and where I can continue to grow.
I had planned on living in LA, but when I was out there going to parties and feeling that vibe, I thought it was ungodly, it wasn’t true to who I was born to be or what I was supposed to grow to be. Being there made me realize this is not where I’m supposed to get my biggest experiences. As sad as I ever was in LA, the lowest I’ve ever been, it’s not where my lowest was supposed to be. The highest I’ve been, the happiest I’ve been in Los Angeles, was not where my life’s happiest moments were supposed to be. Being happy means doing what you are supposed to do, being exactly who you are supposed to be. My god, my inner understanding, whatever it is that guides me, had me recognizing that I’m not supposed to be there.
We have a head start. If you’ve been in that building once, in the Harold Washington Library, one time, you know. Harold Washington. The first Black mayor of Chicago. A very powerful man. A very connected man. A very humble and grounded man. A household name who died in office while at work. His library is in the center of downtown, in the center of the Loop, where all the trains meet. For us to walk into that building is astounding. My dad volunteered for Harold Washington. That’s how he got his record expunged. That’s how he dodged the system. Years later, he has a library named after him and I could walk in from the cold and experience this temple.
From the age of fourteen, I was trying to go against the grain, to grow into a time and period where it’s dope to be anti-establishment, where it’s dope to not just accept all the answers that are given to you but to look for your own answers. I am trying to push that. I’m trying to push that to other people who didn’t get taught that. As kids that grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s, we are able to ask questions like: What’s going on? Who are the people leading us? Who are those people teaching us? What are they telling us? How are they able to tell us that? Who are they and where are they coming from and is it the truth? I’ve been taught to be a critical thinker, and I was able to say this doesn’t feel right. Having the understanding I’ve been blessed with, I’ve been able to discern that that shit is not right, that it doesn’t feel right, that it doesn’t seem right.
I met Kevin Coval at an orientation at Jones College Prep, the first time I ever went into my high school cuz I didn’t check it out beforehand. I just signed up for it and applied. So my first time going up to the school was for the Louder Than A Bomb team orientation and Kevin was doing a writing workshop. Though I didn’t make my slam team or to Louder Than A Bomb, Kevin ended up being very instrumental to me.
Kevin Coval is my artistic father. He mentored my friends Malcolm London and Dimress Dunnigan and Fatimah Warner and got me shows, and those shows got me a little bit of bread and the confidence to continue and take the craft seriously. In a lot of ways he was the other side of Brother Mike for me, and anybody from Chicago knows what that means and how big a statement that is. He was that for me and for a lot of people.
Kevin made art a job to me. He made me feel like it was real. He made me feel like the competition was real. He made me feel that the money was real. He made me feel that the love and the fans were real. And if I didn’t have him in my life I would’ve been complacent. He took me out of that space and made me understand what it is to be a poet, what it is to be an artist, and what it is to serve the people.
Chance the Rapper
Chance the Chicagoan