But it’s a difficult trek, as Durk’s own career has borne out. He brought Von along for that Breakfast Club interview, and you got the sense that it was a training exercise for the younger performer, that Durk sees OTF as a tool to help smart, poetic guys find financial stability. Durk processes pain and misfortune in the vocal booth in songs like “Oh My God” from 2013’s Signed to the Streets mixtape, or his 2014 version of Dej Loaf’s “Try Me”: “I seen my cousin bleeding, I damn near lost it / That’s why I gotta ride through all the opp shit.” The sweetness of the voice is tainted by the stresses of surviving in communities where financial hardship drives crime and violence.ĭurk is trying to build something different, though. In December, OTF affiliate ARoy was shot to death in broad daylight. That July, armed robbers broke into Durk’s home, drawing fire from the rapper and his girlfriend. Last June, Durk’s older brother DThang was killed outside a club in Illinois. OTF star King Von was murdered days after his debut, Welcome to O’Block, dropped in 2020. In 2014, his cousin OTF Nunu was fatally shot in 2015, the same fate befell his manager, OTF Chino. There’s a pain in this music that cannot be faked, the fallout from incomparable losses that have trailed Durk throughout his career. Durk is the kind of guy who shows up to a Breakfast Club interview wearing a black chest harness and fields questions about whether it’s a bulletproof vest. It’s been an arduous journey, a series of breakthroughs and setbacks that imbue the music with dark urgency counterbalanced by an equally jarring sense of humor. Since writing a string of Chicago drill classics on 2012’s memorable I’m Still a Hitta mixtape, Durk has followed an unusual path, a truth reflected in the succession of major-label partnerships brokered and broken across seven studio albums and in TMZ stories about his legal troubles. At 29, the Chicago native and recent Atlanta transplant is a veteran with over a decade of history in the game, a father of six, and founder of the Only the Family rap collective and label.

Durk’s 7220 ponders the emotional fallout of a year of big achievements and crushing lows.

Dej loaf try me bpm