How Ty Money made one of the best rap records of the past year

By holing up in his home studio, this Harvey hip-hop hero found a distinctive voice that speaks to injustice with rare insight.

By Leor Galil

Article Reprintty money

On November 25, less than 24 hours after the Chicago Police Department belatedly released a dashcam recording of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting and killing Laquan McDonald, local rapper Ty Money dropped “United Center,” whose video consists exclusively of edited footage from that recording. The song’s instrumental track accompanies its solemn piano melody with sizzling guitars and muffled, ominous bass that booms like an underground explosives test, and in his lyrics Money mulls over the systemic injustices that afflict Chicago’s black community and make the city’s racial divide feel like the Grand Canyon. Animating his rapid-fire rhymes with a story­teller’s eye for detail, he describes a world of crooked cops, murder victims under white sheets, and mothers with no stoves struggling to feed their children.

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