Lil Durk

Back in the early 2010s, Durk Banks was just another rapper making his way in Chicago drill, a bleak, diamond-hard variant on trap that channeled the city’s culture of violence into unlikely anthems.

Drill—and the label frenzy that surrounded it—faded, but Durk evolved, becoming one of the rare rappers able to make the leap from regional fame to the mainstream without diluting his street appeal.

Painful, raw, but eerily pretty, Durk’s music can turn death threats into nursery rhymes (“Die Slow”) and coax shades of suffering from Auto-Tune that make even the slickest productions breathe with vulnerability (“Turn Myself In”).