“Just got some top from a stripper bitch, she from Kankakee” is easily the opening line of the year. King Von starts his O Block odyssey in media res and hits the one harder than anyone since James Brown. Von’s narrator is trying to bring a woman home to Parkway Gardens with the promise of weed and sex but runs into a rival while she’s inside picking up her purse. Von’s narrator doesn’t want any trouble, but when the rival throws a brick at his car, Von shoots him twice and peels off, with the woman in tow against his better judgment. Like the best crime stories, the violence feels inevitable, both cause and effect. The closest thing to a twist is that she’s unfazed by the violence too, since the victim is from the wrong block.
Von wrote “Took Her To The O” a capella while incarcerated, inspired by the crime novels he relied on for entertainment, turning to frequent producer ChopsquadDJ to outfit his verses in a pummeling piano beat after his release. While his peers like Lil Durk and Polo G have combined drill rhythms with Auto-Tuned stream of consciousness vocals, Von’s voice is unadorned as he tells his story with relentless forward momentum like a shark.
When I interviewed Von this October, he made it clear that he saw rapping as a process to be perfected, rather than an art form to experiment with. “It’s practice,” he said. “If you’re doing something and keep doing it, you’re gonna get better results.” The practice was obviously paying off on his storytelling songs, growing more vivid from his 2018 breakout “Crazy Story” to “Took Her To The O” through “Wayne’s Story,” the last track on his last album Welcome To O Block. Von’s life ended in tragedy this fall, but his stories are already spreading across generations.