Curating Culture: The Brains Behind Apple Music's 'New Chicago' Playlist

Chance The Rapper. Vic Mensa. The Cool Kids. Before you heard of them, Chicago hip-hop expert Andrew Barber profiled them on his site, Fake Shore Drive. He’s been running the blog for a decade now, shining the light on the city’s music when few others would.

Barber recently was tapped by Apple Music to curate the New Chicago Playlist, one of four Apple Music playlists anchored to major American metropolises. New York City, Los Angeles and Atlanta, so far, round out the initial release of the regional playlists. The Windy City, with its history of Common, Kanye and Chance, was destined to grab Apple’s attention. And Barber apparently was destined to be the curator.

“I started Fake Shore Drive 10 years ago and it’s our 10-year anniversary in October,” says Barber, remembering how when he started, the world was still downloading mp3s.  “It’s crazy. Now it is a streaming world, and so I see this playlist as a natural elevation of what we were already doing at FakeShoreDrive and just taking it to the next level. Apple Music was gracious enough to give me an opportunity to present it.”

How does one get on the list? Only Barber and Carl Chery know. Chery is Apple Music’s head of artist curation.

“Looking at Chicago with the history of Common and Kanye, Crucial Conflict and Twista, Lupe, the drill movement, what Chance is doing, Vic Mensa and Noname, we just felt like it was one of the cities to highlight, ” says Chery. “I saw Andrew last summer in Chicago at Chance’s Magnificent Coloring Day concert. I’ve known him for years. I told him you should take [the playlist] over. People are very excited to see that an industry veteran is working with Apple Music.”

This hybrid local-national promotion of artists and curators works because the people in the specific cities know that the curator is legit. And the artists respect both Chery and Barber. As for Chicago, when artist The Boy Illinois found out he was on the list with his song “Dancing Like Diddy,” it confirmed what everyone is thinking about the city’s hip-hop playing field.

“We are a big city, but now we are a big music city,” says The Boy Illinois, also known as Ill, whose born name is William Dalton. He points to the upcoming Red Bull 30 Days in Chicago as yet more evidence of the music cred. (Not to mention Lolla, Pitchfork and the city’s music fests.) “People want to come here and do shows. They want to come here and test the market out. We got a lot of talent. Nobody sounds the same. We got a Jamila Woods or a Show You Suck. So many different arrays of art and artistry.”

And it doesn’t hurt that an artist such as himself, who is expected to drop an album in January 2018, can get extra exposure because of an industry behemoth like Apple.

“I had no clue I was on it until the day that Drew tweeted it and I just looked on the list and I was like, ‘oh for real? I’m on there. It’s dope,’” says Ill. “He’s just one of those people if it’s good, he gone rock with it no matter what. That’s a testament to the camaraderie we’re building (here) so far.”

The Chicago list includes an array of artists, some with Grammy nods. Many of them are already national names and have hundreds of thousands of Twitter and/or Instagram followers, if not millions. Think: Chance The Rapper, Dreezy, Taylor Bennett, Young Chop, Lil Durk, Fredo Santana and Towkio.

Other cities may soon be added, says Chery. Miami may well be next. As for The New Chicago playlist, the plan is to have 50 or so songs and to swap out new ones as needed.

“If we get artists invested and build the playlist to a point where emerging Chicago artists aspire to be on it the way they aspire to be on Fake Shore Drive? I think that’s success,” says Chery. “[We] really love to champion music. For us, it doesn’t matter if you have zero plays, a thousand or a million. If there’s an artist out of Chicago who no one has heard of, and it’s great? They can make the playlist.”