One of the quietly beloved figures of Chicago’s drill scene has been 19-year-old Kiara Johnson, better known in rap as Katie Got Bandz. She appeared last spring in a handful of videos that embodied drill’s most enticing qualities: youthful DIY energy, a cohesive aesthetic, and simple, brutally menacing hooks. Her one-off tracks and her first mixtape, Bandz and Hittaz, were spun around infectiously loud chants delivered in a raspy bark, underscoring Waka Flocka Flame’s role as the godfather of drill. She’s also become something of a rap-lover’s folk-hero, largely because she’s a master of slang and catch phrases-- "Katieeeee!"-- and because her online persona is brashly funny. “ROMENY SAID MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY IS IRRELEVANT FUCK HIM,” she wrote on Twitter during the Presidential Election as part of her ongoing personal campaign against Mitt Romney. "THE BEST PART ABOUT NOT GIVING A FUCK IS REALLY NOT GIVING A FUCK," she once wrote. Her jubilant confidence has often been thrilling.
But when Katie took the stage at this year's South by Southwest for her show at the Fader Fort-- which you could stream live online-- she froze up, timidly shouting over a backing track like someone who'd lost a bet at a crowded karaoke bar. Gone was the ebullient swagger and take-no-prisoners attitude that got her noticed over the last year. Her long-promised new mixtape, the delightfully titled Drillary Clinton, transmits that trepidation and inexperience. What could’ve been an event tape is instead a minor release that will likely lurk in the shadows of Katie’s outsized persona.
Higher stakes seem to have an adverse affect on Katie’s brute-force approach to rapping. Excepting “Y U Mad”-- a sneaky hit in its own right-- and the King Louie collaboration “Pop Out”, there’s a hesitant, unnatural air to Drillary Clinton that finds Katie dragging through some of her verses, sounding timid or lethargic rather than purposefully measured or unhurried. “Fuck fighting/ We shooting/ Catch up!/Y’all losing/ Keep it on us/ No snoozing!”, she shouts on the cumbersome “Finessin’” (like many of Drillary Clinton’s tracks, this one was produced by drill mainstay BlockOnDaTrakk). Occasionally the apprehension or clumsiness is endearing: the Auto-Tuned “Foreign” has an ugly-beautiful sound not unlike Chief Keef’s “Citgo”; her imitations of other rappers’ adlibs-- “skirrrr!”, “nawwhh”, “bow-bow”-- expose her as someone who just plain loves rap music.
Still, she recedes from the foreground too often-- something that doesn’t work, given her style's emphasis of presence over lyrical dexterity. This becomes especially clear when she's heard alongside guests like Dreezy, who offers an explosive verse on “Knock a Hoe”. Dreezy's another young woman from the Chicago's drill scene-- paradoxically, the hyper-aggressive sound has tended to neutralize gender, breeding a disproportionately large crop of new female rappers. Inside it all, Katie sits quietly, reminding us that she still has plenty of room to grow into the authoritative spirit she baited us with at the onset.
