Through his first two projects, Polo built on the thematic foundation that the city’s drill rappers of the early 2010s laid. But instead of the brutalist machismo and slurry, drowned-out AutoTune that some of his predecessors came onto the scene with, Polo opted for a clear-eyed look at the personal devastation that comes with growing up in communities affected by violence, over-policing, and governmental neglect. The silky melodies and dreamy piano that characterize most of his songs provide an accessible way into the music, but the real meat of it all is in the storytelling. On a song like Die A Legend standout “BST,” he’s able to uniquely position the tough choices that people from his neighborhood have to make in order to survive, rapping lines like, “Kid on the way, Mama’s bills late, gotta hustle hard, gotta get it/ Block was slow so he had to rob just to make ‘em smile on Christmas/ Caught a case, judge ain’t tryna hear all the things influenced my decisions.”
“I know I’m registering with people and helping them get through their shit,” Polo says, responding to a question about being able to influence young kids the same way that he was by someone like Herbo. “It’s a good feeling, because I get those messages, like, ‘Oh, you got me through a rough time.’ I really know how that be.”
The place Polo grew up in, Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, was first erected in the 1940s and ’50s, in the midst of a large migratory wave of Black families coming from the South. Former Chicago mayor Richard Daley, along with the city council, recognized a need for a significant increase in public housing that would be achieved in the form of large blocks of high-rise apartments. The Cabrini Extension—15 high-rise buildings known as the “Reds” because of the red brick exterior—was completed in 1958, followed by a few white towers known as the “Whites.”
These superblocks, in addition to being monolithic eyesores, were poorly maintained. The CHA was left to self-fund the projects as city finances fluctuated, forming dense pockets of impoverished residents in neglected infrastructure. After the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assasination in 1968, thousands of West Side residents were left without homes and the city dropped them into the Cabrini-Green projects without any support, leading to clashes between North and West Side gangs. Violence and drug use soared, racist policing tactics escalated, and funding dried up for maintenance. This all contributed to a general lawlessness in the area, and two police officers were sniped from one of the buildings in 1970. The whole project was recognized nationally as a striking example of the deteriorating state of public housing, and it became somewhat of a political boogeyman, before eventually being torn down over a period of 11 years from 2000 to 2011, as part of the CHA’s (also failed) “Plan For Transformation.”
Growing up in the “Reds,” Polo didn’t have it easy. The themes surrounding much of his music consider the on-the-ground realities of living in the conditions wrought by decades of urban blight and neglect. And in his songs, he isn’t afraid to touch on the experiences of surviving on public services, dealing with the desperation of everyone around him, and losing close friends at a young age, even though he’s a little more reticent about it in person. Throughout his catalog, he reflects on the coping mechanisms that a young kid has to develop to deal with it all, rapping bars like, “But my homies died young and that wasn’t part of the plan/ Flying on these planes, wish I could reach and touch your hand/ I don’t wanna be awake, that’s why I keep popping these Xans,” on “No Matter What.”
Polo has spoken at length about his addictions to Ecstasy and Xanax, almost losing his life to an overdose, and he’s had a few stints in juvenile detention centers for small-time weed possession and “soliciting unlawful business.” The cover art for his debut album displays the faces of nine people he was close with, whom he’s lost. And even though he lives in a cushy gated community in Calabasas now, far removed from it all physically, the cloud of violence never escapes him. After rescheduling our interview because of a last-minute trip to Chicago, Polo mentions very casually in conversation that he had to go see the headstone of a friend of his.