Since last summer, it seems like the universe has been telling me to pay attention to Brittney Carter. I wasn’t familiar with the 27-year-old Chicago rapper at the time—from her first releases in 2016, she’d been simmering mostly out of sight, dropping occasional Soundcloud singles or appearing on other people’s tracks. Only in early 2018 did she start performing regularly at concerts rather than at open mikes. But she’s rapidly become one of Chicago hip-hop’s best-kept secrets, earning the backing of a broad cross section of the local arts scene.
Kemba, Brittney Carter, Calid B., DJ RTC, DJ Ca$h Era Sat 4/6, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $10. 21+
Carter has kept a diary for as long as she can remember, and she’s been writing poetry in it since she was ten. But it wasn’t until she returned to Blue Island after quitting Parkland that she began to seek artistic outlets outside those personal journals. She enrolled in intermediate drawing classes at the Salvation Army Kroc Corps Community Center in West Pullman. “I wanted to try something new, just to see how it goes,” she says. “I was like the youngest person in a class of a bunch of elderly people. I wasn’t very good at it, but they were all raw—it was crazy, and I was having fun.”
In late 2015, another local rapper named EssieL approached Carter after hearing her at a different open mike. She wanted Carter to join an all-woman cypher she was organizing.
He was able to connect Carter with Kenneth Clair, aka Disrupt, a budding producer who was working with Haven Studios. Clair brought Carter aboard with Loop Theory, the artist development and management collective that he’d founded with veteran MC, educator, and community organizer Rafael Navarro.
