Back in the early 2010s, Durk Banks was just another rapper making his way in Chicago drill, a bleak, diamond-hard variant on trap that channelled the city’s culture of violence into unlikely anthems. Durk would evolve beyond drill, becoming one of the rare rappers to make the leap from regional fame to the mainstream without diluting his street appeal. Painful, raw, but eerily pretty, Durk’s music can turn death threats into nursery rhymes (“Die Slow”) and coax shades of suffering from Auto-Tune that make even the slickest productions breathe with vulnerability (“How I Know”). Born in Chicago in 1992, Durk started rapping in his teens. He proved a versatile MC who could slip between dead-eyed rawness and Auto-Tuned melodicism, and handle a love song (“India”) without making it sound like it was a mandate from the label. He left Def Jam in 2018, and joined Geffen Records with 2020’s Just Cause Y’all Waited 2. In 2022, he released 7220, which featured some of his catalogue’s hardest tracks up to that point (“Burglars & Murderers”, “Computer Murderers”). Durk followed that with Almost Healed, a frank exploration of tragedy and loss that pointed in the direction of 2024’s introspective Deep Thoughts.