This past month Midwest storyteller and lyricist DaWeirdo delivered to fans his heartfelt project titled LILLIE, a 10-song EP dedicated to his grandmother and the Southside of Chicago.
Not only did this project have a special dedication to DaWeirdo’s grandma, but there is an underlying story about the record number of shootings across Chicago. Giving a front row seat to his life DaWeirdo even divulges into the trauma and loss that he experienced after losing his friends to gun violence in a mass shooting.
“LILLIE is an EP dedicated to my grandmother. I’m focused on getting this music out to the world. And letting them hear my stories on what’s happening on the frontline of Chicago,” DaWeirdo explained. “Through tough times, blessings come and I think LILLIE being dedicated to my grandmother, she’s sending those blessings from Heaven. Each track has its own story because also, just before my grandmother passed away, four days before that, there was a mass shooting, I lost like four friends of mine. So at that point in my life in June, it was a lot going on. It was a lot going on. I lost some friends to a mass shooting. And four days later I lost my grandma.”
Blood Stains on the Southside of Chicago
DaWeirdo knows the blood stains on the city will be tough to wash away, nevertheless he hopes that his stories inspire change on the Southside of Chicago whether it saves one life of thousands.
“On the Southside, we have a big stain on the city. It’s a big stain on the Southside and it’s noticeable, so that’s why people talk about it a lot. You know from crime, to drugs that’ve been distributed around the neighborhoods. The incidents that play out, so that’s why a lot of people talk about the Southside a lot,” DaWeirdo said.
Avoiding the guns and shoot ’em up scenes DaWeirdo is not the typical rapper you will find on the drill rap scene. He’s beyond the drill scene at this point, DaWeirdo is his own scene. He’s not scared to step out on a limb and be himself in a stuffy room full of imposters.
“Man you know, we set the plot. We sat down and came up with the storyboards and we always try to leave something for people to decode. Just being different. I get asked that question a lot. But just being different, because I mean the city that I’m from and the environment I’m from, which is Englewood. You’d think that I’d be pushing the drill rap scene. You know guns, shoot ’em up scenes, just something people are normally used to in Chicago or what they expect. But we created, and we cracked the code in it to just do things out of the norm.”
