Dennis “AK47” Round is one-third of Do or Die, the biggest selling hip-hop group ever out of Chicago. But a few years ago, as Round watched blood spill from three bullet wounds in his body at a house party, it didn’t appear he’d live long enough to ever experience such success.
“I was lying there and the thoughts that went through my mind were, `Am I paralyzed? Am I going to die?’ ” Round says.
A few minutes before, he’d been flirting with a woman he’d just met when her boyfriend burst into the room, shouted some obscenities at Round and opened fire. The rapper took three bullets to the leg and torso.
“I was scared, but I felt as though God spoke to me, and told me everything would be all right,” Round says. “I felt pain, and yet I was at peace. The doctors later told me I was blessed, because one of the bullets lodged in my back this far from my spine (Round holds his fingers about two inches apart). That bullet is still in me.”
The bullet in Round’s back is a constant reminder of the obstacles he and his fellow Do or Die members, brother Anthony “Nard” Round and childhood friend Darnell “Belo” Smith, have had to overcome since they began working on their rapping skills as teenagers on the unforgiving West Side streets. In the 13 years it took Do or Die to finally make an album, the trio struggled to make ends meet yet somehow resisted the lure of the local gangs.
“On the West Side of Chicago, you have a mass of negative images every day,” Round says. “Gangbanging was a daily duty in my neighborhood. If you weren’t in a gang, you were pressured to join one. I saw a lot of bad things happen. I have older brothers who went through a lot of things I wanted to avoid. I could see how sad or stressed out my life could be. Seeing friends or associates go to jail — I didn’t want to take that route. We tried to take positive steps, and each time we did, good things happened and our self-esteem got built up.”
The biggest esteem builder came before a show in south suburban Dolton. A talent scout for Houston-based label Rap-A-Lot, home to such hard-core stars as the Geto Boyz and Scarface, saw the trio perform at a sound check and later signed them. Do or Die’s defining single, “Po Pimp,” became a major hit in Chicago, before going on to sell more than 500,000 copies nationally in 1996.
The song, with imagery steeped in ’70s blaxploitation movies, fostered an instant image of flash, cash and easy sex. With their suits, chains, bowler hats and gleaming watches, Do or Die adopted an identity that embodies the strut of their music, even as it exploits the most noxious cliches of the inner-city community.
“Sometimes people forget the reality of what used to go on,” Round says of why the group embraced such a controversial image. “When you bring it into modern times, people think of it as a negative. But when I bump into pimps on the street, I see a reality there. They talk about keeping your head level and walking a straight line.”
To outsiders, the pimp is simply a villain, someone who exploits human weakness for his economic gain. But within the community, the pimp’s role is a good deal more ambiguous; he’s a figure alternately feared, despised and respected for the way he has found a way to thrive in dire times. Unfortunately, Do or Die explores these themes with little insight on their two hit albums, “Picture This” (1996) and the recent “Headz or Tailz” (Rap-A-Lot). The trio resorts to uninspired variations on pimps-and-prostitutes sexual gamesmanship, flavored with macho boasting — the type of smooth operator-with-a-big-gun swagger that was perfected a decade ago by Big Daddy Kane and Too Short.
Still, there is no denying that the music is often cannily constructed (one of the band’s primary producers is Sam “The Legendary Traxter” Lindley, associated with the Chicago-based Creators Way label). Hi-hats sizzle like snakes, bass lines drag lasciviously and saucy rhythm-and-blues melodies rise out of crossfire. The group’s rapid-fire rapping is in the trademark Midwestern style known as “flipping,” popularized though not necessarily invented by Cleveland hip-hoppers Bone-Thugs-‘N’-Harmony. Do or Die’s “Bustin’ Back” is the latest in a series of tracks between the Chicago and Cleveland camps laying claim to the style.
No matter who invented the sound, Midwestern hip-hop has come to the fore in the ’90s, and Do or Die is clearly Chicago’s highest profile act. A rap backwater in the ’80s, the city has produced a handful of significant acts in recent years besides Do or Die, most notably Common, Tung Twista and Crucial Conflict. Do or Die is certain to add to the local buzz when it releases its next album on the locally based Neighborhood Watch label, which the trio operates on the Near West Side.
“We are the ones who are last in line in terms of getting recognition, but we are not the least in line,” Round says of Chicago rappers. “We listened to the East Coast sounds, the West Coast sounds, and that enabled us to bring an open mind to it. We were a listener and an observer, but now we’re a doer.”
Round says because of such accomplishments, he’s able to go back to his bullet-scarred neighborhood and promote positive change. “There are a lot of younger kids who want to go in a different direction, but when they see someone like us from the ‘hood on TV, that impresses them,” Round says. “So when I talk to them and tell them to put God first and do something positive, they listen. Because they’ve seen someone they know succeed, someone who came from the same place as them. They take what you give them as food, and it helps them grow.”
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