Glimpses of his school days surface on “Keke Palmer,” where there’s an early reference to blue books on “Text,” he recalls toting a BB gun in his lunch bag in second grade and on the fearsome throwback “Glory Bridge,” he’s thinking about how fly he looked at school. There are several indications of Keef’s growth on Dedication, but nostalgia is the principal element that unites the record’s grab bag of styles and approaches. But five years later, with Keef matured and mellowed, it’s easier to listen to his current music and pick up on the charisma that caused one of his deeply passionate Chicago fans to threaten to beat the hell out of anyone questioning his reputation back in the day. In his hometown paper’s good-faith review of his major label debut, Finally Rich, the writer Greg Kot asserted that Keef’s sole innovation had been to appear colder than any other contemporary gangster rapper, and dismissed his mumbled verses as “robotic, deadpan, stoned.” It was a fair assessment, if a stingy one. Keef’s unconstructed approach to rap has earned him ferocious critics, in addition to those who would summarily dismiss him for being simply a bad influence, a media spectacle, or both.

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