When the rapper known as Lil Herb broke through in 2012 with his searing Lil Bibby duet “Kill Shit”—an instant classic in the Chicago drill canon—he was a baby-faced 16-year-old with the voice and gravitas of a grizzled veteran. Since then, G Herbo (as he’s been known since 2015) has watched the genre he helped pioneer become a worldwide juggernaut. Meanwhile, he grappled with the trauma of the lifestyle that informed his storytelling on albums like 2020’s PTSD and 2022’s Survivor’s Remorse, which upped the studio gloss without sacrificing his visceral intensity. Stardom fit the former street rapper like a glove. But for his seventh album, titled after his original alias, the 30-year-old rapper felt drawn back to his past, revisiting old songs like 2015’s “Briks & Mansions” or 2017’s “Street”. “I was just trying to tap into that stage and that era—just trying to find the hunger again,” Herbo tells Apple Music’s Ebro Darden. “I never do that. Once the music come out, I’ve always been on to the next. But listening to my old projects, watching old videos, it just got me in that mode.” The photo on the cover shows a teenage Herbo in one of his early mugshots—a snapshot from a childhood he describes vividly on “Give It All”, juxtaposing school-bus crushes and juke parties with untimely funerals. “It’s tough making it in Chicago,” Herbo says. “Generational curses that just get put on you. Certain people grow up with a chip on their shoulder being from Chicago, because you just experience so much death. You think it’s normal, but it ain’t normal.” “Radar” details nightmarish scenes from his past with writerly precision; on “1 Chance”, he wakes from nightmares about lost friends. Alternately sombre and celebratory, with cameos from Jeremih, Wyclef Jean and Anderson .Paak, Herbo takes time on Lil Herb to marvel at how far he’s come. Still, he’s as passionate about his craft as he was when he dropped Welcome to Fazoland 11 years ago. “I still read the dictionary,” he says. “I try to learn new words all the time, different kinds of flows. I love rapping, so I don’t ever want to get boxed in.”