Photo credit: Weston Rich
Rapper El-Shareef
With its sleek, modernist production, El-Shareef’s new EP, What If I Did This?, doesn’t sound like much else coming out of Milwaukee. There’s a reason for that: He didn’t record it with anybody from Milwaukee. Instead, the rapper looked outside the city to L.A., working with producer Krysshun, an industry producer who’s done tracks for guys like Chris Brown, Casey Veggies and Famous Dex.
Too many Milwaukee rappers, he says, draw from the same pool of producers and collaborators, and as a result, their music bleeds together. “I don’t want the same sound on my record,” he says. “I don’t want to sound like I’m from the same region. That’s why I don’t fuck with nobody from Milwaukee anymore.”
El-Shareef has been kicking around the Milwaukee rap scene for more than a half decade, buzzing at times and falling into the background at others. But now, he says, he’s over it. Not only is he done working with local producers, he’s done performing here. “You won’t even see me trying to do a local show,” he says. “If I get offered local shows, I say ‘nah.’”
Increasingly, he says, he’s come to see Milwaukee as a dead end. “You make a little bit of money from the shows in Milwaukee, but what are we really doing?” he says. “We’re still going home. We’re still going to work tomorrow. I’m not with the fairytale bullshit. We’re not celebs. We’re normal.”
El-Shareef says he’s focusing his efforts on the label he’s about to launch, Money Never Divides, and trying to crack markets outside of the city. He’s had some luck in Germany, where he’s found some fans and acquaintances. He also says he’s trying to transition away from SoundCloud, a platform where success is measured in streams and followers—metrics that can sound impressive but mean very little—and toward Spotify and Apple Music, platforms that actually pay. His goal, in short, is to be more realistic about his career.
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Rappers have a tendency to create false realities, convincing themselves that they have a bigger following than they actually do, and as El-Shareef sees it, Milwaukee fosters those delusions. That’s the tradeoff of living in a supportive city: If the city is too praiseful, artists can grow big heads and begin to believe they’re moving the needle—even when they aren’t. El-Shareef draws a distinction between supporters—which are abundant in Milwaukee—and actual fans, which are far more elusive.
“My friends and family are going to support me regardless, so that’s a given,” he says. “But I don’t really care about supporters. It’s a natural thing for your family and friends to support you, which is all love, but at the same time, we’re trying to grow, trying to really do something.
“I’m not going to lie and say I have a billion fans,” he continues. “Who knows how many fans I have? But I do know there’s some people that fuck with me and who inbox me and shit like that. I don’t have to lie about it. I’m one of those guys where, if I post some shit saying that I made a move, it’s because I really made that move.”
El-Shareef’s What If I Did This? EP is streaming now.
