Opening arguments are expected this week in a federal murder and racketeering trial that spotlights links between Chicago’s gang culture and drill rap, a subset of rap.

Six members and associates of the O Block gang faction are on trial in connection with the 2020 murder of Chicago rapper FBG Duck. He was gunned down in a brazen daytime attack outside the Dolce & Gabbana store on Oak Street on Chicago’s Gold Coast.

The case is also drawing attention because it features several high-profile rappers connected to this case.

To learn more, WBEZ talked to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Tom Schuba, who is covering the trial.

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Tell us about FBG duck and what made him a target.

Duck, at the time of his death [in August 2020], was really starting to make a name for himself as a rapper, and a drill rapper specifically. His real name was Carlton Weekly, and he was killed during this brazen daytime attack outside of the Dolce & Gabbana store, in Chicago’s Gold Coast, one of its swankiest neighborhoods.

What makes this case particularly interesting is that we have Duck and these other rappers who are at the center of this really jarring public homicide. Police and court records specifically allege that another rapper named King Von, who himself was later killed, put a bounty on Duck’s head. Von was a protégé of the Chicago rap superstar Lil Dirk. And he was also a purported leader of O Block, which is a faction of the Black Disciples street gang that is at the center of this prosecution on this investigation.

For those of us who don’t know, tell us about the particular kind of rap, drill rap, that’s highlighted in this trial.

Drill rap is a pummeling, hyper-violent form of rap that started in the early 2010s in Chicago on the South Side. Chief Keef is probably the most noteworthy rapper from the drill rap scene, but the sound has now been kind of co-opted, and you have drill scenes in London, you have drill scenes in New York. So it’s really been mainstreamed.

What does this prosecution and trial tell us about any connections between Chicago gangs and drill rap cultures?

In this case, it shows that the rap world and the gang world were inextricably linked.

Duck was killed less than a month after he released a particularly scathing diss track, and it went after dead members of O Block and it named them, and this apparently really ruffled feathers. But this was just among a volley of these types of tracks that memorialized this beef. [It] was a rap beef, but it was also a violent gang beef .

Can you tell us a little bit more about O Block and how it’s featuring in this trial?

So the six people on trial are either from O Block, or from allied or “clicked up” factions. And O Block is not only a gang faction, it also refers to the Parkway Gardens subsidized housing facility, which is in Woodlawn, and this is an area and a housing facility that has had a lot of challenges. It is and has been, one of the city’s most violent blocks.

But these six individuals are charged with murder in furtherance of a racketeering conspiracy. Federal authorities say that O Block was a tightly controlled group. They had meetings, they paid dues, they got more respect and moved up in the gang’s ranks based on things that they did, such as carrying out shootings and killings. Essentially, they say this is an enterprise and the killing was in furtherance of this enterprise.