Every so often, a song falls that's more than a catchy playlist-filler, it adheres to your ribs, crawls into your chest, and sits with you for a bit. Cheff's new single, "Complicated," is that kind of track. Featuring Evil Ebenezer and Jyay, it's a moody, melodic rap cut as personal as it is universally relatable, a nod to dark days and lost loved ones set against a massive industrial soundscape from the St. John's rapper.
"Complicated" embodies the smooth interconnectedness one might expect in such a luxurious conversation, one that offers the perfect canvas for reflections on love, trust, and the most complex emotions that often attach themselves to human connection. It's not just the song's infectious chorus that makes it magnetic. Cheff doesn't rap at us, he raps with us, bringing us into his world with stark, unblinking honesty.
It's this duality of grit and heart that makes Cheff rise to the top of the pack in today's rap scene. You can hear the lineage of the artists who influenced him, traces of Pop Smoke's rugged self-assurance, Drake's inner monologue, J. Cole's storytelling, and Mac Miller's sense of play, all refracted through Cheff's own perspective. He's not emulative, he's speaking to the music that formed him, continuing to shape his lane in the process. The collaboration feels effortless. Evil Ebenezer lends a mature touch to the album, while Jyay adds his melody to the room. The trio has an organic chemistry, with each voice providing a texture that complements the others without stepping on them. It's the kind of collective effort that makes you remember that rap can be communal as much as individual.
For Cheff, the curated name of the 31-year-old, born Tyler Traverse, "Complicated," is another step in a career that has already seen plenty of both growth and resilience. Since having his breakout year in 2021 with the debut of his EP "Top of My Game" and a string of collaborations with Ciggy Blacc, "Feel Like the Plug", and Slim Dinero, "Stallin", Cheff has built a reputation as an artist who doesn't fear anything in the game. It was a pause that was hardly that, more of a honing of the pen and a broadening of sound, even in the short one he took in 2022.