Hurricane Chris has had a half-dozen comebacks in as many years, but with his new single “Don’t Play With Me,” it looks like it might finally be true. The song might have gained notoriety for dissing Kodak Black, but it has a lot of people wondering what Hurricane Chris has been doing since he put out “A Bay Bay” almost a decade ago.
Hurricane Chris’ Early Career
In the late 2000s, Deep South hip-hop was going through a renaissance. Earlier in the decade, East and West Coast rap had both faded in favor of the Dirty South. It wasn’t long before the southern genres of hip-hop fractured.
Producers like Mr. Collipark were there to make the best of the situation, pulling up artists like the Ying Yang Twins. He was also there when Christopher Dooley, Jr. dropped out of school in Shreveport, Louisiana and started calling himself Hurricane Chris, a nod to his fast cadence and tight meter. Mr. Collipark began working with Hurricane Chris, and by May 2007, his first single was ready.
“A Bay Bay” was produced by Phunk Dawg, and broke the Billboard Hot 100 the week it debuted. Before long it broke the Top 10, peaking at #7. The song helped bring Mr. Collipark’s genre of “snap music” to the front of southern hip-hop. Snap has been heavily criticized by music critics for being reductive and simplistic, but it’s hard to argue against the long-term effects it has had on trap. It also came along at the perfect time – Snap tracks were easy to cut down into ringtone-length clips, which were incredibly popular at the time.
51/50 Ratchet
Over the next few months, Hurricane Chris released a few more singles. In August he released a mixtape with a remix of “A Bay Bay,” and in September he released his first album, 51/50 Ratchet.
51/50 Ratchet debuted at #24 on the Billboard charts. Hurricane Chris used the fame from the release to work with dozens of other southern hip-hop artists and toured extensively.
Two years later, Chris released a single from a new album. “Halle Berry (She’s Fine)” didn’t get quite the traction his earlier work had. He released another single in September 2009, “Headboard,” this time working with R&B singer Mario.
Unleashed released just before Christmas, and while it wasn’t lambasted by critics the same way 51/50 Ratchet had been, it also was nowhere near the commercial success Hurricane Chris’ debut had been. It did make it to #20 on the Billboard US Rap Albums charts,, but otherwise, came and went without much notice.
In 2010, Polo Grounds Music dropped Hurricane Chris, and it looked likely that he was going to be a one-hit wonder. He released a few mixtapes over the next couple years, and in May 2012, announced he was going to release a third album called Return of the Hurricane.
What’s Hurricane Chris Doing Now in 2018 – Recent Updates
Through 2013, Hurricane Chris continued to release mixtapes, the most popular of which was Caniac. In early 2014, he released the first single from Return of the Hurricane, called “Ratchet.” The song went mostly unnoticed outside of the hip-hop community, except to express surprise that Hurricane Chris was still making music.
In July 2015, Hurricane Chris got the most press attention he had in a long time. Not by releasing music, but by using the Internet to complain about rappers who used the Internet to complain about rappers. He inserted himself into Meek Mill’s beef with Drake to say the two should handle things personally, not by throwing fanbases at each other.
That fall, Hurricane Chris released “Sections”, a new single, and Hurricane Season, another mixtape. But the third album, Return of the Hurricane, still seemed to be in production.
Earlier this year, Chris seemed to have forgotten his own opinions about Internet beefs. After Kodak Black said on Instagram that he wanted to fight Lil Wayne, Hurricane Chris was among the many rappers who came to defend Wayne. He even went so far as to say he’d fight Kodak in Wayne’s place.
Kodak Black posted to his own Instagram with a short video referencing Hurricane’s hit “A Bay Bay”, which got more media attention than anything Hurricane Chris has released in the past few years.
Until February, when Hurricane Chris released “Don’t Play With Me” through WorldStarHipHop. The track, which admits its a diss track toward Kodak Black, has been viewed more than a million times in the past week.
There’s even rumors that Kodak Black and Hurricane Chris might head to Dubai to settle their issue in the boxing ring. It’d definitely be a way for Hurricane Chris to break his reputation as a one-hit wonder, if it happens.
