Brooklyn Drill Trio 41’s “Chill Guy” Is the Platonic Ideal of Meme Rap

In the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it world of memes, the “chill guy” has enjoyed unlikely staying power. The drawing of a preternaturally relaxed dog in a grey sweater was created by the artist Phillip Banks last year, drawing a cult following of fellow chillers before going legitimately viral toward the end of this summer. On TikTok, he was often paired with a snippet of Chicago singer-songwriter Gia Margaret’s 2023 piano instrumental “Hinoki Wood,” the aural equivalent of sipping a cup of hot apple cider on a brisk fall day. The meme has stuck around in various forms since then, perhaps as a dissociative alternative to the chaos of election season, and once again became the internet’s de rigueur reaction image in late November. By Thanksgiving, I thought I was ready for this trend to be shuffled back into the decks with the smoking duck or the cowboy chicken nugget. But Brooklyn rap trio 41, composed of TaTa, Jenn Carter, and Kyle Richh, is giving me one more reason to get my chill on.