Chiraq

Chicago rapper King Louie is credited with coining the term Chiraq in 2009. Louie released a mixtape in 2011 titled Chiraq, Drillinois. Drillinois combines Illinois with drill, the subgenre of hip-hop that King Louie performs.

The term Chiraq gained traction in the press as violence in Chicago worsened. In 2012, the Daily Mail reported the misleading headline that more people were being murdered in Chicago than United States service members killed in Afghanistan–an erroneous claim that Mother Jones would later point out to be false.

The term continued gaining traction through 2013, when Will Robson-Scott released a documentary titled Chi Raq about violence in Chicago. The following year, another Chicago rapper, Chief Keef, put out an album titled Chiraq Villain.

In 2015, Spike Lee released a movie about violence in Chicago titled Chi-Raq. The movie is a retelling of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, a story in which a community of women withholds sex to discourage their significant others from fighting. The film’s title proved controversial, drawing criticism from Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel.

Later that year, a TV pilot titled This is Not Chiraq screened at the Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago. The team behind This is Not Chiraq set out to “to portray a more complex human reality than [Spike Lee’s] controversial Chi-Raq.”