For months, Chicago rapper Adamn Killa has been approaching cops, bending over and daring them to arrest him.
“Arrest me, daddy,” he says in several viral videos, before lacing his fingers together and looping them around his head in a now-viral dance. Fans have even joined him in when they see him in public.
On Monday, the Chicago police listened.
Adamn Killa, whose real name is Adam Kelly, was handcuffed and detained by police after he interrupted cops making a traffic stop Downtown with the “arrest me, daddy” refrain. He was held in a squad car for about 20 minutes before he was released without charges. Chicago police don’t keep records of investigatory stops, a spokesperson said.
Kelly posted a video of the incident to his social media accounts within hours. Well known for pushing the boundaries with police, Kelly said he won’t interfere again — but promised the videos would continue.
“I got out and I went and made more ‘Arrest me, daddy’ videos right after,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times.
The rapper and social media star has nearly 2 million followers across both Instagram and Tik Tok. His videos routinely gain hundreds of thousands of views, with several TikToks ticking into the millions. In his most popular videos, he trolls law enforcement, putting his hands behind his back and yelling the phrase before launching into his dance.
His most popular song, “Fall On” plays in the background of the videos during the dance.
The videos are a tongue-in-cheek way to poke fun at law enforcement. But Kelly said there’s a bigger political message in his success.
Kelly, who grew up in Chatham and Roseland, has trolled law enforcement beyond municipal cops. He’s approached National Guard members in Washington, D.C., demanding they, too, “arrest me, daddy.” And he has taunted police amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign in the city.
“How they be covering their face and s- – -, I feel like in the future, they gonna look at them like how they looked at, like the Nazi soldiers,” he said. “Because they know what they be doing wrong. That’s why they cover their face and they be covering their badges and stuff.”
But instead of taking to the streets in protest or joining a rapid response team, Kelly uses social media and music.
“I feel like rap was always speaking your mind against s- – – you didn’t like,” he said. “I feel like that’s how hip-hop kind of started, but I know I’m like the new type of rap, but it’s still the same thing. I feel like you should speak about things, your opinions. You should voice your opinions. It’s a way to get your opinion out.”
Other popular videos of his call out his viewers, saying things like “If your name starts with an S, this is for you,” or “If you a baddie that likes makeup, this is for you” before breaking into his signature dance. In a video filmed on Loyola University Chicago’s Rogers Park campus and posted in October, he and a mob of fans yell: “If you Sister Jean, this is for you,” referring to Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, Loyola’s longtime men’s basketball chaplain, who died a week prior at age 106.
As a kid, Kelly, now 29, started learning to play the trumpet from his uncle. That awakened something in him that he wanted to morph into a career, and he has drawn on influences like Future and Young Thug for his own work. Going viral gave him the focus to follow through.
“I just had a song go viral online, and then I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I should start taking it serious,’” he said.
Kelly’s fame is starting to explode — his 4-year-old son Mars is tired of fans asking for photos — but he said he works to stay humble. He’s an independent artist and records all his songs on a cellphone, and he said he isn’t interested in working with studios and record labels. He wants something more personal. He’s known his manager Taylor Bennett and collaborator Zekur Stewart, a rapper who goes by Forever Band, since they were teens growing up on the South Side.
“At first it seemed very crazy to a lot of people, but when you see that he’s just having fun and bringing so many people joy, I literally wake up and laugh in the morning. … The first thing you do is laugh. It’s because Adam is in the algorithm,” Stewart said.
For Bennett, who also manages his brother and three-time Grammy-winning artist Chance the Rapper, Kelly’s social media prowess, coupled with his rap talent, create a loyal and diverse fan base.
“You laugh at him, but it’s like he’s created an environment through his socials where people feel that they can be involved even if they’re not there,” Bennett said.
Following in the footsteps of Chance the Rapper, Kelly sees himself as the “new face of Chicago” within the rap scene. He has upcoming performances in Vancouver and Los Angeles, and is headlining a show at Reggies Chicago on the Near South Side Dec. 5.
But keeping his independence is important to both him and Bennett, similar to Chance the Rapper. Where some managers may be wary of artists making political statements or jokes, Bennett welcomes it as a perk of resisting record labels that have come knocking.
“He can continue authentically being who he is and not ever having to sacrifice that,” Bennett said. “And that is something that I see a similarity within him and Chance.”