Chicago, Illinois · Est. 2025 · A Literary Empire
Malik Yusef brings Shakespeare home — to 103rd Street, the Wild 100s, and the streets that always spoke his language.
Shakespeare × Malik Yusef
"The story was never in Verona. It was on 103rd Street. Two families. Hate older than the children who inherited it. Love that doesn't survive the war it was born into."
"Shakespeare was always writing about us — about the Wild 100s, about South Side Chicago, about every neighborhood where people are born into something they didn't choose."
— Malik Yusef
21 booklets. 21 tracks. One cultural collision that was always inevitable.
"What if every track on the greatest hip-hop album ever made was actually Shakespeare? What if it always was?" Each of the 21 booklets pairs one track with one Shakespeare play — translated through Malik Yusef's South Side Chicago voice. King Lear Jets. Life of King Leer. The Merchant of Michigan Avenue.
Poet Laureate of the Streets
Eight-time Grammy winner. Co-writer of Beyoncé's "Sandcastles." Principal collaborator on Kanye West's most celebrated albums. Born and raised on Chicago's South Side, Malik has spent twenty years proving that Shakespeare's language has always lived in hip-hop, in spoken word, in the streets.
The Society is reimagining all 38 of Shakespeare's works through the lens of South Side Chicago. Society members hear first about every volume, every drop, every collaboration.