{"id":174743,"date":"2026-08-14T10:00:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=174743"},"modified":"2026-08-13T15:15:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:15:05","slug":"chad-fore-on-lil-spooky-before-brad-there-was-silky-chad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/14\/chad-fore-on-lil-spooky-before-brad-there-was-silky-chad\/","title":{"rendered":"Chad Fore on \u201cLil Spooky\u201d: Before Brad There Was Silky Chad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photograph by Kathleen McNamara.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the time between his first submission to the <\/span><\/i>Review, <\/span>in<\/span><\/i> February of <\/span><\/em>last year, and the publication of his short story \u201cLil Spooky<\/a>\u201d in our new Summer issue<\/a>, the writer Chad Fore and I exchanged almost a hundred emails. I also read several of his stories, which tend to be somewhat autobiographical, at least in the sense that they often take place in one of Fore’s two neighboring hometowns\u2014Piru and Fillmore, in Southern California\u2014and are rich with the kinds of details and characters that feel impossible to invent. \u201cLil Spooky\u201d follows its high-school-age protagonist, Brad Camacho, through his gradual\u2014then all too fast\u2014initiation into a local gang. In a humiliation ritual disguised as a tryout, he has to freestyle for members of the gang\u2019s hip-hop arm, also known as the Sick Minded Clique, which records posse cuts in a \u201cdecrepit shack\u201d they call the studio, at the end of one of their driveways. Knowing what I did about Fore’s fiction, I wasn\u2019t entirely surprised when, alongside the first draft of this story, he included the link<\/a> to a song he was featured on when he himself was in high school. He and I talked about the musical influences of his characters and of his own past over a lunch this past spring, when, after all those messages, we were finally able to meet in person. I found he has an encyclopedic memory for rap verses, some by artists we both love, and others that he\u2019s been writing in his head, he said, for twenty years.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While we were editing \u201cLil Spooky,\u201d you told me it was partly inspired by time you spent with your older cousin\u2019s rap group in the nineties and early aughts. What drew you to that specific experience as a subject and how did you approach writing about it after so many years?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

CHAD FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

From the start I had in mind the type of story I wanted to write. When I think of friends from my hometown or family members who got involved in gangs or drugs or whatever\u2014there were always opportunities before it got bad, where they could still get out of it. But then something happens, and they can\u2019t anymore. I wanted the story to end it at that moment where, without having been told anything, the reader would know that Brad\u2019s in a different place, and now it is too late. There was one sentence that I almost cut. I went back and forth. Does this explain too much? Does it not explain enough?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Which sentence?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was all pretend until the moment it wasn\u2019t.\u201d At a certain point you\u2019ve fallen through the hole. That was the feeling I was trying to reproduce.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One thing that\u2019s been on my mind is why it was attractive\u2014the gang. The attitude toward things like gangs that I hear where I live now in Arizona is like, Why the hell would people ever do that? If people are stupid enough to join a gang, then who cares? Arrest them all. Let them kill each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a way, it is hard to understand why someone would join a gang. But having grown up in that environment, I\u2019m just like, Gangsters were the coolest people. They were the most popular. They got all the girls. Everyone looked up to them slash lived in fear of them. If you\u2019re in a setting where everyone\u2019s saying, This is cool, then it is cool. Anybody would think it\u2019s cool. You\u2019re in this world. This is what you might do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/span><\/p>\n

In the story, there\u2019s a sense of aspiration that I think ties in well with the music. I\u2019m curious how the music plays into the story for you. You said your cousin had a rap group back in the day. That song that you sent\u2014\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFlow Trip<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah. I\u2019ve listened to it a number of times. So was there a \u201chip-hop arm\u201d of the gang in real life?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I conflated the gang and the rap group a little bit. Some people who were involved in the rap group were also involved in the life. But I was not a gangster growing up. I did well in school, which made me not popular. I was on the basketball team. There was this one dude who was a fantastic rapper. He\u2019s the first guy on \u201cFlow Trip.\u201d His name was Mikey. He\u2019s got that gruff voice. I remember him in the studio being like, \u201cWe have to live it. We have to live the life if we\u2019re rapping about it.\u201d I felt that as a response to me in a way. I was kind of like Brad. Hip-hop in general, you\u2019re rapping at a hypothetical enemy. You\u2019re boasting. \u201cI\u2019d kick your ass.\u201d I had never really done those things in my life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The story exaggerates the attachment of the group to the gang, but at the same time there were gangs that had\u2014you can find this online\u2014rappers associated with them. Even in just this town of ten thousand people, there were probably a dozen active rap groups. A lot of it is gangbanging on wax. They\u2019re making threats. My cousin\u2019s rap group, not quite so much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Are you the hook on \u201cFlow Trip\u201d?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s me singing it, yeah. My cousin knew I could sing, which was also not cool.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Listen, it\u2019s not bad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

Not bad, but it\u2019s also pretty crushing when you show up and it\u2019s like, \u201cYou\u2019re singing.\u201d You know what I mean? I wanted to be a rapper. They gave me a lot of shit about it too. I remember Mikey was like, \u201c<\/span>Your name is gonna be Silky Chad. You\u2019re not going to be C-4, you\u2019re going to be Silky Chad.<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/span><\/p>\n

In what you would call gangster rap\u2014that\u2019s never a term I\u2019ve used because it feels like something they would say on the news. \u201cOh, these gangster rappers \u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

Delores Tucker, that congresswoman who was always bashing rap in the nineties, would use that term.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah. But there is a real artistry to the way violence is depicted by the best rappers of that genre. I was just thinking about this line in <\/span>Liquid Swords<\/span><\/i>, the perfect album.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t even\u2014it\u2019s so crazy you say that, because the GZA might be my favorite rapper of all time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s unbelievable. But there\u2019s that line\u2014I think it\u2019s in \u201cGold\u201d\u2014about waiting for the subway to pass and make enough noise so he can shoot this person without anyone hearing. There\u2019s something about the way that he conveys it that makes you believe it\u2019s something he\u2019s actually done.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

You said a lot right there. I\u2019ve been thinking about why hip-hop was so important to me. Why was I so obsessed with it growing up? The lyrics are amazing. I teach rhetoric. I\u2019m always talking about how writing is ethos, pathos, and logos. The rhetorical triangle. I was reading <\/span>A<\/span><\/i> Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/span><\/i>, and they have this discussion about the question of what beauty is in art. Stephen Dedalus is talking about Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas\u2019s definition of beauty in art is that it has to have wholeness, harmony, and radiance. And then Dedalus describes radiance as a light that shines from another world. What he\u2019s trying to say is it has to be good on a technical level, but it also has to have something else\u2014some true sense of what the artist\u2019s life is like.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, what did hip-hop stop doing for me? Why literary fiction? When I taught beginning creative writing, my students were like, \u201cWhy is every story sad?\u201d Whereas, in certain kinds of hip-hop, there\u2019s just the side that\u2019s beating your chest. \u201cI\u2019m the best. I will kill you.\u201d It\u2019s missing some of life, where you\u2019re alone with loss or vulnerability. That kind of hip-hop really resonated with thirteen-year-old me, who wanted to feel confident. I didn\u2019t want to feel scared, so I wanted music that wasn\u2019t scared. But my older self was like, I <\/span>am<\/span><\/i> scared. I want to hear someone say that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fear is a rare emotion to hear in music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

Absolutely. That\u2019s why I like \u201cTha Crossroads,\u201d Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. That song came out after my grandma died. My sister wouldn\u2019t listen to it. It was too sad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t that song about Eazy-E dying of AIDS<\/small>? Horrifyingly scary, especially at that time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of the transition from trying to be badass to making art about however you are feeling\u2014Bone Thugs-N-Harmony were prot\u00e9g\u00e9s of Eazy-E, some of the hardest-core rappers of all time. There was literal Devil worship in their songs\u2014\u201cMr. Ouija\u201d on <\/span>Creepin on Ah Come Up. <\/span><\/i>Imagine my parents when they caught me with that. \u201cWhat are they rapping about?\u201d \u201cWell, Devil worship.\u201d I wasn\u2019t allowed to buy CDs with the \u201cexplicit lyrics\u201d stickers on them. So I would find CDs with stickers that you could take off. That\u2019s how I wound up with a really weird collection. It was whatever I could peel off.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When you think about the time in which this story takes place, in Southern California in the late nineties, it\u2019s immediately post-Biggie and Tupac. <\/span>Life After Death<\/span><\/i> has come out. Who was big for you?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good question. It was Cypress Hill. Because this is a Mexican community, ninety-nine percent Mexican. Latino rap was huge. Kid Frost, Delinquent Habits. The Mexakinz was a group. Even more regional, Lil Rob, and this guy Cowboy, who was a producer. One of the members of my cousin\u2019s group had had an interaction with him. He was like, \u201cSend us an EP.\u201d This was the holy grail\u2014this thing that you\u2019re always reaching for. That was huge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

People really liked the melodic aspect of Bone Thugs, the speed of it. Ice Cube, Mack 10. The West Coast response to the East Coast. I would buy stuff from the East Coast because the lyricism\u2014that type of rap where \u2026 We were trying to describe this in the story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWordplay, poison darts.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

People like Chino XL, Crooked I, Black Thought, Kool G Rap. All these rapper\u2019s rappers. <\/span>Life After Death<\/span><\/i> had a removable EXPLICIT<\/small> sticker. I remember I bought it, took it off, and I was in heaven, listening in my headphones in my room. Any of those lyricists. Canibus, Kurupt, Killah Priest, and Ras Kass\u2014they didn\u2019t have hit songs. The beats were very spare and they were just cutting loose over them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So that\u2019s what you were listening to. Was that different from what your cousin and those other guys were listening to?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember being in the studio for the first time. In high school I worked at the lake with my cousin, cleaning bathrooms. One day he\u2019s like, \u201cJust come by the studio.\u201d They had this throwaway beat. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to put a hook on it. You can just rap on it.\u201d It wasn\u2019t a good verse. I still remember it, but it wasn\u2019t good. I was intimidated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Silky Chad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy the way, you\u2019re Silky Chad. Let\u2019s see what you\u2019ve got.\u201d They used to tell you the name of the song, just like in the story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/span><\/p>\n

And you just had to interpret it on the spot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what Bone Thugs did. It\u2019s what Cypress Hill did. It gives people creative freedom or whatever. The song was called \u201cNo Peace.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember the verse I wrote was like, \u201cThere\u2019s never any serenity \/ showing love and befriending me \/ but they\u2019re never defending me \/ when there\u2019s many an enemy \/ like Serbians to advance their plan \/ and put a bullet right through Franz Ferdinand \/ or when the people of France heard a man\u201d\u2014you know.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Super embarrassing. They let it go, but they\u2019re also kind of looking at me askance, like, What are you talking about? We are rapping about no peace in these streets. Now when I listen to it, I\u2019m cringing. I should\u2019ve just rapped about punching someone\u2019s brains in or something.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What happened after you got that invite from your cousin to the studio?<\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We were cleaning restrooms at Lake Piru, driving around in a golf cart. The fucking bathrooms were disgusting. Speaking of small towns, my mom\u2019s first cousin got me the job at the lake. He was a dam keeper there. He also had a band, the Piru River Band. The music goes back generations. My grandparents\u2019 generation were in the choir at the Catholic Church. My grandma played guitar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, my cousin\u2019s friends at the studio, they put out a CD before I ever went there. It was called <\/span>Get More to Fillmore<\/span><\/i>. I remember thinking, This is dope. I was always wondering if my cousin would ask me to come, like, Why hasn\u2019t he asked me? He\u2019s older than me. And then he finally invited me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second CD was supposed to be called <\/span>From Struggle Comes Hustle<\/span><\/i>. That one was supposed to go to Cowboy. So much care and effort went into it. A lot of tracks got made. Some of them are on the internet, like the one you heard. It never got finished. They started to lose people. They kept making songs, but if you don\u2019t get a break, at some point, you\u2019re just like, I\u2019m forty. What do you do? I think they did it for a long time for the love of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It can\u2019t be easy to produce a whole collection of actual songs like that, especially if there\u2019s no money involved.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What happens to that stuff? It\u2019s just in the wind. Stuff that gets made and doesn\u2019t catch on. Even writing. There are so many things that you spend forever on and they still just sink to the bottom of the sea. I thought of music as my way into the culture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But for people like my cousin, it was going to be the thing that got them out. If you stay in that small town for too long there\u2019s only a few ways it can go. Some of them are bad. One reason why I\u2019m always writing about these Chicano rap groups\u2014we were always competing with one another. \u201cWe don\u2019t want <\/span>them<\/span><\/i> to make it.\u201d But then you look back and no one made it. No one made it out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What do you think rap music means to Brad? Your identity as a rapper mirrors his in a way. There\u2019s that very lonely scene where he\u2019s rapping to himself and he\u2019s flipping through all these CDs. What does he think about it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing I was thinking about was, Is he good? I think it\u2019s an interesting question. It\u2019s not so good that people are like, Let\u2019s sign Brad, but it\u2019s not so bad that it\u2019s like Dr. Seuss\u2013type shit. On the one hand, it\u2019s evident from the lyrics that the mechanics of rap are something that he\u2019s thought about a lot. This is his artistic outlet, without him wanting to be conscious of it in that way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s similar to me growing up. None of these guys that were making rap would\u2019ve been like, I\u2019m an artist. But that summer when my cousin finally invited me to the studio, and I did the Franz Ferdinand verse, I remember Mikey saying, \u201cWe gotta get in as many hooks as we can.\u201d I was about to move away to college. But I would go\u2014if I remember correctly\u2014almost every day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What was it like in the studio itself when you were working at that pace?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FORE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The studio was at my friend\u2019s house, like in the story. It was a little converted closet. They\u2019d glued empty egg cartons to the walls for insulation. One dude was just a wizard on the audio board. You\u2019d pop on your headphones and he\u2019d speak into your ear. I didn\u2019t know anything about this, but when you layer tracks, you say something once and you say it over again so it thickens the voice. And you try to do it exactly the same every time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I layered all these hooks they had me sing that way. Once, though, I thought it would be cool if the voice I did in the background was deeper. I remember, during layering for one song, I tried singing in this deep voice. They cut the track and the dude was like, \u201cAy. Nah.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I was like, \u201cNah?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNah.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, got it\u2014normal voice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Owen Park is the <\/em>Review\u2019s<\/span> assistant editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chad Fore is at work on a novel forthcoming from Henry Holt.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI remember Mikey was like, \u2018Your name is gonna be Silky Chad.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2584,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChad Fore on \u201cLil Spooky\u201d: Before Brad There Was Silky Chad by Owen Park<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 14, 2026 \u2013 \u201cI remember Mikey was like, \u2018Your name is gonna be Silky Chad.\u2019 \u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/14\/chad-fore-on-lil-spooky-before-brad-there-was-silky-chad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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