Squeak—the artist, DJ, and in-house producer for the Saba-led Chicago hip-hop collective Pivot Gang—has died. Pivot Gang’s representative confirmed the news to Pitchfork. He was 26.
Squeak (often stylized squeakPIVOT) was part of Pivot Gang’s production team, along with Daedae and Daoud. He got his start engineering Pivot Gang recording sessions. After getting his first laptop and a copy of Fruity Loops at SXSW 2014, he began producing music for the crew.
In a 2017 interview, Squeak talked about how Crucial Conflict, Do or Die, Twista, and other artists’s from Chicago’s West Side influenced his sound. “I low-key I realized I had a West Side sound when I was listening to old Twista tapes, I listened to the high-hats in his songs,” he said. “I started to realize all of his hits had a certain rhythm to them, and it was just like something I studied and once I kind of perfected it, I realized, ‘Ok, this is how people will know I’m from out West.’”
MFnMelo and Squeak released a collaborative EP called #EnRoute in June. In February 2019, Squeak and Saba appeared on Pitchfork Radio from the Art Institute of Chicago at the inaugural Midwinter, previewing songs from Pivot Gang’s You Can’t Sit With Us.
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