By Joshua Eferighe

Copyright chicagoreader

Kanye West’s May 2012 remix of Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” featured Pusha T, Jadakiss, and Big Sean, and it helped catapult drill from Chicago’s streets to the mainstream. Heavyweights such as Rick Ross, Chris Brown, and T.I. soon followed with their own versions.

Only one remix, though, had Sosa himself in the video: the one where 34-year-old Shawnna rapped alongside her 24-year-old protege, Lstreetz.

Shawnna was already a star, having been part of Chicago rap duo Infamous Syndicate and signing to Ludacris’s label Disturbing tha Peace (DTP) in 1999. Her guest spots with Luda on “What’s Your Fantasy” (2000) and “Stand Up” (2003) remain all-time classics. Lstreetz, born Laqueise Pettigrew in upstate New York, had found some success of her own—she’d scored a local hit with the single “On a Hunnit,” from her 2009 mixtape A Nightmare on L Street.

The two women’s cosign from Keef not only helped them command space in a male-dominated genre but also demonstrated the possibilities of synergy as mentor and mentee.

Yet within a year, Lstreetz and Shawnna would part ways.

“I’m going to be very honest. In 2012, I was with Shawnna. She got me around 2011, but she knew of me since 2009. She already had reached out and everything,” Lstreetz says. “But Shawna was going through her own situation.”

Shawnna had an affinity for Lstreetz, not just because of her talent but also because they had similar stories. “She reminded me of the younger me, before the industry got a hold on me,” she explains. “I’ve always had this mama-bear kind of aura, so I immediately wanted to get around her before some of the people that would try to make her compromise. So when I did that, we had insane chemistry, and I just took her on the road with me. Iron sharpens iron. So I let her open my shows. We would always be in the studio together. She would motivate me to stay to my roots of where I started and who I was in the beginning, so it was really complementary.”

But Lstreetz wanted more of Shawnna’s bandwidth than her mentor could give. “She had so much stuff going on—she didn’t even have a label,” Lstreetz says. “Here I am, like, going crazy and going up, and I felt like she didn’t really have attention. I just feel like I’m being at a standstill.”

In the years since, Lstreetz has found her own path, and she’s far from at a standstill. At 37, she’s a professional gamer, and through the content-creator program of games company 2K, she’s partnered with top-selling franchises NBA 2K and Borderlands. Her 2024 single “Dipset” appeared on the NBA 2K25 soundtrack, and she’s been scanned into the game as a digital character for NBA 2K26. Through her gaming and music imprint Jiedao 街道 (Chinese for “street”), she streams and interacts with fans.

More important, after over a decade, Lstreetz has reunited with Shawnna—on July 23, they released the joint album Run It Back, produced entirely by ChurchBoy Scotty. You might have caught the duo throwing the ceremonial first pitch at a White Sox game on August 28 or seen the Thelma & Louise–themed video for their single “Counterfeit,” which premiered in July—and which features a cameo from west-side legend Twista. Earlier this month, they performed album track “Look Aye” on Purple Box Videos.

Reunited in 2024, Lstreetz and Shawnna have moved in lockstep ever since. What changed? Timing. Their paths converged again as they each resurfaced in Chicago’s rap scene.

In 2019, Shawnna had established her label, Guy Entertainment Group (she’s a daughter of blues guitarist Buddy Guy, and her full name is Rashawnna Guy). The death of her mother last year pushed her to focus on the operation.

“I really wasn’t coming back to say, ‘Hey, I’m still that, that girl,’ or trying to come and take anybody’s spot,” Shawnna says. “I just still love hip-hop, and I was able to finally get away from a couple of personal things I was going through. I lost my mom in ’24, and when I lost her, that’s when I really just hit the ground running. It just all came to me: It was like, ‘You know, just come with your label.’”

Lstreetz had been in California for around a decade when her own mother suffered a stroke in 2023. She decided to come home to Chicago in 2024.

“I just wanted to spend time with my parents, because everybody getting older, and that was such a scare,” Lstreetz says. “I almost lost my mom. And I had spent so much time away from family that I can’t get back. So I’m like, OK, this chapter, I want to be around for a while.”

Lstreetz developed into a stronger, more polished artist in California. She’s also more professionally aligned with Shawnna, who’s learned from the setbacks she faced while signed to Disturbing tha Peace and vows to avoid them with her own label.

“DTP was a start-up company,” Shawnna says. “So they were learning as they were going. That was a problem I would always have with Def Jam and DTP—I felt like they were taking on too many artists. So I use all my experiences in what I’m doing. The good thing is I don’t have to eat off my artist, so I can take my time. For instance, when I get Streetz to hit like that, I’m not going to go try to hurry up and sign somebody else up under it. I’m a label now. I’m not just the artist—I’m the CEO of Guy Entertainment Group, and I am presenting to you my artist.”

As a woman who owns a hip-hop label, Shawnna is already shattering industry norms, and she plans to platform more women with the Guy Entertainment Group.

“That taught me a valuable lesson about patience with this industry,” Lstreetz says. “The difference between Shawnna and other situations was that she was very genuine about hers. Shawnna has money. She had me living in her crib for two to three years. Who does that? That’s one thing I learned, just doing the young dumb artist thing—because I also feel like I should have waited and not left and allowed certain stuff to fix.”

Lstreetz says her reunion with Shawnna is the inspiration behind the title of Run It Back. “Yup, we running it back,” she says. “We finishing what we started—that was the meaning behind that. This is what we should have been did a long time ago.”

“I was still young, but I knew from the first time when we was around each other that our chemistry was always dope,” Lstreetz continues. “This is my mentor—I literally learned from her. I’m like the second coming of her. I could do exactly what she do. She got her stuff together now. She got the label going; I’m on her label, so we’re doing this the right way this time. . . . All the love that we’ve been getting is crazy. So it’s working out. I’ll be sitting some days and be like, damn, she really did this.”

Shawnna echoes that sentiment. “We didn’t even think about it until people started saying it, like, this is a dynamic duo—Batman and Robin. Oh my god. Y’all, chemistry is crazy,” she says. “I think that the success that we’ve attained right now is just all due to sticking to our roots, sticking to what we love, sticking to what first turned us on and made us fall in love with hip-hop. And that’ll never go anywhere, no matter how many times the fads change, the trends change. The love of the artistry will always be the foundation.”

All nine tracks on Run It Back overflow with that love of hip-hop. It’s full of songs that feel like something to put on before a night out. Shawnna says that’s a by-product of the duo’s process.

“We didn’t sit down and say, ‘OK, we got to focus on making music that makes people happy,’” she explains. “We were literally just happy, and we chose the beats that kept that emotion going. We were done with that within four to six weeks.”

Lstreetz and Shawnna’s next release from Run It Back will be a video for “Look Aye.”

Shawnna is now in full executive mode. On deck is a video for “Look Aye,” the next single from Run It Back. Her focus going forward will be pushing Lstreetz. “With Streetz, it’s putting out music, being at the top of the game, touring, selling merchandise, and killing in the streaming. When she’s doing that, I know I’ve done my job,” Shawnna says.

In three years, Shawnna says, she sees herself working with a new artist—after she’s done with Lstreetz, of course. She also hopes to own a space where she can build offices, studios, and podcast rooms. “God willing, whatever I could do to host and have somewhere where the youth can come and learn how to engineer, how to edit, and how to digitally market themselves,” Shawnna says. “I would like one building where I can host all of those jobs and opportunities in one place.”

Lstreetz plans to maintain her momentum by releasing a solo project and by capitalizing on the intersection of gaming and music. She thinks the Chicago scene has a lot of room to grow in that department.

“I look at our creators, even the comedians and stuff,” she says. “I’m like, damn—if they knew how to expand and maximize who they are, they could take the streaming world by storm. None of them has figured that out yet, and I’m so shocked by it. I know how to maximize that area.”

Lstreetz and Shawnna’s renewed partnership has the potential to bring new infrastructure and resources to Chicago rap—as well as the combined knowledge of two artists who’ve already found success. Run It Back isn’t just a reunion album—it’s the closing of an old loop and the start of a new one.