Drill rap
Drill, Drill Music or Drill Rap is a subgenre of trap and rap whose origins can be dated back to the early 2010s in Chicago .
In temporal and content-related proximity to an unusual and sudden increase in the murder rate in the city of Chicago in the first half of 2012, which can be disproportionately narrowed down to a few quarters in the south of the city ("Chiraq", a phrase from Chicago and Iraq), a very young, mostly underage generation of rappers found their identity-creating and authenticity-tested expression. The protagonists of this scene include Chief Keef , Lil Durk , Lil Reese, L'A Capone, Rondonumbanine, Lil Bibby and G Herbo. If not reflecting the demographic distribution, there are drill rappers of all ethnicities and genders in Chicago (Fredo Santana, Ebe Bandz, Buddah G). There is a strong correlation, sometimes explicitly expressed in the texts, between Chicago Drill and gang crime.
Chicago Drill
Style-defining for the Chicago Drill are short tracks, dark instrumentals and hooks (refrains) with frequent repetition of few words. Texts and flow focus above all on the raw, violent threat to the counterpart in a nihilistic attitude towards bodily harm and murder ("kill shit"). Dealing with women is described in an analogous contemptuous attitude and terminology. The vocabulary is sparse, the language mostly simple and haunting.
"Your man said that he wanna fight, tell him catch me at the light, he should have looked left, he looked right, like me, so I tell him goodnight"
"If a nigga ain't with me they can get banged All my niggas crazy we is insane If you with the opps, you can get banged A new .40 with a .30 you can get banged"
In some cases, opponents are named and addressed explicitly or in code. The direct threat to the other person through maliciously mocking panning of the gun barrel in the direction of the camera is one of the genre-typical visual topoi as well as appearing in groups or the presentation of prescription drugs intended for improper purposes ( benzodiazepines , opiates , the latter often in the form of cough syrup or as Mixed drink in the form of lean ) and large amounts of banknotes or money stacks ("rubber bands").
The flowering phase of the Chicago Drill lasted from around 2012 to 2014, after which the output decreased significantly.
UK Drill
A little later in England, especially London, a scene called the UK Drill formed. It draws its influences from the Chicago drill and the British grime . Well-known representatives of the scene are 67, 1011, Zone2, the Harlem Spartans, Moscow17, CGM, OFB and Young Dizz.
Analogous to the rise in the murder rate in Chicago, the identity and authenticity-creating core of the scene is the "knife crime rise", the disproportionate increase in violent crimes with stabbing weapons in London, including some sensational attacks with large-caliber weapons such as machetes , cleavers or katanas that involve gang crime have been linked.
This is expressed in text content and scene-typical jargon (get "chinged", "splashed", skanked "," cheffed up "," drenched "," dipped "," chopped). In contrast to the Chicago Drill, the terminology is strongly influenced by Caribbean influences such as Jamaican Patois .
"Man try say that I run with my sword, is he fucking dumb? Run up in the shop and chopped my man and he went and snitched to his mum. All this talk on my name, how many times have I made you run? TeeWizz got splashed and died and I don't feel sorry for his mum "
In particular, the specific naming of threatened or murdered people and the use of social media with a wide range to spread one's own messages has triggered a controversial political discourse and equally controversial police countermeasures in Great Britain.
In UK Drill there is also a strong association with gang crime and a high proportion of underage artists, as well as a clearly expressed identification with districts or territories.
Despite many stylistic similarities with the Chicago Drill, there are also differences: There are hardly any weapons presented in the music videos and the texts are focused on stabbing, not firearms. This can potentially be explained by the different legal situation in both countries. The protagonists are often masked and the focus is not on individuals, but on the collective, the gang, whose name is appended as an appendix in brackets to the name of the individual rapper.
Drill and violent crime
Some of the more prominent murdered American drill rappers include L'A Capone, Pop Smoke, Lil Mister, Lil Jojo, and Ebe Bandz. Since the individual rapper is less important than the collective in the UK drill, the names of murdered British drill rappers (e.g. Incognito, GB, Bis) are less known than those of the collectives to which they belonged (Moscow17, Harlem Spartans). A large number of American and British drill rappers were sentenced to long prison terms, including Rondonumbanine at the age of 19 to 39 years imprisonment for murder (first degree murder), Young Dizz at the age of 23 to twelve and a half years imprisonment for aggravated assault, imprisonment, Kidnapping, blackmail and perversion of justice (grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment, kidnapping, blackmailing, perverting the course of justice), at his side also four accomplices between the ages of 14 and 16. In March 2019, CB was sentenced to 23 years in prison at the age of 21 after threatening police officers with a shotgun in a stolen car in a clown mask during a chase, and SJ (OFB) at the age of 17 to 21 in January 2020 Detention for murder.
"Drill music is associated with lyrics which are about glamourizing serious violence, murder, stabbings. If it is inciting in some way or glamorizing violence, then we think they (social media companies) have a social responsibility to work with us to take those videos down. [...] "This is just music", the people will say , but I think it has a terrible effect. "
"The idea that a genre of music by itself is responsible for an increase in crime just doesn't bear up to proper scrutiny."
The mutual influence of drill rap and violent crime is the subject of academic work and political discourse and, like the countermeasures introduced, is controversial.
Drill in other countries
Since around 2019 there has been a nationally perceptible drill scene in Ireland (partly imitating the London dialect, for example Chuks, partly with Irish dialect, for example # 86 INK) and Australia (for example onefour ).
Around 2019 a drill scene emerged in New York that drew its influences from American rap and British drill, among other things through instrumentals produced there. Her central character, the rapper Pop Smoke (co-productions with Quavo and Nicki Minaj ), was shot in 2020.
Outside of the English-speaking world, Drill remains an exception. Despite individual self-proclaimed drill rappers such as Luciano , whose early (Locosquad / Skaf Eddo) productions contained aesthetic elements of the drill, there is no scene in Germany of the same size as in the USA and England.
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america/13/
- ↑ Monica Davey: Rate of Killings Rises 38 Percent in Chicago in 2012 . In: The New York Times . June 25, 2012, ISSN 0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed February 22, 2020]).
- ↑ https://home.chicagopolice.org/statistics-data/crime-statistics/
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/arts/music/chicago-hip-hops-raw-burst-of-change.html
- ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42749089
- ↑ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/drill-the-brutal-rap-that-fuels-gang-murder/
- ↑ https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/met-police-chief-calls-on-youtube-drill-music/
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/09/since-when-was-it-police-job-to-impose-sanctions-on-drill-musicians
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/arts/music/drill-music-london.html
- ↑ https://www.welt.de/kmpkt/article178156092/UK-Drill-Was-Rap-mit-dem-Anstieg-der-Gewalt-zu-tun-hat.html
- ↑ https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nek3qm/drill-knife-crime-violence-london-long-read
- ↑ https://www.chiraqdrill.com/drill-rappers/
- ↑ https://www.thefader.com/2016/07/06/rondonumbanine-sentenced-jail-murder
- ↑ https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/drill-rapper-young-dizz-turned-ordinary-schoolboys-into-torturers-a4286951.html
- ↑ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/clown-mask-drill-rapper-gang-lekan-akinsoji-jailed-e7-a8803506.html
- ↑ https://www.cps.gov.uk/london-north/news/five-gang-members-jailed-murdering-teenager-inside-wood-green-hair-salon
- ↑ Lambros Fatsis: Policing the beats: The criminalization of UK grime drill and music by the London Metropolitan Police. Retrieved February 22, 2020 .
- ^ Bennett Kleinberg, Paul McFarlane: Examining UK drill music through sentiment trajectory analysis. (PDF) Retrieved February 22, 2020 .
- ↑ https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/drill-music-ban-conviction-knife-crime-metropolitan-police-london-a8750506.html
- ↑ https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/kriminalitaet/los-angeles-einbrecher-erschiessen-us-rapper-pop-smoke-16642568.html
- ↑ 16BARS : Luciano brings UK Drill to Germany , March 18, 2020, accessed on July 14, 2020