Drill deeper
Since drill music burst onto the scene in the UK in 2011, its stripped-back, visceral lyrics have been lambasted by many in politics, policing and the media. The genre has been blamed for a rise in serious youth violence: there have even been calls to ban it, and equally, calls to ban its use as evidence in criminal trials. But the focus on drill only emerges after something has gone ‘wrong’ – there is little examination of the context behind the music or why it resonates with so many young people. Fourteen years on from its emergence, why are we still asking the same questions, asks Patrick Olajide.
Violence is loud. As are the condemnations of it. A single act of violence can be devastating, splitting families, rocking communities and ending lives. It can leave parents without children, children without parents, and vulnerable and marginalised groups questioning what can be done to keep them safe or if there is even a genuine intention to do so.
Violence leaves people looking for answers. But when questioning the causes and consequences of violence, particularly serious youth violence, the loudest ‘answers’ aren’t always the right ones.
By our best indications, the UK is safer today from violence than it was 30 years ago. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, most crime, including violence, has fallen by 90 per cent. Hospital admissions for violent injuries have also dropped substantially, with NHS hospital data showing that the number of knife assaults last year fell to a 25-year low. Similar trends can be seen across many western countries.
But this doesn’t always match how people feel in their local communities and on their streets – whether walking home at night, watching their children leave the house, or simply spending time in their local area.
The early to mid-2010s marked a significant rise in serious youth violence, particularly knife crime. At the same time, UK drill music made its first, loud impression on the music scene, gaining growing prominence in the UK between 2011 and 2012.
‘A purposeful ambiguity’
The nature of crime and violence has changed greatly over the last 30 years. Yet despite progress, we still face serious and urgent challenges in tackling violence, particularly that affecting women and children. But all too often we return to the same arguments without looking more deeply at the root causes of the vulnerabilities within our society.
Music is a window into the soul. Jazz, hip hop, grime and drill – genres rooted within Black cultures – have long been unfairly associated with claims of deviance and criminality. Drill music, with its stripped back, visceral rap lyrics, masked musicians and brutalist backdrops, was quickly identified by some as a culprit. The cause of rising youth violence, we were told at the time, was deceptively simple: it was rap music – or rather, its latest iteration, drill.
There’s a purposeful ambiguity to drill lyrics. Real events or fiction? Real reflections or our own projections? Characters who are larger than life and provide a grim reflection of it.
There are undeniably cases where drill music intersects with crime through the actions of the artists, the legal liability in lyrical admissions, or the antagonising of rivals within releases. Like online gaming or social media, drill can act as an amplifier or catalyst when certain vulnerabilities and risks are already present in a young person’s life.
However, drill is not a monolith, and these cases do not represent the majority. It is difficult to imagine a young person living in a society where they are truly safe from outside threat, protected from risks growing up and free from structural disadvantages such as poverty and racism, simply committing a serious act of violence purely because they have listened to a particular genre of music.
Where an offence has been committed, it is right that the criminal justice system seeks justice for the victims, families and all those affected. But it is wrong that our interest in the lives of the predominantly Black and brown, working class, young men behind the music often only arrives after something has gone wrong. After they have inflicted harm or have been alleged to, ignoring the harms – both personal and structural – that have been inflicted upon them.
Violence is loud. And it sells. Whether in music, movies or media debates. But the pain, the pain that often gives rise to the serious harm that children and teenagers can inflict upon another is often quiet.
Safeguarding failures, violence and institutional disadvantage
Many drill artists describe – or allude to – their early exposure to violence, neglect and substance abuse. Safeguarding failures are woven into the very fabric of drill – desperate families who should have been spotted sooner by local authorities, adults who should have intervened or been empowered to do so, and young people who should have been protected from violence and exploitation.
Unaddressed, these early traumas replicate themselves through financial desperation – the need to make money by any means necessary – as well as emotional suppression and cyclical violence.
The lyrics in drill music aren’t only about violence, but about being trapped by it, physically and structurally. Local communities – the streets, road, ends, block – are constant talking points. Artists speak of their local communities with a mix of fond affection, territorial obsession and deep frustration: tight-knit environments where loyalty is everything, but everything else is scarce.
These lyrics also speak to a sense of abandonment among drill artists, of growing up in ‘hell’ or the ‘gutter’ and feeling a deep desire and/or responsibility to lift up themselves and those they care about. Across its iterations, drill music is infused with varying degrees of individualism and fatalism.
The streets are also a trap, from which only ballers, drillers and trappers can escape. But even where artists are able to ‘make it out’, many believe that the ‘system’ – particularly the criminal justice system – was never built to let them succeed.
‘A cat-and-mouse dynamic with policing’
Drill lyrics are filled with mistrust towards institutions. Artists often speak of family and friends arrested, harmed or killed through police contact; of criminal prosecutions pushed for on purportedly weak grounds; and of prison records and probation conditions that leave them incapable of earning a living upon release. For them, the criminal justice system is not seen as a system of justice, but as a structure that shadows them from adolescence to adulthood.
Many artists describe a constant cat-and-mouse dynamic with policing. Even after release or when finding legitimate success, the sense of being hunted never fades. Neither does the fear that their newfound success may be fleeting, leaving them without a legitimate plan B.
Prison, too, features prominently in drill music – not as rehabilitation, but as inevitability. It’s something to evade, yet also a proving ground. In these glimpses into artists lives, prison isn’t reform – it’s survival of the fittest: barricading cells, fighting inmates, smuggling contraband, segregation, isolation, and in some cases, suicide.
For artists it’s a checkpoint, a trauma, a warning – and for many, part of the narrative they’re expected to live out.
‘We simplify complex issues of harms perpetrated and experienced within society’
I’ve been working in the crime and justice space for nearly five years – but it started with a dissertation and a blog on drill music, analysing over 50 tracks. I was, and still am, a genuine fan of the genre. I enjoyed the savvy wordplay of the artists, the dark tongue in cheek humour and the cathartic feeling of venting it invoked in an environment where all too often we can feel powerless to change our surroundings or control our own experiences.
But at the same time, I was conscious of the grim, and often morbid nature of its lyrics. The trauma, the harm – consciously or subconsciously – artists described being inflicted upon them and in many cases inflicting upon others.
Back then, I wanted to make sense of the noise surrounding drill – the calls to ban it, the claims it should be off-limits to criminal justice agencies as protected artistic expression – and the missing focus on what the artists were saying, or why.
Too often, we have a tendency to judge the raw, sometimes violent expression of marginalised men without fully understanding why. We simplify complex issues of societal harms and build careers questioning the careers of ‘controversial’ artists and genres without ever questioning our own role in reinforcing the very systems that shaped them.
Those of us working firsthand with children and young people, or on the issues that deeply affect them have a duty to take the time to learn more about their lives. To listen to what they are saying without judgement, understand the factors that have impacted their lives, and crucially, to work with and include them in creating constructive solutions.
It has been over 50 years since the creation of rap music, and fourteen since drill first emerged — yet we are still debating the same questions as decades ago: whether rap causes violence, rather than why so many of our young people are born or drawn into it.
Patrick Olajide is a highly experienced researcher, facilitator and published author with a background in youth work, social justice advocacy and safeguarding. He previously worked as a senior researcher in the Crime, Justice and Security team at the National Centre for Social Research, and as a senior analyst at Crest Advisory.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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