Ever heard of M-Trap 0, Lynch, or Chief Keef? They are ‘musicians’ but they are unlikely to make Laura Perrins’s classical music favourites for Conservative Woman readers. As ‘drill’ artists, they are representatives of a rather different genre and provide role models for many, mostly disaffected, teenage boys.
Drill is an adaptation of so-called rap music for the purpose, often, of challenging or threatening rival gangs. It has its roots in the gangland and murder culture of Chicago but, as ‘UK drill’, is now firmly rooted in our cities, especially London, as Harriet Sergeant describes here. It’s a trend that is prompting many to question whether it is to blame for London’s gang culture, violence and crime spike.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, has no doubt about the links between the capital’s knife crime crisis, UK drill and its glamorisation on social media sites.
Despite this, the BBC sees fit to feature drill on its ‘urban’ station, BBC 1Xtra Rappers’ tales of violence and drugs are put online by BBC and post tracks on its YouTube channel.
Sanctimonious feminists and gender-identity warriors should stop banging their drums and blowing their whistles. They would then hear another sound. Highly discordant and alarming, it is the sound of the drill. It is the sound of the boys and it is getting ever louder.
This is payback time for alienated and marginalised young males, for the under-educated and the politically-uncorrected outlaws of our society. Drill is their theme music.
The lifestyle philosophy of its role models differs sharply from that of the intellectual liberal elite that populates much of the Westminster village and the media.
Delivering a life sentence at the Old Bailey for the murder of a 15-year-old, Judge Leonard QC berated 17-year-old Junior Simpson, known as M-Trap 0, for suggesting that his drill music lyrics were anything but a glorification of killing. He said: ‘You suggested [the lyrics] were just for show but I do not believe that, and I suspect you were waiting for the right opportunity for an attack.’
Putting into action boasts of violence expressed in drill music has become expected behaviour for its adherents. The father of M-Trap’s murder victim described drill music as having ‘a demonic mindset’.
Sometimes, the drill accompaniment to criminality is retrospective rather than predictive. This was the case with 20-year-old drill star Reial Phillips, known as Lynch. He was locked up after he drill-boasted in celebratory mode about a shooting in Birmingham.
It would be dangerously short-sighted to dismiss all drill musician role models as morons. Chief Keef, for example, a trailblazer for UK drill, was bright enough to sign a £4.4million recording deal at the age of 16. He went on to set up his own recording company and by the age of 20, drill music had provided him with enough cash for him to announce his retirement.
A key to Chief Keef’s success was his lyrics such as this toned-down example:
Pistol toting and I’m shooting on sight . . . Got your bitch, I was in it all night.
There is plenty of cash to be had via drill music’s call for violence. The price we are all paying, of course, is social disintegration.
We have a gender inequality issue in the UK and most of all it is marginalised and alienated boys who are the victims. Whilst the chattering classes obsess over the gender credentials of who might be the next presenter of BBC Question Time, a lost generation of young males is creating an alternative dystopia.
Judge Rupert Mayo identified one symptom of this dystopia in a case involving the murder of 17-year-old Liam Hunt in Northampton. Jailing an 18-year-old for life last week he observed:
This case is about normal, immature boys who think it is OK to carry a knife. This killing was just short of an execution. The jury was exposed to a culture where kids carry knives like they were mobile phones.
BBC Question Time: Is our current drill dystopia the un-costed price of feminism?
