A young man in a grey tracksuit and silver mask looks straight at the camera. He is flanked by others in black anoraks, heads jabbed sideways, moving to the beat. The young man raises his hand and curls it into the shape of a gun. ‘Bang, bang, I made the street messy. Bang, bang and I don’t feel sorry for his mum.’
Last year 80 people were stabbed to death in London, a quarter in their teens. Fifty have died already this year. The Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, deployed 300 extra police at the weekend after six separate knife attacks last week, five of the victims being teenagers, one a 13-year-old boy.
Welcome to the world of UK drill rap — the music behind the explosion of teenage deaths on London’s streets. This is the music that has turned murder into a money–making industry. Understand it and you understand why these children are dying.
A glance at drill videos on YouTube is revealing. Here are no dreams of beautiful women or exotic places. This is a world of shabby London streets, chicken take-aways and dirty stairwells. It centres on London’s various gangs. They display weapons, talk about drug dealing, describe recent stabbings and issue threats to rivals. Their concerns are a bizarre combination of the homicidal and domestic: how to clean trainers soaked in blood or a kitchen knife with bleach. ‘Blood on my skank, keep it, clean it, use hot water and bleach it,’ one rapper instructs would-be assailants. Another video even describes stealing a knife from ‘Mummy’s kitchen’. It is a reminder that these lethal young men and their fans are teenagers still living at home. This is reinforced by their appearance. Every-thing in a drill video is designed to make boys look big and fierce, from the bulk of their jackets to the hoods pulled up over baseball caps.
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