Blaming drill for fomenting violence is a distraction from looking at the causes of crime
Last year, YouTube removed 30 music videos after requests from the Metropolitan police, who claim they incited or glorified violence. All the tracks were made by exponents of drill, an often grim and slang-ridden London take on rap. While Britain’s rise in violence comes amid falling police budgets and vanishing youth services, the authorities treat lyrics as culprits. True, the street argot of “shanking” and “fishing” – both used to denote stabbing – may cause alarm if people understand it. But arguments that blame art for fomenting physical assaults are as thin as sheet music.
Rappers Krept and Konan say drill artists are being silenced by a civil order known as the “gangster asbo” which has also been used to target terrorists. Two rappers were handed suspended sentences in January for performing a song in breach of such an injunction. Drill music is made almost exclusively by young black men who chart the lives of their peers and themselves. Why is their freedom of expression being curtailed? The Met didn’t ban the Rolling Stones’ Street Fighting Man in 1968, though it exhorted Londoners, only half-ironically, to emulate rioting Parisians. After nine people were stabbed in 2012 at a Swedish House Mafia gig in Dublin, nobody banned the band.
