Written By: Jessica Leane
Drill music has gained traction and prominence in recent years much to the scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police and the Criminal Justice System. Whilst there isn’t a shadow of a doubt that the genre’s music videos and lyrics are sometimes considered to be incendiary, the extent to which this is attributable to the general rise in violent crimes is a far greyer area, which ultimately begs the question as to whether drill music should even be admissible when prosecuting individuals and groups. This article aims to reconcile alternative positions as a way to facilitate further discussion on the controversial subject in hopes of bridging the gap between artists and the institutions involved.
Drill music often makes explicit reference to postcodes, people and groups. It’s what I dub the genre of “name-dropping”. The genre’s graphic lyrics supposedly glamorising gang culture is just one piece of the puzzle: the accompanying music videos and hand gesturing is an additional aggravating factor in the eyes of the police.
Routinely dishing out Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBO’s) and Anti-Social Behaviour Injunctions mandating the removal or censorship of certain content, conflates artistic expression with crime. In my view, there appears to be an overall miscommunication between the artists and the respective authoritative agencies. Much of this boils down to a question of interpretation: the police often take the lyrics too literally and then work backwards to build a case, presenting the CPS with what looks like an “oven-ready” case.
Afterall, the police are not music moguls or record label companies! I do believe that if drill music is to be admitted as legitimate evidence in court, then it’s only fair to have the appropriate “expert witnesses” on hand to interpret and adjudicate in a contextually-apt way. As it stands, socio-cultural anthropological evidence is not freely admissible in courts, limiting the potential for a more nuanced interpretation of the alleged inflammatory lyrics. Granting evidence based on social cultural analysis, the same status as other forms of expert evidence (scientific, medical, psychiatric) would help level the playing field.
Despite the adversarial design of the justice system, the prosecution seems to have more leverage in being allowed to cite drill music as “bad character evidence”, a loosely defined benchmark. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 extended the scope of what could broadly be defined as “bad character evidence” to a “disposition towards misconduct”: the perfect trap for inchoate (planning/conspiracy) offences. Inchoate offences are more vulnerable to the evidential use of drill music given that that there is no action to derive evidence from and is therefore purely reliant on conjecture, which is deeply unfair for the individual artist on the receiving end of the criminal justice system.
This feeds back into the crossed wires between artists and the authoritative agencies, making it all too easy for those in power to attach a sinister motive to these lyrics when much of the time these people are just rapping about what they see and hear everyday and if this is negative content, then it does beg the question as to what has gone wrong in society to facilitate the normalisation of such lyrics within certain communities? For example, looking at the causes rather than criminalising the music per se.
Indeed, a number of artists rely on drill music as a way out: an escape avenue from which to ironically avoid any run-ins with the law, yet the authoritative institutions arguably work to undermine such efforts. This has been exacerbated in recent years with the inception of Project Alpha, an operational police unit using intelligence and research to flag drill videos deemed dangerous. These videos subsequently get taken down, impeding the success of the artist and seldom providing a reason. Artists are thus forced to walk a tightrope or risk receiving a criminal record.
Progress has already been made to redress this imbalance with the recent decommission of the Gangs Matrix which should allow artists to perform at venues with less police interference, however, more still needs to be done. Hopefully the tone of this article will aim to get all sides thinking as to the most effective way to achieve greater parity between artists and authoritative agencies without compromising the safety of our streets.