# data[].attributes.body
Drill is a style of trap music defined by its dark, violent and nihilistic lyrical content and ominous trap-influenced beats.

# data[].attributes.headline
Article on why Drill is changing and how it is for the better

# data[].attributes.subject
Article on why Drill is changing and how it is for the better

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Glorifying violence? No – in 2020, drill is more positive than ever

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After years of fighting with the police and media for acceptance, does the sub-genre really have to keep proving that it’s not the Devils’ work?

# data[].attributes.headline
Brixton based gang "67" on how they've evolved past the being in the streets

# data[].attributes.subject
Brixton based gang "67" on how they've evolved past the being in the streets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
North London's Bloody Gang War - OFB v N9

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sign up for alerts from The Irish Times

Just click on "Allow Notifications" on the message appearing on your browser to activate them.

We will send you a quick reminder in the future, in case you change your mind.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How postcode wars have made London a murder capital

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sign up for alerts from The Irish Times Just click on "Allow Notifications" on the message appearing on your browser to activate them. We will send you a quick reminder in the future, in case you change your mind.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"These days if someone gets stabbed no-one really cares, unless it's the family. It's just another young person getting stabbed."

Those chilling words come from a young boy in north London, no older than 14, in a new documentary about the links between knife crime and drill music.

He's not alone. His classmates describe intimidating encounters with gangs in balaclavas, and the fear that "saying the wrong thing" will lead to violence.

What they're less clear about is whether music, specifically the dark and gritty beats of drill, encourages criminal behaviour.

"In the songs, they talk about how they killed so much people and all that," observes one pupil.

"Violence is a choice," responds another. "Everything is a choice. You don't have to do it."

"If you think about it," adds a third classmate, "drill has caused more success for people than deaths."

A way out?

Like the students, the documentary, titled Terms and Conditions, is divided on the question of whether drill's violent lyrics are a symptom or a cause of the rise in knife-related crime.

"In this time of fake news, I wanted to show both sides," explains Andre Montgomery-Johnson, who authored the feature-length investigation.

"Some people see drill music as bad, and some people see drill music as a way out - but we want to see why people have these opinions.

"In a way, we ask the question, 'Does drill cause knife crime?' and the viewer makes the decision. That's the most powerful thing about it."

Montgomery-Johnson is uniquely placed to explore the issue. Under the name Mr Montgomery, he's one of the few journalists to cover drill closely from a grassroots level.

He grew up on the same streets as some of the genre's biggest names, and has lost friends of his own, including the rapper Incognito, to knife crime.

Crucially, he files his reports on YouTube - drill's natural home - giving him authenticity within the scene.

As a result, he has access to some of drill's biggest stars, going behind the scenes as they record music and shoot videos. In turn, the documentary shows "another side of these drill rappers", who have often been painted as aggressive thugs in the media.

"They have pride in what they're doing. They can articulate themselves," says Montgomery-Johnson. "We're giving them a voice to be understood."

The journalist recognises that drill, like grime before it, offers some of London's poorest residents an escape route.

"You can record a song on your phone and within 24 hours, that could potentially have a million views, which would change your whole destiny," he says.

The lyrics are often about obtaining money and status and power "because these are the things people on the streets don't have", explains rapper Drillminister ( who recently launched a bid to become London's mayor) in the film.

But Montgomery-Johnson is equally aware the music can lead to problems.

"Some drill songs do make it seem like it's cool to carry a knife, so of course there's going to be consequences to that."

There were 90 fatal stabbings in London in 2019, according to the Met Police. Across the UK, there were 44,771 offences involving knives or sharp instruments between September 2018 and September 2019, a rise of 7%, figures from the Office of National Statistics show.

Police have targeted drill music in an attempt to crack down on the violence, asking YouTube to remove videos that they say incite real-world crimes.

To examine the links, Montgomery-Johnson spoke to knife crime activists, youth mentors, community leaders, police officers and, in his documentary's most moving scenes, the mothers of several victims.

Among them was Sharon Kendall, whose 18-year-old son Jason Isaacs died after being ambushed by four assailants on mopeds as he walked to a friend's house in November 2017.

"The boy that killed Jason, he's in numerous YouTube videos and all they speak about is stabbing people in the back," she says.

"It's a massive thing, this drill music. I don't think it's the only cause, but it's one of the causes."

Several interviewees blame YouTube for disseminating violent videos without checks in place (a segment that's all the more striking when you learn that Terms and Conditions is being released under the YouTube Originals banner).

"They're not being mindful of the things they're allowing to be put onto their platforms," says campaigner Lucy Martindale, who developed PTSD after witnessing her cousin's murder at the age of nine.

"It's just a way of these gangs communicating with each other really violently and making threats. They need to take them [the videos] down very quickly."

"I think YouTube has a massive responsibility because, ultimately, it's a platform which they profit from," agrees Sayce Holmes-Lewis, director of youth work charity Mentivity.

"If young people are losing their lives because of content that's being put up, it needs to be screened at the earliest opportunity."

'There's even gay drill'

Rappers Skengdo and AM strenuously disagree. The duo, who've been handed suspended sentences for performing lyrics which police said incited violence against rival gang members, argue that their freedom of speech is being curtailed.

"They didn't link any crimes to our music," says AM. "It was a very weak case".

Montgomery-Johnson offers a solution to the stand-off between rappers and law enforcement - put pre-roll disclaimers on videos to discourage copycat behaviour.

"They need to have little warnings that say, 'This is not real life, this is not true, this is just entertainment - like in a film'. These are people playing a role and you shouldn't take them too serious," he says.

The idea that some drill lyrics are artfully exaggerated is reinforced by 21-year-old rapper Lavida Loca, who admits in the documentary that her "songs about violence and drugs caught everyone's attention", encouraging her to pursue that direction.

But Montgomery-Johnson points out that the genre is about more than gang culture and nihilistic violence, with an artist like Drillminister tackling climate change and economic austerity in his songs.

"Drill is only drill because of the beats. So you can create political drill, you can create property drill, there's even gay drill. The beats is the genre, but the topic can be anything."

And while the documentary deliberately avoids making a judgement on the link between drill and knife crime, you're left with the impression that it's only one pixel in a bigger picture.

"There's so many things that you can look at," says Montgomery-Johnson. "The lack of father figures, the lack of economic structure, the lack of activities, the lack of opportunities.

"So I think, yeah man, there's more than just drill to knife crime. There's other structures that are failing our young people. That's what I learnt."

Terms and Conditions: A UK Drill Story will be released on GRM Daily's YouTube channel on 26 February.

Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Does drill music cause crime, or offer an escape from it?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new film gives a voice to drill rappers, while exposing hard truths about links to knife crime.

# data[].attributes.headline
Analytics of the negativity of Drill Lyrics

# data[].attributes.subject
Analytics of the negativity of Drill Lyrics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In August 2017, a rapper known as M-Trap 0 was among three people who stabbed to death a 15-year-old boy in South London. All were later convicted, and M-Trap 0, also known as Junior Simpson, and the two others were subsequently sentenced to no less than 18 years in jail.

One curious aspect of the case was that Simpson performed a type of music known as U.K. drill rap, characterized by lyrics about violent and debauched criminal lifestyles. Before sentencing, the trial judge highlighted Simpson's lyrics that described knife attacks and were written before the murder. The judge said he believed they showed Simpson was waiting for the right opportunity for such an attack. The link between drill rap and violence seemed clear.

In 2018, London's police commissioner cited drill rap as a factor behind a rapid rise in knife crime in the capital and asked social media platforms to stop spreading it. In response, YouTube deleted more than 30 videos associated with drill rap, about half of those the police had asked for.

The episode raised controversial questions about the relationship between violent crime and cultural activities. There is little dispute that some drill music is produced by gangs in London and that the release of drill music coincides with violence from time to time. The question is over cause and effect. Does drill music incite violent crime?

Cause vs. Effect

Today, we get an answer of sorts, thanks to the work of Bennett Kleinberg and Paul McFarlane at University College London who have studied the lyrics in U.K. drill music, how it has changed over time and how it is correlated with violent crime in London. "The current policy of removing drill music videos from social media platforms such as YouTube remains controversial because it risks conflating the co-occurrence of drill rap and violence with a causal chain of the two," they say.

To explore this issue, Kleinberg and McFarlane study the lyrics of drill music and measure the way their sentiment has changed over time. They then compare this trajectory to the way violent crime has changed in London over the same period.

Sentiment analysis is relatively straightforward. It begins with a database of individual words and the sentiment each conveys, whether positive, negative or neutral. The analysis uses a sliding window technique to move through lyrics measuring how sentiment changes. And by doing this with different songs, the researchers can build a picture of the way lyrical sentiment changes over time.

One problem is that the language used by drill artists can be obscure and, in any case, evolves over time. So the researchers analyzed new words to determine their meaning and sentiment. For example, they found that ting translates as gun or thing, opps translates as enemies in other gangs, splash mean stab, peng means attractive girl, shank means knife,and so on.

After including this new vocabulary in their database, the researchers analyzed the sentiment expressed by 105 different London-based drill artists over the period between December 2013 and November 2018.

The results turn up some surprises. Kleinberg and McFarlane say that drill music lyrics are predominantly negative in sentiment but have become more positive over time. "The trajectory of the genre reveals that it becomes more positive over time but still remains negative in general," they say.

Homicide Data

The team also look at the way three different types of crime changed over the same period: homicide, robbery of personal property and violence with injury. Between December 2013 and November 2018, there were 121,00 robberies, 370,000 instances of violence with injury and 609 homicides in London.

But these crime statistics are not obviously correlated with sentiment in drill music. "An initial look at the relationship between crime and sentiment did not support the idea of the negativity of drill lyrics as a leading indicator (or even incitement) for real-life serious crimes," say the researchers. "We cannot interpret these results as support for the hypothesis that sentiment can be used as an indicator of real-life crime."

That's interesting work that is related to other similar controversies over the relationship between crime and other cultural vehicles such as violent films, video games and so on. The evidence in all cases is ambiguous. Even if there were a correlation, the question then arises of cause and effect. And that throws into question decisions to ban music or other cultural activities.

The work of Kleinberg and McFarlane has some limitations, however. For example, much of the crime in London is not related to gang activity, which the researchers acknowledge. But this shortcoming may mean that their analysis is not capable of revealing a correlation, even if it exists. In addition, the researchers cannot rule out that factors other than lyrical sentiment may be related to crime, such as the way rappers dress in videos, the hand signals they use and the weapons they carry. That leaves the work open to certain kinds of criticism.

A broader issue is what kind of social factors contribute to increases in crime. Various commentators have pointed to more obvious influences such as poverty, inequality, low levels of education, poor housing, and so on.

In an interview with The Guardian in 2018, the London-based drill rapper Abra Cadabra pointed to the cuts that affect schools, youth clubs, social housing and benefits as contributing factors. "Targeting musicians is a distraction," he said. "Our art is imitating our life, not the other way 'round."

The issue is clearly complex. Kleinberg and McFarlane say they do not, and cannot, claim that drill music videos have not contributed to some instances of gang-related violence. Indeed, they point out that requests to remove the videos from social media may be based on confidential data only accessible to the police.

But ultimately, evidence-based science should play an important role in informing public policy on these issues. "At this point in time, to the best of our knowledge, there is no publicly available empirical evidence that drill music language incites violent crime," Kleinberg and McFarlane conclude.

Ref: Violent music vs violence and music: Drill rap and violent crime in London. arxiv.org/abs/2004.04598

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Curious Case of Drill Rap and its Link to Violent Crime

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In August 2017, a rapper known as M-Trap 0 was among three people who stabbed to death a 15-year-old boy in South London. All were later convicted, and M-Trap 0, also known as Junior Simpson, and the two others were subsequently sentenced to no less than 18 years in jail.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There's a long-standing debate about whether violence in entertainment can inspire real-life events. Will that R-rated slasher or that gore-soaked shoot 'em up encourage impressionable viewers to commit murder? The conversation around this topic has reached quasi-political levels, and while both sides have plenty of talking points, there are a ton of bloody blockbusters that have resulted in copycat crimes or were connected to some pretty deplorable deeds.

The Dark Knight

The 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, was absolutely catastrophic. The tragedy occurred at the Century 16 movie theater, where 12 people were killed and 70 were injured in just a matter of minutes. At the time, that was the most casualties in a shooting in America history, a dark record that wasn't broken until 2016. (It should be noted that "casualty-filled" and "deadliest" aren't the same thing.)

The attack went down on July 20, when a gunman named James Holmes burst into a screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opened fire on the audience. As a result, many speculated Holmes was inspired by the film's predecessor, The Dark Knight. After all, when authorities took him into custody, Holmes reportedly said, "I am the Joker." Things got even crazier when police discovered his apartment was booby-trapped with explosives, which is a movie taken straight from the Joker playbook.

In the wake of the attack, Christian Bale visited with the victims, and director Christopher Nolan publicly condemned the massacre. As the director put it, "The movie theater is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me. Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families."

Project X

In 2012's Project X, a group of teens decides to throw a party, and as you might expect, their little event quickly spirals out of control, spilling across the neighborhood...and into the real world. After the film hit theaters, a series of copycat bashes popped up around the US, and in at least one instance, the results were deadly.

After watching the critically-hated comedy, some kids in Houston, Texas, staged their own raucous event in an abandoned mansion. Eventually, things got so wild that police showed up to disperse the crowds. Unfortunately, the situation quickly turned violent when somebody pulled a pistol. According to one witness, "[The gunman] was just walking, and he pulled out a gun and started shooting, like for no reason." Tragically, several of those bullets struck a nearby teen, and the young partygoer died shortly afterward.

Much like the movie, this Lone Star celebration had disastrous consequences. The situation gets worse when you realize the film's director, Nima Nourizadeh, had refused to condemn the idea of audiences taking his film to heart when planning their own parties. "I don't want to speak whether it is irresponsible or promoting certain things it shouldn't," Nourizadeh told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's an R-rated movie. It all depends on the individual whether you take inspiration from it."

Well, in hindsight, it certainly seems like he should've said something.

Fight Club

David Fincher's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club has spawned countless hush-hush groups that use their fists to do all their talking. Perhaps the most stunning example happened in 2015, when two daycare workers in New Jersey were charged with pitting toddlers against each other in a Fight Club-inspired brawl. The two reportedly shared their staged bouts of several children, aged four to six years old, on Snapchat and were overheard referencing both the movie and book in the videos.

Meanwhile, the "Project Mayhem" aspect of the movie has also been known to inspire some untoward activities in real life. In 2009, a Manhattan Starbucks was the site of an explosion of a homemade bomb, and police revealed the teen who planted the device was inspired by Fight Club. According to the police commissioner involved in the case, "[The teen's] statements indicated he was launching his own 'Project Mayhem.'" If you'll recall, this particular project is the name for Tyler Durden's anarchic group that plans on destroying America's financial institutions. And as it turns out, the suspect supposedly orchestrated his own at-home fight club before setting off the explosion. Talk about missing the point of a movie.

Scream

Shortly after the release of Wes Craven's Scream, the gory slasher pic was implicated in the chilling 1998 murder of 37-year-old Los Angeles native Rita Castillo. But in a disturbing twist, the killers weren't some random psychos. As it turns out, Castillo was murdered by her son and nephew.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Castillo was stabbed by the teen boys after they'd finished watching Scream and its 1997 sequel. Her one-year-old daughter was in the next room when the attack occurred, but fortunately, the infant was left unharmed. As for the teenagers, they admitted they'd killed Castillo because they needed her money...to plan a Ghostface murder spree. They wanted to buy masks and voice-changing devices, and they'd even supposedly planned to kill a classmate who looked like Drew Barrymore. Fortunately, their grisly dreams didn't pan out, and the boys were convicted of murder.

Saw

In addition to giving us all nightmares, the Saw films have encouraged a whole bunch of copycat crimes. For example, there were two teens from Tennessee who tormented a 52-year-old woman with prank calls, threatening her life with toxic gas if she didn't win their "game." The messages sent the woman into a panic that resulted in a stroke. However, a far ghastlier crime occurred in 2013, when a 25-year-old man tried to imitate a scene from Saw VI by stabbing a former soldier 17 times, hoping to sever his spinal cord. Ultimately, he wanted the PIN number to the man's bank account so he could withdraw cash for crack cocaine. However, according to Judge Timothy Pontius, it seems the murderer was directly inspired by the slasher flick...which was found in his bedroom after the crime.

But believe it or not, there's yet another Saw-inspired crime, one that could've made serial killer history. In 2009, two teens decided to take up the Jigsaw mantle and plan a series of torture killings. The duo wanted to abduct two students and a school police officer, take them to various locations, and torture them to do death on camera. Fortunately, the wannabe bad guys were thwarted when one of their moms overheard their conversation and contacted the police. Looks like these guys won't be playing games anytime soon.

Natural Born Killers

The violence and depravity showcased in Oliver Stone's 1994 crime drama Natural Born Killers has spawned a staggering number of real-life crimes. Most notably, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were believed to have been, at least in part, inspired by the movie when they killed 12 students and one teacher at the infamous Columbine High School massacre. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only school shooting inspired by the Woody Harrelson film. In 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal shot at a prayer circle outside his school in West Paducah, Kentucky, killing three classmates and injuring five others. And as you've probably guessed, the shooter cited Natural Born Killers among the movies that fueled his deadly rampage.

In another disturbing incident, an Oklahoma couple admitted to taking LSD and watching Natural Born Killers before embarking on a crime spree that included armed robbery, the slaughter of a Mississippi man, and the shooting of a Louisiana woman, who was paralyzed by her injuries. The latter victim, Patsy Byers, tried to take legal action against Oliver Stone and the company Time Warner, but the lawsuit was tossed out for lack of a solid connection between the movie and the shootings.

The Matrix

When it comes to special effects, The Matrix is one of the most influential films ever made. Unfortunately, this sci-fi flick has also inspired quite a few criminals. Take Lee Boyd Malvo, for instance. Known as the D.C. Sniper, this guy committed a series of terrifying murders in 2002, and he was supposedly so obsessed with the Wachowski film that his defense attorneys incorporated the movie into Malvo's insanity plea. He reportedly identified with Neo and instructed FBI agents to watch The Matrix if they wanted to understand his motives. He even scribbled lines referencing the film in his prison cell, including, "Free yourself from the Matrix."

It wasn't the only time the so-called " Matrix defense" would come up in court. In 2003, a 19-year-old dressed in Neo-like gear proceeded to murder his parents as a sort of grisly homage to the movie. As the killer himself put it, "I just kinda looked over at my Matrix poster, and then I looked over at my gun. I guess you know the rest." And in 2000, a Swiss exchange student believed his neighbor was putting off evil vibes and might suck him into the Matrix, so he slaughtered and dismembered the poor woman.

But while the Matrix defense sounds pretty ridiculous, it actually worked in 2002, when a woman shot her landlady at point-blank range. So why did she pull the trigger? Well, the killer claimed her dreams had been infected by her victim, and oh yeah, that "they commit a lot of crimes in the Matrix." As she further elaborated, the Matrix is "where you go to sleep at night, and they drug you and take you somewhere else." Yeah, that sounds pretty crazy, and evidently, the court agreed because it accepted her insanity plea. But as for Warner Bros., the studio issued a statement separating its fictional series from reality, saying, "Any attempt to link these crimes with a motion picture . . . is disturbing and irresponsible."

Taxi Driver

One of the most infamous examples of a movie inspiring violence involves Robert De Niro, a taxi cab, and a legitimate madman. It all started after a disturbed individual named John Hinckley Jr. grew obsessed with Jodie Foster after seeing her in 1976's Taxi Driver. And similar to the fictional Travis Bickle-who attempts to assassinate a senator-Hinckley decided to impress the actress by shooting President Ronald Reagan on on March 30, 1981. Fortunately, the psycho only wounded Reagan with a ricochet, although he also injured both a Secret Service officer and Press Secretary James Brady (who was left partially paralyzed).

Before embarking on his shooting spree, Hinckley wrote Foster a letter which read, "Over the past seven months I've left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me....I will admit to you the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you." He would later tout his deadly deed as "the greatest love offering in the history of the world." Well, it was definitely the creepiest.

Queen of the Damned

In 2003, a British man who'd seen Queen of the Damned over 100 times killed his best friend for disparaging the film's central vampire, Akasha. In fact, this guy even claimed Akasha told him to commit the murder. As a justification for his crime, he testified the undead queen had promised him immortality because "if you did not murder somebody you could not become a vampire." So naturally, he bludgeoned his friend with a hammer before stabbing him 42 times, drinking his blood, and eating parts of his skull. After being convicted of the savage murder, the man killed himself in his jail cell a year later, which just proves you should never ever trust a vampire.

Interview with the Vampire

In 1997, a man named Daniel Sterling was convicted of attempted murder after he stabbed his girlfriend seven times after the two had watched Interview with the Vampire. According to The Orlando Sentinel, the victim woke up to find her boyfriend hovering over her and saying, "I'm going to kill you and drink your blood," which is generally a bad way to start your morning. This loser Lestat eventually admitted the film inspired his terrible actions, saying, "I was influenced by the movie. I enjoyed the movie. But I cannot sit here and blame the movie." We're sure Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt greatly appreciated the review.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There's a long-standing debate about whether violence in entertainment can inspire real-life events. Will that R-rated slasher or that gore-soaked shoot 'em up encourage impressionable viewers to commit murder? The conversation around this topic has reached quasi-political levels, and while both sides have plenty of talking points, there are a ton of bloody blockbusters that have resulted in copycat crimes or were connected to some pretty deplorable deeds.