11/29/2023 0 Comments Drill uk![]() ![]() Since its cross-pollination, it has adapted to its new environment, rising in the slipstream provided by more established London genres. But carried by the youth population’s comparable inner city lifestyle – one driven by poverty, territorial gang rivalries and hyper-masculine bravado – drill settled amongst the housing estates of south London. Up until that point, it had been a specific, localized phenomenon, as charted by Forrest Stuart, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. For the first time, the genre transcended the trappings of its Windy City birthplace, where more homicides took place last year than in New York and Los Angeles combined. Other noteworthy tracks are the Oxide & Neutrino-influenced ‘Bound 4 Da Reload’, and their feature on the London supergroup New Gen’s compilation project, ‘Jackets’.Ĭhicago drill music exploded onto the international stage in 2012 after a series of YouTube videos by Chief Keef went viral. On last September’s Let’s Lurk mixtape, their most recent body of work – whose artwork is fittingly a blacked-out map of the crossroads at the centre of Brixton – is the well-known title track with Giggs, and the late-night anthem ‘5am Vamping’. But the sheer quantity of addictive output that 67 have produced under Hill’s sonic guidance – accompanied by high-quality hood videos that have set the standard for the rest of the genre – has made their rise undeniable.įeatured across their three mixtapes to date have been the likes of ‘Hookahs’ and ‘Skeng Man’, as well as ‘Take It There’, whose crisp, colorful music video first exposed the group to more widespread appreciation up and down the country when it first aired. ![]() Some local fans will flat-out refuse to listen to – or at least admit to listening to – music being made by artists from a rival part of town. They have managed to transcend the internal logic of the drill world and the petty ties of fierce postcode loyalty that plague it. ![]() Like Rodney P, like So Solid Crew, like Giggs before them, 67 are the voice of the youth of today,” Hill continues, placing them in a lineage of era-defining south London MCs going back over two decades.įor teenagers in south London, and increasingly elsewhere, no other drill outfit comes close to the popularity of 67’s main members: LD, Monkey, Dimzy, Liquez and ASAP. Their London shows may have been canceled at the end of 2016, but 67’s Let’s Lurk tour has recently completed a leg in Scotland, and the crew have featured in a cypher video for Beats by Dre headphones. Armed with Hill’s instrumentals and industry know-how (he studied music technology at university), the group is becoming one of the biggest names in UK underground music. Over the last few years, the 32-year-old has been steering the drill sound in collaboration with fellow Brixton Hill natives, 67. A lot of kids in south are stuck in that one world.” “Maybe they’ve just been in college, or in trouble with the police, or joining gangs. “The younger generation aren’t going to relate to rappers who are 29, they’ll relate to a rapper that’s 18, who can reflect their own day-to-day,” producer Carns Hill explains to me in a pub on Brixton Hill. “A lot of kids in south are stuck in that one world” Carns Hill Carns Hill Photography by: Tristan Bejawn Via its social media presence and DIY work ethic, London’s very own strain of drill music – the dark, aggressive cousin of trap rap, birthed in Chicago in the late ‘00s – is taking over as the dominant sound in urban youth culture. “It’s what we’ve grown up around.”Īs a youth worker in the southern quadrant of the city, I hear this sentiment expressed more and more. “Drill,” one of my students at a school in Elephant & Castle told me, when I asked what music he listens to. SoundCloud clips play from smartphones and lyrics are yelled between different groups of people. If you walk along a busy street in south London when schools are finishing for the day, amongst the clamor of teenagers congregating at shops and bus stops you can hear references to local music. Youth worker Ciaran Thapar investigates a very British phenomenon. ![]() Now, you’re more likely to hear the familiar distorted beats rattling from the schoolyards and buses of South London. Birthed in Chicago’s blighted South Side in the early 2010s and popularized by artists like King Louie and Chief Keef, drill music – an aggressive descendent of trap – has all but faded from view in the US. ![]()
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