Bristol has seen a rise in knife crime over the past year and while there are a number of initiatives to tackle the complex issue, some believe there is a link to drill music. Steven Draper - AKA Krazy - has been rapping in Bristol since he first took to the stage at Easton Community Centre when he was 13 and has strong views on the genre of music.
Krazy, who has a local hip hop music channel and his own recording studio, supports young rappers in Bristol but does not back those whose music glamourises murder. Becoming a rapper can be an aspiration for young people and is often seen a way out of crime for those considered at risk, but Krazy believes this can be supported by promoting rap or other forms of music with a more positive message.
“At the start everyone was trying to support drill because it was deemed as something positive that kids could be doing. But we’ve realised it’s not a good thing. I don’t play it on the radio at all now,” explained Steven Draper AKA Krazy, who presents the Wordlife show on Tuesday evenings on Ujima radio.
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UK drill emerged in Brixton, South London in 2012 and has since spread across the UK. The music videos tend to feature young men and boys wearing balaclavas and lyrics that refer to committing violent acts. By 2020, 17 drill singles had reached the charts. While some argue that the music is directly linked to violent acts, others have said that as it's grown in popularity, its content has become more positive.
Dayton Powell, who delivers a Box Therapy programme with young people at Empire Fighting Chance in Easton, believes that record labels actively encourage young people to speak about murder. “Record labels give you more money to speak about murder and poison the youth's mind. You’ve got rappers out there who want to make it in rap so the first thing they do is think of the worst things they can think of and their negative experiences,” he said.
He argues that like gangster rap, as drill grows in popularity, more young aspiring musicians start to adopt styles associated with gang culture and boast about committing crimes in their lyrics because it's what they believe they need to do to make it in the industry. “Now you get some kid who has never been to a ghetto in his life but he has a Hoodrich tracksuit and he’s in his house listening to a bit of Central Cee and he wants to go and get a shank and now it’s a public health problem,” added Dayton.
While Krazy agrees that rap music and wider hip hop culture has given a platform to people from disadvantaged backgrounds to speak about the realities of growing up in poverty, he thinks drill music tracks tend to have a more direct association with knife crime. The rapper and producer who first performed at Easton Community Centre at 13, said: “I have three friends whose children who have been killed so I can’t as a music producer actively promote drill music.
"A lot of the time when I have parents send music and say, ‘can you listen to my son’s music?’ I always say, ‘have you listened to the content?’ I say, ‘do you realise what your son is actually rapping about?’ And refuse to play it. It’s really pushing a negative vibe and the industries are profiting off it.
“Hip hop was talking about the struggle and real life issues and that got pushed aside with the rise of gangster rap in America. That’s where there was funding so people started emulating it.
“People imitate that and the money that they are celebrating comes from selling smack and crack and contributing to people’s misery. It’s not a good thing that they are endorsing."
“There is a lack of support for youth clubs.”
Krazy, who is 42, has recently released a new music video which links the problems faced by disaffected young people with the cuts to public services and cost of living crisis. He felt the need to produce the track, ‘Britain Ain’t Great’ after losing friends to suicide and drug addiction.
Although there are many grassroots groups doing work to support young people and tackle knife crime, the situation is very different from the experience Krazy had growing up in Easton in the 1990s. Coming from a single parent family, he found himself often left to his own devices until his mum would get home from work at 6pm.
Although he admits he would get into trouble, there were plenty of youth clubs nearby with trained staff, some of whom he still remembers today. “There is a lack of support for youth clubs today, young people are not included and there is little there for them other than those most at risk
“We used to go to youth clubs and there were five to 10 youth workers that could all deal with all situations,who I still remember to this day. They’ve been prominent figures in my life and role models,” he added.
While Krazy continues to support and mentor young rappers in Bristol through a group chat and his own personal networks, the project he was previously involved in through Access Creative College , no longer receives funding.
Meanwhile alongside the work that Dayton does with Empire Fighting Chance, he co-founded a new CIC - Each One Teach One UK, with his wife Tatiana Powell as a response to the murder of Eddie King in St Pauls. Their aim is to try and fill the gaps caused by the decimation of youth services but they have to rely on funding grants and crowdfunding for their projects.
There are other organisations in Bristol are working directly to move away from the criminalisation of young people. The Mwanzo project offers a six-month programme of support and activities for young people who have been arrested or identified as being 'at risk.'
Their programmes target 16-21 year olds in East Central Bristol, including some who have been arrested for possession of a bladed article. The organisation gets referrals from Avon and Somerset Constabulary for those who have already been arrested but any organisation can refer young people to their programme which targets those identified as being at risk.
Music now being used as evidence in court
In recent years there has been an increase in music videos made by young people used as evidence in court. In 2021, a senior officer in Avon and Somerset police spoke about how the police were working with schools in South Gloucestershire to identify the young people in the videos carrying weapons and in some cases, prosecute them.
At the time Chief Inspector Dan Forster said that some of the boys from South Glos who were identified as rapping in the videos were committing offences in Bristol City Centre. But some academics have raised concerns over the potential to mis-identify young people as gang members for simply participating in such music videos or adopting the style of clothing associated with a music genre that is becoming more mainstream, particularly in the case of young black males who are already over-represented in the criminal justice system.
A recent study into the experience of black and mixed heritage boys in the criminal justice system found that despite the majority of serious offences being committed by white children, black children were more likely to get a caution or be sentenced for a crime. In the same study, the majority of the boys who were sentenced to court orders had been permenantly excluded and a significant proportion were subject to Child Protection or had been victims or criminal expolitation.
New research from The University of Manchester has shown that the popular ‘drill’ rap music is increasingly being used as evidence to convict children of serious crimes. The study raises concerns over rap being ‘an unreliable form of evidence’ with its use to build ‘gang-related’ prosecutions under Secondary Liability Laws , described as racist by some law enforcers.
The report looks at a murder case in Manchester where 11 teenagers who were all black or mixed race were sent to jail by an all-white jury, despite all but two of them being present when the fatal stabbing took place. A rap video that the group had made together a year before the murder took place was used as evidence against to convict them under the Joint Enterprise Pilot , also known as Secondary Liability which applies to those 'assisting or encouraging a crime.'
