This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link:

Authorities in the United Kingdom censure ‘drill rap’, the artistic expression of disadvantaged urban youth, citing its connections to serious violence. This is shown to be based on a thin, ‘street-illiterate’ understanding of the genre that ultimately rests on stereotypes of young black men as violent ‘gang’ members. In place of this misreading, a street-literate interpretation of drill is offered from a deep and nuanced analysis of YouTube videos and below the line discussions. It is demonstrated that it is inaccurate and unhelpful to view drill videos as evidence of violent crime or as attempts to glorify or precipitate it. Instead, the stylized videos and violent lyricism are shown to be forms of artistic performance that reveal an ambiguous relationship to criminality. Marginalizing the excluded further, video removals and restrictions on performance are shown to be counterproductive from a crime-reduction perspective. New developments in technology and culture can take shape around existing patterns of criminalization.

A background in ‘ordinary’ crime, violence and drug use seems to characterize many European individuals recently involved in ISIS-related jihadi violence. With its long tradition of studying marginalized populations and street culture, criminology offers novel ways to explore these developments theoretically. In this article, we demonstrate how Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus and field allow for a nuanced analysis of how certain individuals move from street to politico-religious criminality. We show that ‘investments’ in street capital can be expended within the field of violent jihadism. We argue that an embodied street habitus supports continuities in attitudes and behaviours within different violent contexts, and furthermore that street social capital facilitates recruitment to violent jihadism. Finally, reflection is offered on resonances between street and jihadi fields. The article explains how continuities in lifestyle can exist between the European city and a Middle Eastern battleground.

With original authors and audiences from the most disadvantaged and excluded communities across Western society, urban music has been equally scorned and sought out for its referencing of, and/or association with, criminal activity. Urban music (such as rap from the United States) can be understood as generating both 'respectable fears' and 'subcultural capital', appealing to youthful consumers who are seduced by its ostensibly transgressive character. This appeal is linked to the urban communities which incubated and popularised both the music and the 'street culture' of its underprivileged population. The wisdom has followed that the more 'ghetto' the music, the greater its ability to court controversy and generate record sales. Interestingly, the latest generation of UK urban artistes has bucked this trend, eschewing violent imagery and metaphor, courting a 'mainstream' aesthetic and actively referencing 'respectable' routes to inclusion such as engaging with education and running small businesses. This paper reflects on British 'grime' music, demonstrating that new media and music industry democratisation can alter the manner by which crime and street culture are commodified. It argues that where there is a perception of threat connected to street-level urban music authored by those with supposed links to criminality, the lines between real crime and its mediated representation can become blurred. The authorities and the music industry may respond by effectively criminalising and excluding an entire genre. In the case of UK urban music, artistes have adopted a strategy to succeed within the mainstream industry which, as opposed to US rappers, involves muting their links to street culture.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/15764/ Link to published version: http://dx. AbstractThe interactions between young, disadvantaged, urban men and the rank-and-file officers who police them should be understood as layered structural, cultural and emotional phenomena. Using data from a multi-dimensional ethnographic project, this paper demonstrates that structural issues manifest in cultural scripts which place both groups in confrontation with each other. Within a tightly bound geographic district, competitiveness between them can be animated by intense emotionality. Frustration, humiliation, disdain and the potential for elation push both parties into behaviours that cannot be understood through discretion and confidence models of decision-making alone. Ultimately, through recognising how questions of inclusion/exclusion play out in simultaneously structural, cultural and emotive ways, the problems generated by negative interactions between the two groups might be meaningfully understood.