THUG LIFE: Drill music as a periscope into urban violence in the consumer age

Lynes, Adam; Kelly, Craig; Kelly, Emma

doi:10.1093/bjc/azaa011

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…However, it should not be viewed as directly attributable to rising knife crime. Rather, Kelly et al (2020) claim drill music should be seen by those in power as an indicator of structural issues that young people face under neoliberalism including poverty, labour market insecurities and a sense of powerlessness. Others suggest that the police's view is street illiterate and based on the assumption that young black men are violent, though this is a crude racist stereotype with the reality being more complex (Ilan, 2020).…”

Section: The Aims Of Britain's Blm Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Critical Assessment of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United Kingdom

Hodgkinson

Telford

Treadwell

2021

JCCHE

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The death of George Floyd in May 2020 in the United States of America (USA) generated protests across the world, fronted by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The BLM movement cast the killing of Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin as emblematic of the criminal justice system’s (CJS) long history of racism. Whilst the core message that Black Lives Matter is indisputable, noble and a worthy rallying call, little scholarly attention has been given to the movement’s underlying philosophy and aims, particularly in relation to the CJS in Britain. This article explicates Britain’s BLM movement by considering four core themes – (a) critical race theory and British social science, (b) the policing of black people in Britain, (c) the omission of social class from the analyses of BLM scholars and activists in Britain and, (d) the aims of Britain’s BLM movement. It suggests that the BLM movement potentially offers a flawed understanding of racism within the CJS. The paper also critiques and problematizes BLM’s use of the terms ‘white privilege and ‘whiteness’. It closes with a critical discussion of the movement’s aims, including defunding and abolishing the police, suggesting that critical engagement with both CRT and BLM should form a core part of criminological debate.

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Section: The Aims Of Britain's Blm Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drill music has proliferated since 2010, particularly in London, and it is primarily associated with young black men in deprived localities where knife crime is prominent (Ilan, 2020;Kelly, et al 2020). However, it should not be viewed as directly attributable to rising knife crime.…”

Section: The Aims Of Britain's Blm Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Assessment of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United Kingdom

Hodgkinson

Telford

Treadwell

2021

JCCHE

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“…The language used in the Offensive Weapons Bill leaves open a wide degree of discretion in interpretation: one potential condition of KCPOs, for example, prohibits a young person from "using the internet to encourage crime involving bladed articles" -but what precisely constitutes encouragement? Recent police priorities indicate that this condition has likely been designed to target the increasingly popular genre of rap music known as "drill", which involves, among other things, young people rapping about serious violence in the areas in which they live (for further details see Lynes et al 2020). To what extent, however, does rapping about violence further encourage it?…”

Section: Considering "Violence Reduction" Initiatives Through a Lens Of Matteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

The terrifying abyss of insignificance

Billingham

Irwin-Rogers

2021

Oñati Socio-Legal Series

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The concept of mattering can be helpful for understanding the ways in which structural and historical factors affect individual psychologies. This paper lays out the usefulness of mattering as a lens through which to examine why a small minority of young people in Britain commit violent acts. We first explore what it means to matter and the evidence linking the quest to matter with violence, and then examine the factors in contemporary Britain which can diminish a young person’s sense of mattering, using recent community research. We then critique the British government’s attempt to address the problem of violence through Gang Injunctions and Knife Crime Prevention Orders. We conclude by suggesting that policy-makers could gain substantial insight from investigating the connections between marginalisation, mattering and violence, rather than focusing disproportionately on the music young people choose to listen to or create, or the specific weapon that they opt to carry.

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“…There are, for example, no direct links between hip-hop or ethnic minority street culture and jihadi rap, and listening to jihadi rap music cannot be equated with future involvement in violent jihadism. As demonstrated by studies of drill music (Ilan, 2020; Lynes et al, 2020), one of hip hop’s most controversial subgenres, these are complex artistic performances expressing deep concerns of social injustices and come with highly ambiguous relationships to actual violence. Nevertheless, there is still a certain (sub)cultural continuity in, and blurriness between, these subcultures and hip hop genres.…”

Section: Cultural Bricolages and Subcultural Continuitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rap, Islam and Jihadi Cool: The attractions of the Western jihadi subculture

Jensen¹,

Larsen

Sandberg

2021

Crime, Media, Culture

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Recent scholarship has explored the potential of subcultural theory for understanding the convergence of Western street and jihadi subcultures. The role of jihadi rap in this radical hybrid culture, however, is yet uncharted. We argue that subcultural analysis allows an understanding of the aesthetic fascination of jihadism, sometimes referred to as jihadi cool, and that jihadi rap should be seen as an integrated part of this cultural amalgam. To better understand the role of hip-hop in the hybrid street-jihadi culture, this paper offers a historical analysis of the relationship between hip-hop and Islam and detailed insight into the more contemporary, and marginal, phenomena of jihadi rap. We track the continuities and discontinuities from the presence of Black Islam in early hip hop to recent convergences between hip hop and jihadism. Our analysis draws on Lévi-Strauss concepts of bricolage and floating signifiers. Subcultures and hip-hop music are seen as bricolages that draw on a multitude of cultural references with their own particular history. In these cultural bricolages, Islam often acts as a floating signifier, with different and often ambiguous meanings. We argue and demonstrate that Islam has a long history of being part of hip-hop rebellion and attraction and that this, channelled through jihadi rap, can contribute to jihadi cool and the contemporary pull of Western jihadi subcultures.

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THUG LIFE: Drill music as a periscope into urban violence in the consumer age

Cited by 18 publications

References 41 publications

A Critical Assessment of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United Kingdom

A Critical Assessment of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United Kingdom

The terrifying abyss of insignificance

Rap, Islam and Jihadi Cool: The attractions of the Western jihadi subculture

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