Many Britons will be disappointed that wetter and cooler weather has arrived. The Metropolitan Police, though, might be breathing a sigh of relief. After all, literature on violent crime has established the “almost universal finding in … that violent crimes are more common during the hotter seasons and months of the year”.
If nothing else, this is because social gatherings are bigger and a lot more liable to be held outside. In crime-ridden neighbourhoods, this raises the chances of violent people bumping into each other. So, amid the recent heatwave in the UK, several appalling acts of violent crime took place.
In Hackney, last Monday, 15-year-old Brayan David Saldarriaga was stabbed to death. A party was being held when a fight broke out. Knives, and reportedly a gun, were involved in “a large disturbance involving hundreds of youths”. The circumstances have yet to be established but a 16-year-old has been charged with murder.
The family appear to be raising money for the funeral.
Just a few days later, a rapper called Lil Slipz released a song called “Exposing Rappers”. Whether you can call “Exposing Rappers” a song is dubious — and not just because it’s less than 90 seconds long.
“Exposing Rappers” has more to do with gloating than entertaining. It is a series of boasts about people who have been hurt or killed.
“When Dotz got caught and shaved,” raps Lil Slipz, “I knew he was dead from the look of the blade.” “Dotz” appears to refer to Tashaûn Aird — a 15-year-old who was stabbed to death in Hackney in 2019. This is made quite obvious because one of Lil Slipz’s associates in the video is wearing a t-shirt that bears Mr Aird’s face. When the line is rapped, he tugs jubilantly at his shirt.
I told 88 don’t play
Look at him now — he’s gotta dig some graves
BD got cheffed and left on the pave
88 is a reference to a rival rapper from the London Fields gang “Zero Tolerance”, who, about a week earlier, had dropped a preview for a song that appeared to celebrate the death of “ZT” enemies Israel “Shegz” Ogunsola. “BD” appears to be a reference to Brayan David Saldarriaga. On Lil Slipz’s shirt is a young man in a mask who looks very much like Mr Saldarriaga.
Insulting the dead is nothing new in the world of drill rap. Indeed, it is a defining feature of the genre. For all that disingenuous activists and academics have attempted to present its violent content as being similar to that which can be found in gangster films and country songs, it does not use violence as a theme for artistic purposes half as much as it uses it as a theme so gang members can insult and threaten other gang members. In an unpleasant coincidence, the events of the past week have taken place ten years after four men were convicted of the murder of 18-year-old Marcel Addai in Hackney as part of a feud thought to have been stirred up by rap videos. But I’m not sure I recall a “diss track” being rushed onto the internet so quickly. There was, it appears, not even time to write a proper song or record a proper video.
These shock tactics have led to “Exposing Rappers” attracting 150,000 views on YouTube within days. Still, these would not have been impressive numbers in the drill rap genre until recently. A look at online comments suggests that the daring and macho reputation that trash-talking drill rappers used to attract has been diminished.
“All I’ll say is.. karma is a bitch,” says one comment, “You’ll remember what you said in this video when karma is at your door.” “Your mum must be so proud,” says another, more bluntly. “Lets see all that talk in 20 years no skills no job whatsoever.” The grammar is dodgy but the point is hard to dispute — and it’s good that the glamour that was inexplicably attached to a destructive and self-destructive cycle of violence might be fading.
Still, this can’t be especially comforting for the relatives of young men who have been murdered, and who have to see their sons, brothers and nephews being mocked online. Sometimes, these young men have been perpetrating harm themselves — but that does not make it any easier for their loved ones.
What is vaguely surreal is that this has flown so far beneath the radar of the cultural mainstream. Commentators and politicians have rubbed their chins over imaginary violence in prestige drama while a subculture that explicitly celebrates killing has swollen like a cyst beneath the surface of our discourse. It can’t be aligned with mainstream shibboleths — and, more understandably, it is hard to know what can be done about it. But the effect of such cultural and political neglect is that some people think anyone and everyone in central London is never more than ten seconds from being on the wrong end of a knife, while other people think that young men — especially young black men — are being murdered almost at random, with no cultural and organisational dynamics behind their deaths.
Perhaps colder, wetter weather will allow people to completely forget about it again.
