This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.
In January 2019, there was a landmark case in British legal history – it was the first time someone received a prison sentence for performing a song.
The perpetrators were Brixton duo Skengdo x AM, one of the brightest acts of the burgeoning UK drill scene. They had already been put under surveillance by the police after they and two other members of rap group 410 were handed a gang injunction in 2018. This was in response to a song they released depicting clashes with members of rival crews. Three young men from those crews were killed that year, but there was no evidence that members of 410 were involved. The Metropolitan Police still classified 410 as a gang, and the injunction prevented them from entering the “rival” SE11 London postcode area, and from performing songs with lyrics that mentioned rival crews.
But at a concert in December 2018, Skengdo x AM broke the injunction. The pair performed one of their more popular songs, Attempted 1.0, which contained lyrics that were regarded by police as inciting violence. Officers discovered videos of the performance online – and in January 2019 the pair were given nine-month prison sentences suspended for two years.
In a statement, the Met said that the injunction was breached when “they performed drill music that incited and encouraged violence against rival gang members and then posted it on social media”. But it was their fans that shared videos, not them. Shereener Browne, a former barrister for Garden Court Chambers, has spent years working on cases involving young people alleged to be involved in gang or criminal activity. She was shocked by this case, particularly given the pair hadn’t posted online themselves.
“So here, they got an order for not doing anything, and then got an order saying that they were in breach of that order for something that they didn’t do! Head blown,” she told Index. “So we’re just… tearing up Magna Carta – every principle of criminal law is up for grabs. And if it was happening to any other group? We would be marching.”
This is a case that Index on Censorship commented on at the time – and it is not the only instance of UK police trying to control the work of drill artists. One notable case was that of Digga D. In 2018, Digga D (full name Rhys Herbert) was convicted of conspiring to commit violent disorder and ultimately sentenced to a year behind bars. He was also given a criminal behaviour order (CBO) which, alongside having his movements tracked, meant he was required to notify police within 24 hours of uploading music or videos online. Additionally, the lyrics of his songs had to be verified and authorised by the police to ensure that they did not incite violence. If they did, he could be sent back to prison. These restrictions meant that police essentially had control over his work, and this will continue until 2025. Digga D is one of the most influential drill artists on the scene, but even he is forced to censor his work under police surveillance.
The Met has been scrutinising drill musicians for a while. In 2019, it launched a targeted initiative titled Project Alpha which scoured social media platforms for potential signs of gang activity in posts and videos by young, usually Black, people. As revealed by The Guardian, the force monitors the activity of young people – primarily young men aged 15 to 21 – online, which it says aims to fight serious violence, identify offenders and assist in removing videos that glorify stabbings and shootings. In many cases, Big Tech is complying, and this policy has led to hundreds of drill music videos being removed from platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
In a Freedom of Information application on Project Alpha, it was revealed that the Met made 682 requests to remove drill songs from streaming platforms between 1 January 2021 and 31 October 2023, with most requests made to YouTube. Another FOI request found that on YouTube specifically, 654 requests for removal were made between September 2020 and January 2022, and 635 of them were granted.
Browne believes that the claimed attempt to tackle gang violence has become a concerted effort to silence drill artists, and young Black men in particular. It amounts to systemic racism, she told Index, with the evidence for this being that other genres of music are not censored or surveilled in the same way.
“It creates a culture of fear amongst mainly young, Black men, and it makes them feel even more disenfranchised, marginalised and silenced,” she said. “Because if you see your heroes – and I think to a lot of these young men, the drill and rap artists that break through are seen as their heroes – being silenced in that way, it’s going to make you angry and frustrated.
“There’s this demonisation of an entire generation of young Black people, and it’s crushing their self-esteem.”
The moral panic surrounding drill music means it has become common practice for lyrics to be used in court as evidence of criminal activity amongst drill artists. Rapping about crime and violence is often seen as an admission of guilt rather than musical storytelling, and even listening to drill music can be taken as a precursor to violent behaviour.
Art Not Evidence is a campaign group fighting against the criminalisation of drill. Founded a year ago, it has collaborated with musicians and human rights organisations to battle against the use of lyrics – and creative expression more broadly – to unfairly implicate people in criminal charges when there is a lack of real evidence. Co-founder Elli Brazzill works in the music industry and has spent time at a major record label with some of the biggest names in music. She noticed how the police began to interfere with the work of drill artists signed to the label.
“I started to see the disparities between the way different artists are treated, and what I referred to as a correlation between the growing popularity of certain rap and drill artists and an increase in police interference and surveillance,” she told Index. One artist who was signed after serving a prison sentence was at risk of further criminal punishment for simply posting online about Black Lives Matter, she claimed.
In founding Art Not Evidence, Brazzill hopes that she can help change presumptions around drill music, from a violent and dangerous genre to a form of therapy and creative expression. “What all the other genres are awarded, and rap and drill music are not, is artistic licence,” she said. “Which is why it comes up in court as autobiographical, as literal, as a confession, as a premeditation to crime.”
Music can be a therapeutic tool. According to the charity Youth Music, which conducted a survey of 16 to 24-year-olds last year, nearly three quarters found that listening to, reading or writing musical lyrics enabled them to “process difficult feelings and emotions”, whilst half said it helped to reduce feelings of isolation or loneliness. “That is what these kids need, especially if you’re in a community where you don’t talk about things,” said Brazzill. “I’m 28 now, and I still struggle to talk about my emotions! When you’re 15, all you can do is let it out like this. I’m pretty sure every artist would say that that is what it is for them.”
Censoring drill music only further ostracises an already-marginalised group, Browne believes. “It’s a group of young men who have fallen through the cracks – very often excluded from schools, put into pupil referral units… they’re not doing their A-levels, they’re not going to university,” she said.
“There are very, very few legitimate ways for them to raise themselves [and] lift themselves out of poverty, and this is one of the few ways that they can do that. That’s why it’s even more cruel for the state to try to shut down those avenues of escape.”
Her point is valid. If these young Black people cannot tell the stories and realities of their lives, and they are instead silenced because their retelling is deemed “too violent” or “glorifies gang culture”, we are depriving them of a crucial outlet, erasing a core element of modern-day British culture and exacerbating the cycle of poverty and crime. And inevitably, this can only lead to prison sentences for some young people. Brazzill recalled the poignant words of one drill artist from a recent podcast interview: “You are really angry, and you don’t want us to make the music talking about our life. But you don’t care if we’ll just go back and have to do The Life.”
