Why the Met are drilling down on drill music
Whether on the radio, TV or even on the Greta Gerwig blockbuster Barbie movie, drill music has had a dominant year in every format. As one of the country’s most popular sounds, it has taken London, and international music markets by storm, helping launch careers of rappers including Central Cee, Dave and Headie One, who have all topped music charts in the UK.
The genre, a sub-division of rap, originated in Chicago, and moved over to London in 2012. With its thumping instrumentals and raw - often violent - lyrics it details the harsh realities of the artists’ lives. With artists regularly attached to particular estates and postcodes, correlations between their musical output and London’s death rate of young males to gang-related knife and gun crime have long been drawn. In 2021, London saw the record murder of 30 male teenagers aged between 14-19. The question of whether UK drill scene is simply chronicling the bleak truths for youths on London streets, or actually driving crime hangs heavy.
But hidden within the Metropolitan Police is a specialist team tasked with monitoring and removing drill music from the internet.
Never heard of Project Alpha? That’s precisely how they like to operate. Established in 2019, it is a specialist taskforce that’s part of the Metropolitan Police responsible for gathering intelligence from on YouTube, Facebook,
