Beat(s) for Blame

Abstract

Abstract UK Drill music is regularly admitted as evidence of criminal offending, violence, and aggression in Britain’s courtrooms. Seizing on this popular rap subgenre’s deliberately lurid lyrical and visual content, the police, prosecutors, and judges interpret drill music lyrics and videos as literal, autobiographical testimony to bring charges against defendants. In so doing, an entire music genre is put on trial—likening it to a source of danger and a symbol of trouble, while also revealing prosecutorial tactics that are poor in evidential weight, rich in prejudicial value, and discriminatory in their outcomes. This chapter counters such punitive reasoning, arguing that perceiving and pursuing drill rap(pers) as ‘criminal(s)’ tells us more about the state-sanctioned, racialised criminalisation of Black British music than it does about the threat that a Black music subgenre ostensibly poses.