Originating from the streets of Chicago, drill music is a creative output of inner-city Black youths. It is defined by real life experiences and perspectives, and whilst drill rappers often document gang-related conflict and anti-establishment narratives in their lyrics and music videos, the rap genre is a crucial mouthpiece of artistic and cultural expression. However, London’s police force—the Metropolitan Police, or the Met—have argued that the genre is partly responsible for the rise in knife crime across the UK’s capital, and have sought to remove drill music from online platforms based on the mistaken, and frankly racist, belief that it is not creative expression but a witness statement to criminal activity.
It is concerning, therefore, that in 2018 streaming platform YouTube started an “enhanced partnership” with the Met, which has since facilitated a pervasive system of content moderation for drill rappers in the UK. This partnership of state and corporate power has enabled the Met to advance their previous efforts to censor drill music, most notably since 2015 when the force launched Operation Domain to monitor “videos that incite violence” on YouTube. In June 2019, Operation Domain was replaced by Project Alpha, which involves police officers from gang units operating a database of 34 different categories, including drill music videos, and monitoring sites for intelligence about criminal activity. According to Vice, 1,006 rap videos have been included on the database since 2020 and a This article has been indexed from Deeplinks
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