Juan Williams of FNC is certainly a liberal. But when the man is right, he’s right. Rap and drill music are blights amongst black entertainment and perpetuate a culture of murder. Williams understands this and eloquently speaks out against it.
Drill "music" is designed to program young black men to massacre other black man with the end result being the total destruction of the black community. #drillmusic pic.twitter.com/1k7LfSX9st
— Cee-Ninja (@NinjaRealityme) February 17, 2022
Williams: Years ago, a rap music fan described me as a “hip hop scold of the highest order.”
My sin against the music was calling out rap artists for their constant use of the “N-word,” casually insulting women as “bitches,” and denigrated gays by using the word “f——.”
I said the language was damaging to Black culture, especially young people. I even went on Oprah Winfrey’s show to call out rappers for their racially profane, violent songs. Also appearing on the show was the rapper Ice-T, who rose to hip hop fame with explicit lyrics. He dismissed my criticism of rap lyrics, even when it depicted outright sex abuse, such as shoving a flashlight into a woman, by saying it was not rape and “the girl might have liked it.”
Ice-T must have won the argument because rap music has continued to grow. It is now the number one music genre in America. It sells to young people globally, Black, White, Latino and Asian. But the bulk of the audience is mostly young, White males attracted by adrenaline pumping fantasy domination of women and fearless embrace of ‘gangsta’ rap,’ with violent young men boasting about gunning down rivals.
Now ‘gangsta rap,” has grown even more deadly, evolving into “drill music.” Yes, that is “drill,” as in “drilling” people with gunfire. And make no mistake, the person doing the “drilling,” is a young Black man firing at another young Black man.
There are real world consequences coming from these celebrations of Black-on-Black violence. Look at the current spike in murder nationally. That trend is often discussed as a threat to everyone. But that is shameful avoidance of the reality that most of the bloodshed is among young Black men and in Black communities.
After a spate of shootings in New York, Mayor Eric Adams made the connection between ‘drill’ music and young Black men murdering each other. He said it is “alarming,” to see the popularity of the genre.
“We pulled Trump off Twitter,” he said, “Yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We’re allowing it to stay on these sites.” Adams said he plans to convene social media firms and “tell them that you have a civic and corporate responsibility.” The mayor met with some drill rappers on Tuesday.
But for now, the staccato gunfire beat that defines drill music as a subset of Hip Hop grows louder and more influential. It is not just the music. These days there are music videos to go with it.
On the Internet, for example, there is a steady stream of websites, even YouTube updates about violence in Chicago’s Black neighborhoods, equating violence there with war zones in Iraq.
There is “Chiraq News,” “Chiraq Central,” and ‘War in Chiraq,’ which is run by a guy in New Jersey and, according to a recent book, had a quarter million subscribers and 94 million views in its first two years…
The late Stanley Crouch, a celebrated music critic, once wrote that rap had turned the image of young Black men into a damaging caricature of a “money-moving, gold chain-wearing, illiteracy-spouting, penis-pulling, sullen, combative buffoons.”
Today, rap is so successful – dominating a wide spectrum of popular culture from fashion to sports, and music — that such critics are in hiding. The genre and its excesses are accepted as a fact of contemporary life. But make no mistake, rap and drill music are parts of America’s racial problem.
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As a composer, but not of the Rap genre, I believe the roots of Rap are solid Americana. It is, irrefutably, an art form. However repulsive some of its messages are, it is art. Art has been known to push the limits of reason, acceptability, and reality, itself. As such, Rap comes from where all other art emerges: the imagination. It is the thought-form embodied in Rap from wherein the problems of Rap creep out. The “programming” is as real as the art. And it is “the programmer” who controls the minions who blindly and naively carry out the orders. Malcolm X eruditely said, ““Mankind’s history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power, anxieties are created.” Today’s murder rates among blacks are a very real part of those anxieties.