Workout music ‘encourages young people to adopt violent lifestyles’

Bristol has seen an increase in knife crime over the past year and while there are a number of initiatives to tackle the complex problem, some believe there is a link to exercise music. Steven Draper – AKA Krazy – has been rapping in Bristol since he first took to the stage at the Easton Community Center when he was 13, and he has strong opinions on the music genre.

Krazy, who has a local hip hop music channel and his own recording studio, supports young Bristol rappers, but not those whose music glamorises crime. Becoming a rapper can be an aspiration for young people and is often seen as a way out of crime for those deemed at risk, but Krazy believes this can be supported by promoting rap or other forms of music with a more positive message .

“At first everyone tried to support the exercise because it was seen as something positive that children could do. But we realized that is not a good thing. I don’t play it on the radio at all now,” explained Steven Draper AKA Krazy, who presents the Tuesday night Wordlife show on Radio Ujima.

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UK Drilling originated in Brixton, South London in 2012 and has since spread across the UK. Music videos tend to feature young men and boys wearing balaclavas and lyrics that refer to committing violent acts. As of 2020, 17 singles have charted. While some argue that the music is directly linked to violent acts, others have said that as it has grown in popularity, its content has become more positive.

Dayton Powell, who offers a Box Therapy program with youth at Empire Fighting Chance in Easton, believes record companies are actively encouraging young people to talk about crime. “The record labels give you more money to talk about crime and poison the minds of young people. You have rappers who want to make it in rap, so the first thing they do is think of the worst things they can think of and their negative experiences,” he said.

He claims that, like gangster rap, as drill grows in popularity, more and more young aspiring musicians begin to adopt styles associated with gang culture and brag about committing crimes in their lyrics because it’s what what I think they need to do to get into the industry. “Now you have a kid who’s never been in a ghetto in his life but he’s got a Hoodrich tracksuit and he’s at home listening to a bit of Central Cee and he wants to go get a ghetto and now it’s a health issue public. Dayton added.

While Krazy agrees that rap music and the wider hip hop culture has provided a platform for people from disadvantaged backgrounds to talk about the realities of growing up in poverty, he believes that drill songs tend to have a more direct association with knife crime . The rapper and producer who first performed at the Easton Community Center when he was 13, said: “I have three friends whose kids have been killed, so I can’t, as a music producer, actively promote drill music.

“Most of the time when I have parents sending music and saying, ‘Can you listen to my son’s music?’ I always say, “Did you listen to the content?” I’m like, “Do you realize what your son is actually rapping about?” And you refuse to play it. It’s really a negative atmosphere and industries are taking advantage of it.

“Hip-hop was about struggle and real-life issues, and that was pushed aside with the rise of gangster rap in America. There were funds there, so people started imitating it.

“People copy that and the money they celebrate comes from selling smack and crack and contributing to people’s misery. It’s not a good thing that I support.”

“There is a lack of support for youth clubs.”

Krazy, who is 42, recently released a new music video linking the issues facing disaffected young people to cuts to public services and the cost of living crisis. He felt the need to produce the piece, “Britain is not great” after losing friends to suicide and drug addiction.

While there are many grassroots groups working to support young people and combat knife crime, the situation is very different from the experience Krazy had in Easton in the 1990s. Coming from a single-parent family, he often found himself left to his own devices until his mother got home from work at 6 p.m.

Although he admits he would have problems, there were plenty of youth clubs nearby with trained staff, some of whom he still remembers today. “Today there is a lack of support for youth clubs, young people are not included and there is little for them apart from the most at risk.

“We used to go to youth clubs and there were five to 10 youth workers who could handle all situations, which I still remember today. They were prominent figures in my life and role models,” he added.

While Krazy continues to support and mentor young Bristol rappers through a group chat and through his own personal networks, the project he was previously involved with via Go to Creative College no longer receives funding.

Meanwhile, alongside the work Dayton is doing with Empire Fighting Chance, he co-founded a new CIC – Each One Teach One UK with his wife Tatiana Powell in response to the killing of Eddie King in St Pauls. Their aim is to try to fill the gaps caused by the decimation of youth services, but they have to rely on grant funding and crowdfunding for their projects.

There are other organizations in Bristol working directly to move away from youth criminalisation. The Mwanzo project provides a six-month program of support and activities for young people who have been arrested or identified as ‘at risk’.

Their programs target 16-21 year olds in East Central Bristol, including some who have been arrested for possession of a bladed article. The organization receives referrals from Avon and Somerset Constabulary for those who have already been arrested, but any organization can refer young people to their program which targets those identified as being at risk.

The music is now used as evidence in court

In recent years there has been an increase in music videos made by young people being used as evidence in court. In 2021, a senior officer from Avon and Somerset Police spoke about how police were working with schools in South Gloucestershire to identify young people in videos carrying weapons and, in some cases, prosecute them.

At the time, Chief Inspector Dan Forster said some of the boys from South Glos who were identified as rapists in the videos were committing crimes in Bristol city centre. But some academics have raised concerns about the potential to misidentify young people as gang members for simply participating in such music videos or adopting the style of clothing associated with an increasingly mainstream music genre. more popular, especially with young black men who are already overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

A recent study of the experience of black and mixed boys in the criminal justice system found that, despite the majority of serious crimes being committed by white children, black children are more likely to receive a warning or be convicted of a criminal offence. In the same study, the majority of boys who were convicted by court orders were permanently excluded and a significant proportion were placed in Child Protection or were victims or criminal exploitation.

New research from the University of Manchester showed that the popular rap music ‘drill’ is increasingly being used as evidence to convict children of serious offences. The study raises concerns that rap is an “unreliable form of evidence” with its use to create “gang-related” prosecutions under Laws of vicarious liability described as racist by some legal people.

The report examines a murder case in Manchester, where 11 teenagers who were all black or mixed race were sent to prison by an all-white jury, despite the fact that all but two were present when the fatal stabbing took place. A rap video the group had made together a year before the murder took place was used as evidence against them to convict them under Joint venture pilot also known as vicarious liability, which applies to those who “assist or encourage a crime”.