NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A wave of shootings involving NYC drill rappers has put the music scene on the radar of police.
The commanding officer of detectives in Brooklyn South speculated to the New York Daily News that the music is inflaming tensions between gangs and playing a role in recent gun violence.
“The music definitely inflames the situation,” Deputy Chief Joseph Gulotta told the Daily News. “But these are gang shootings. I think sometimes rap and the lyrics ignite, cause some issues. But I don’t think that’s the underlying motive at the end of the day.”
Drill music is characterized by violent nihilism and gang-related lyrical content, and the past weeks have seen a number of shootings involving drill rappers.
Twenty-two-year-old Tajay Dobson, who went by the stage name TDott Woo, was shot and killed Feb. 3 just hours after signing a record deal.
On Monday, early reports that 18-year-old Jay Williams, aka Chii Wvttz, was shot and killed over the weekend started appearing on social media and hip-hop blogs.
Nasir Fisher — stage name Nas Blixky — 22, was shot in the head on Jan. 27. and survived.
On Jan. 18, 16-year-old Camrin Williams, or C Blu, was charged with shooting a police officer after his gun unintentionally fired while police attempted to arrest him.
The spate of shootings has caught the attention of the NYPD and built enough buzz around drill music to get high-ranking cops to start speculating to the press.
“They’ll talk about what they’re going to do,” Gulotta told the Daily News. “They’ll talk about the past.”
That kind of attention could lead to unwanted scrutiny for artists. US law enforcement and the NYPD in particular have a long history of surveilling rap artists and fans.
Between 1999 and 2004 the FBI investigated Wu-Tang Clan, which is a hip-hop collective that is not gang affiliated, for gang activity.
In 2004, The Village Voice reported on an active NYPD “Rap Intelligence Unit.”
As recently as 2019, The New York Post reported on the NYPD’s Enterprise Operations Unit, known among cops as the Rap Unit. The Post found police were monitoring rappers who were not suspected of any crime and sending undercover officers to hip-hop concerts.
Despite the department’s pet theories, there is little evidence available to distinguish whether the gang violence is a product of the lyrics or the lyrics are a product of the gang violence.
It remains to be seen whether the NYPD will again formalize its interest in the relationship between music and gang violence.
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