Steve 'Flash' JuonThe differences between Chicago drill, Brooklyn drill and London drill are increasingly smaller and smaller. To me it’s all drill so long as it has a few defining characteristics — dank bass, gritty realism, electronic production, and a propensity for violent fantasies. The accents or the slang may change a little from scene to scene, but they have far more in common than they have different. My evidence is that my first impression of “Brooklyn’s Most Wanted” was that 22Gz was a UK rapper. Not joking. I realize “Brooklyn” is right there in the name but the DefBeats production of “10 28” sounds takes me right across the ocean. I realize Def is Swedish, not from the United Kingdom, but he’d sound right at home working with Digga D (and surely has).
Speaking of Digga D though, I’m not convinced that 2KBeats (“STFU“) and ZKBeats (“Culture Vultures”) aren’t at least friends. Yeah the names could be a coincidence but the styles are definitely UK drill through and through. The lyrics of 22Gz are drill anywhere in any part of the world. Chicago may have made it infamous, but gunplay and male posturing are staples of inner city life in any metropolis on either side of the Atlantic. Tell me you can’t read the bars below with a British or a Brooklyn accent.
“If you run down on a opp, you better kill him, niggaz cooperatin
Try to reach for his blick we ain’t give him a chance
I can’t fuck with no rat, I heard boy took the stand
Tryin to opp through a pack, I just give him a bam”
It’s no coincidence that if you look up “Brooklyn drill” you find both the late Pop Smoke and Ilford’s own 808Melo. Try to tell me 22Gz doesn’t reflect both and you’re just capping. 22 doesn’t rap like Pop, doesn’t have the husky voice of Pop, but his drill delivery and drill musical production are both in Pop’s shadow. It’s almost impossible to imagine how that wouldn’t be the case given how quickly Smoke rose to popularity before he died far too young. That didn’t stop the other drill rappers from following in his footsteps, and if you believe in an afterlife he’s probably looking down on songs like “Busy” and smiling.
There’s a saying as old as recorded human history that “violence begets violence.” After listening to “Brooklyn’s Most Wanted” I hope that’s not true. I don’t mind 22Gz or any drill rapper from any scene around the world expressing their dark thoughts in a cruel world. It’s arguably therapeutic for both them and the listener. I’m always dismayed though when talking about opps in song leads to taking shots at them for real, which is why so many drill scenes have so much negativity attached to their cities. 22Gz is able to rapid fire his flow like a machine gun, and if that’s the only blicky with his name on it, so much the better. Take a journey through music that could find the man “wanted” in Brooklyn or London Town.