Is Drill Rap a Dead End?

world’s largest The drill rapper could spend the rest of his life in bars and no one should want his crown. Chicago rapper this week Lil Durk In August 2022, he was arrested in Los Angeles in a murder-for-hire plot to kill Savannah, Georgia rapper Quando Rondo. Instead, Quando’s cousin Lul Pab was killed, prompting Quando to scream in pain at the scene. Then Durk put those wails of “no” into the intro to an unreleased song, in the face of adoration from those same voyeurs and Reddit rats calling Durk an idiot for preoccupied with the beef they were giddily watching.

Durk’s arrest puts an end to the feud between his friend and OTF member King Von (killed in 2020) and rivals Youngboy Never Broke Again (imprisoned) and Quando Rondo (who is awaiting sentencing next week on a federal drug case). The most discouraging thing is that it is not even clear why the conflict started; These men were all cold-blooded at one point or another. Durk’s close friend, Chicago rapper Lil Reese, He said No Jumpers He said the NBA Youngboy crew occasionally hangs out with him in Chicago. In 2019, Durk posted an X that read, “Young kid is so tough.” King Von and Rondo (who made NBA Youngboy’s Never Broke Again records) were friendly.

But apparently, something happened behind the scenes to upset their feelings for each other. During an Instagram Live session in March 2019, King Von dissed NBA Youngboy’s music, saying “there are limits in his raps” but then backtracked, saying he was joking and the music was coming – in February 2020, Von made an X with Youngboy a post urging them to drop a song they made. In August 2020, Von posted a photo of herself holding hands with someone who fans identified as possibly Youngboy’s mother’s child, Jania Meshell (she just says they did a song together). The next day, Youngboy posted a photo on Instagram with the caption, “I’m leaving, make sure my boy fucks your girl since you’re trolling,” with many speculating that the shot was aimed at Von. Around the same time, Quando Rondo and Lil Reese began shooting each other on social media.

Just days before Von’s death, a YoungBoy song was leaked featuring Von’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, rapper Asian Doll. In November 2020, King Von downplayed the fracture in an interview with DJ Akademiks, saying, “It’s nothing too serious,” and that the internet was blowing it out of proportion. This was his last interview; Later that night, he encountered Quando at a club in Atlanta, fought him, and was then fatally shot, allegedly by Quando’s friend Lul Timm. With Von’s death, things went beyond resolution. Durk had known Von for years, signing him in 2017 after he returned home after beating a murder case, and together they helped turn Durk’s OTF (Only Family) label into a formidable rap act.

Over the next few years, Durk and the duo of Youngboy and Quando began to trade ideas endlessly on social media and in diss tracks. Fans flooded Durk’s Instagram comment section, telling him to “slide for Von.” For these fans, who tend to view rap-related street violence like a reality show, Von’s death wasn’t a sign that things had gone too far, just another plot point. The dividing lines were drawn by artists, but sharpened by fans on a subliminal quest for the next guy through Twitter (now X) posts, Instagram Lives, and songs.

What was going on between them before Von’s death resembles the kind of supremacism that rappers grow out of and project as youthful selfishness. Iconic rapper 50 Cent had an argument with Fat Joe that seemed to be on the verge of violence, but they managed to quell it and the two appear to be pretty close friends now. In February 2023, he said Rolling stone this maturation made her realize that she was “annoying” Joe for pursuing her in this way. He also said he understands what happened between Durk and YoungBoy: “The things they come from make them do this. Their entire experience is in music.”

50 has many parallels with both men. His upbringing in Southside Queens appealed to many fans. Gangster rap pioneer Ice T calls 50 “the last gangsta rapper” I’m telling Soren Baker He said he “believed” Get Rich or Die Trying artist. “I think a real gangsta rapper is supposed to scare you a little bit. I don’t think there are new people doing this,” said Ice T. But there’s no long-term incentive for an artist’s main interest to be horror in 2024. Lurking on Reddit pages and watching Trap Lore Ross videos, fans are realizing that artists are figuratively walking a tightrope between art and reality They want to feel like Durk’s bars about hitting the naysayers are about someone specific, and when an artist inevitably slips and falls during a rope-pulling act, it’s entirely their fault for wasting their opportunity, even if the appeal of drill rap comes from the originality fans seek. They are “idiots” This is a paradox that cannot be won.

Drill rap is a dead end that artists don’t need to go down anymore. This is not a statement about the artistic value of these scenes; the scene gave us geniuses like Durk, Chief Keef, G Herbo, Sheff G, Pop Smoke, and artists like Cash Cobain and Ice Spice developed the entertainment Cobain invented branch sexy drill. However, the drill scenes as a whole have become extremely corrupt due to the severity of criminalization. There are too many fans who view rappers as racist, hypermasculine caricatures and ignore the anti-Blackness that demands artists live their rap at the expense of their lives or freedom. There are too many “media personalities” who have no respect for hip-hop as an art form, making millions by insensitively feeding these fans doses of Black nihilism. And there are more district attorneys than ever eager to ensnare artists in the next gang indictment. Drill rap has become a blight in hip-hop, not because of the artists, but because of people who don’t treat it like art. These are people who try to excite artists to their own detriment.

Most of the violence on the streets comes from people defending their reputations, and unfortunately drill music is so inextricably linked to gang violence that the dynamic has seeped into the fandom. The music was reduced to the soundtrack to the nationwide gang violence that destroyed a generation of Black and brown youth. And fueling the alarm, it became a pastime that artists felt compelled to play. “I ain’t discussing this shit on the internet that feeds the years,” Durk rapped on “Wonderful Wayne and Jackie Boy,” but he still played with fire every now and then just to show people who he was. That’s why, after Von’s death, Durk’s lyrics left damning hints of retaliation that could make its way to the courtroom. So after Pab’s death he put Quando’s screams into a song and he cheekily told DJ Akademiks she was no longer seeing the “slide for Von” comments on Instagram “for some weird reason.” His perception depends not only on good music. He feeds his fans’ desire to believe in him. But at this point, in the wake of the alleged deaths of two young men behind nonsense, it’s worth wondering how many more Black lives hip-hop “credibility” is worth.

These fans did not force Durk to do what he allegedly did; he is a grown man with autonomy. But the five-year beef is a brief glimpse of a rap subculture drowning in its own bloodlust. In September 2022, Quando told Rolling stone “I’m always thinking about changing, but he can’t change because people don’t want a nigga to change. Like if a nigga changes, my respect and dignity is gone.” Rap fans who support Quando are also part of these people. They don’t like him just because he makes good music, because they think he’s a gangster who makes good music.

Elsewhere in the interview, Quando noted: “Negroes live a violent life. There is nothing to change this. Anyone can say ‘You can change…’ Big brother now, nigga too far away.” He seemingly couldn’t see any way out. In 2020, Durk said: “They asked me where I’d be in 10 years, damn, I said ‘The Feds.'” Both men were convinced that a country that had failed them The fans watched the OTF-Youngboy fight like a sports rivalry, but in the end, even though they physically escaped their home environment, they couldn’t do it mentally. And the voyeuristic fans who watched them become martyrs didn’t want it.