This Is Not a Drill: Postcode Wars
- XO
- Sep 17, 2018
- 2 min read
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past year you would have heard a lot about drill music, gangs, violence, killings and many, many funerals…
In 2018 there have been around 80 murders this year alone, and the scariest thing is the year isn’t quite over yet. The main cause for this is something known as ‘postcode wars’. Essentially postcode wars are violent behaviour and conflict between neighbouring postcodes sheerly over the fact they are from different towns or cities.
We’re in an era where it is the norm for parents to have to bury their children from gang crime. If you go back a long time ago the idea of children getting buried would be laughable, but in this day and age, it is as common as the sun rising each morning.
The main difference between the past and the present is the continuously increasing number of gangs that we have on our streets. Over the past year, people such as TV Presenters, Councils, charity organisations and crime activist groups have been debating what the major reason for the rise in knife crime is, and many have concluded it is down to the influx in Drill music.
Drill music is a genre which is a branch of rap/hip-hop hybrid. Originated in Chicago, it depicts scenes of violence and typically has artists mocking those who have died from their rival gang, or less formally whom they are ‘beefing’. With the rise in drill music’s popularity, it could be argued it is encouraging and provoking street violence and crime, masking it to seem imperative to mimic these behaviours expressed typically in drill music’s lyrics.
We must remember that in a lot of these gang-related incidents people are having issues with another area that is within the same postcode, or even just literally down the road. And so more often than not they either used to be friends with them, went to school together or have mutual friends. So with all this being said do you honestly think the main cause of all this is for some lyrics in a song?
The people that are sitting in higher places, with the power to make changes need to try to look at things on a deeper level because that is where the problem and solution reside. We often hear people use the phrase ‘products of their environment’, which means it can sometimes be inevitable for kids to grow up becoming accustomed to the pressure of following violence in their area.
After all, if the foundation is unstable then how can you expect the rest of the building to be steady and firm.
Finally, I want to leave everyone with this thought that is very relevant and applies to a lot of different situations in life: what someone may not be getting in one place they will always look for it elsewhere… sometimes in the wrong places.
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