Yesterday, a young man named Nathan Tokosi was jailed for life for committing attempted murder. A lot of criminals are sent to prison every day. Few of them have hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify.
Nathan “DigDat” Tokosi was born in Deptford, London in 1999. At the age of just 13, he was sent to jail. Five years later, he emerged and dropped the son “Air Force”. It was the peak of UK drill music — a rap subgenre which combined dark beats with tales of violent crime — and his brash, arrogant style — filled with knife and gun references — was an immediate hit. “Air Force” alone has been streamed 50 million times on Spotify.
What a story! A young juvenile offender leaves prison and becomes a millionaire. Inspirational! Well, not quite, because DigDat was involved in the shooting of another young man named Daniel Offei-Ntow. Offei-Ntow somehow survived, despite being hit six times, though he has since died for unknown reasons.
Drill music has been embraced by commentators and participants as a route out of the streets. Sometimes, it has been. There have been rich and successful rappers. But more often than not, performers have been dragged back into the streets.
Cassiel “LD” Wuta-Ofei of the gang and rap group 67 has been dubbed “the godfather of UK drill” for his role in pioneering the genre. “We rap about violence because we’re from a violent background,” he told The Evening Standard in 2017, “Life’s changed now. We’re leaving that world and taking people with us.” He appears to be in jail now, with two of his collaborators recently releasing a song called “Free LD”.
The song “Kennington Where It Started”, by the group Harlem Spartans, is popularly recognised as being the first truly mainstream UK drill song. It has been streamed almost 30 million times on Spotify. Of the four rappers who contributed to the song, one is serving a long prison sentence — Mucktar “Mizormac” Khan — and one has been murdered — Crosslon “Bis” Davis.
A list of prominent rappers who have ended up in jail on serious crimes could go on and on. Jayden “SJ” O’Neill-Crichlow received an offer for a £150,000 record deal when he was awaiting trial for murder. He was convicted. Kammar “Kay-O” Henry-Richards had enough respect in the drill rap scene that he was dubbed “Drilliam Shakespeare”. He is in jail for murder. Lekan “CB” Akinsoji was called the “Self-Crowned King of Drill” by Complex in 2022. He was then in jail for waving a gun at the police and he has since received a separate sentence for murder. Perhaps the last truly major up-and-coming star in the UK drill genre was Tariq “Suspect” Monteiro. His career took off while he was on the run in Africa after killing a man. He has since been extradited and convicted.
Alas, rappers have the same friends, the same enemies and the same attitudes
I’m not trying to sound entirely dismissive here. I’m sure there was a sense in which these young men really did want to escape the streets. “I’m trying to get out the hood, and the easiest way of doing that is making music,” said Kemani “Bandokay” Duggan in 2019. Alas, rappers have the same friends, the same enemies and the same attitudes — none of which can be easy to escape from, and especially if you’re creating music in a genre which is so violence-oriented. Duggan — son of Mark Duggan, who was shot by the police in 2011 while in possession of a handgun, and whose death prompted the London riots — is in prison after pleading guilty to possessing a firearm.
Now, the popularity of UK drill has waned. Its major platforms, like GRM Daily and Pressplay Media, used to host videos with tens of millions of views. Now, their videos struggle to break 100,000. There have been no true breakout stars for years. Streaming numbers have declined and declined.
The controversial police suppression of rappers has been blamed for this, but it is also the case that music is subject to fashion trends. Rappers listing people that their gangs have shot and shanked over moody basslines could not seem cool forever. Moreover, the drill fanbase has been growing more mature, and the idea of a lifestyle that could well mean ending up in a grave or in a jail cell “smelling next man’s shit” does not have the vicarious glamour that it once did.
So, a lot of rappers who have ended up in prison — often gamely recording music from their cells — have ended up being unfashionable as well. Some of them might well have had a few years in which they could have made enough money to escape a life of crime. But their life of crime was at the very least wrapped up with their opportunity to escape that life. Now, for all but an extremely lucky few, the opportunities have withered away. A lot of them have made decisions which have earned them imprisonment. But there is still something poignant about it.
The only UK drill star to have achieved truly major global fame is Oakley “Central Cee” Caesar-Su. Very far from coincidentally, Central Cee’s ties to the gang life were tangential. He sometimes gets insulted for not being authentic, and he isn’t, but when being authentic gets you killed or jailed it isn’t hard to understand.
