Drill Music And Its Connection To Violence Questioned After Killings Of 2 Young Rappers

The killings of two young rappers, Tahjay Dobson and Jayquan McKenley, reawakened the questions about drill music, a popular subgenre of rap, and its connection to the rappers' deaths.

An aspiring rapper from the Bronx, McKenley, known as CHII WVTTZ, was shot and killed on Sunday morning after leaving a recording studio in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He was killed in an ambush while sitting in a parked car at the corner of Greene and Lewis Avenues. McKenley was shot in the chest and was rushed to a local hospital, where he was declared dead.

Meanwhile, another rapper Dobson, 22, known as Tdott Woo, was shot and killed on Tuesday in front of his home in the neighborhood of Canarsie hours after signing a record deal. He was rushed by paramedics to The Brookdale Medical Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead.

A New York City Police Department (NYPD) spokesman told ABC News that no arrests had been made and the investigations are ongoing in both cases. The two young rappers were both part of the Brooklyn drill music, a hip-hop subgenre that started in Chicago and was popularized by Chicago rappers like Chief Keef, Lil Durk, Fredo Santana, King Louie, G Herbo, Lil Bibby and Lil Reese. Drill music is diverse in terms of lyrics and artists.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said the genre still carries the same violent connotation in the media and law enforcement. He shared McKenley's story during a press conference on Thursday. "We're going to sit down and really bring in the rappers and show how this is impacting and is causing loss of lives of young people like them," Adams promised to meet top rappers to discuss the problem.

“He was a Drill rapper, part of a scene which involves using music as a challenge for social media posts — posts that bled out into violent real-world confrontations,” he said. “It was right there, for all to see. Our city should have done more.” Adams pointed the blame at the "broken system," detailing society's failure that caused these deaths.

According to NYPD statistics, major crime in New York City is reportedly up 38.5% from Jan. 2021 to Jan. 2022. Adams' strategy is to get more officers involved in crime prevention through his two-part plan to get the police currently assigned to desk jobs on the streets. The new NYPD plan will make 300 officers reassigned daily by Chief of Department Ken Corey to the 4:00 pm to 12:00 am shift based on crime trends. For the second part of the plan, each precinct and housing command will pull four uniformed officers and move them to patrol in the second and third tours.