Fuck tha Police

• If you look at the psychology of music … there is scientific fact the type of music that is played actually predicts somebody’s behaviour… There will be no music played [at the show] that is rapper music, or has swearing words through it, or has any offensive language.
• This rather comic invention of a new genre “rapper music” was actually aimed at banning, we suspect, “drill” or “drill rap”.
• In fact, there is virtually no evidence to support the claim that music causes crime.
• If there’s rap music that’s quite pleasant and there’s no offensive language, they can play it, that’s not an issue.

What is drill music?

• Drill is a subgenre of hip-hop that originated in Chicago in the early 2010s.
• Drill in Australia was largely pioneered by ONEFOUR, a group of five core members with Pacific Islander background from the Western Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt.

Music as a crime

• Artists such as Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg, and even Rage Against the Machine have faced surveillance, censorship and curtailment.
• The fact is, though, as hip-hop become more popular around the world, crime rates have meanwhile dropped, even in major cities like New York or Los Angeles, the home of gangsta rap.
• Does this mean hip-hop prevents crime?

Musicriminology

• Scholars have long studied music’s role in protest and resistance – even its role in redemption in correctional settings.
• The confusion between rap music and the so-called street gangs has been studied, and the salacious pleasures and desires wrapped up in violent or crime storytelling have been analysed by researchers.
• One of us (Murray) coined the term “musicriminology” to describe these fields of research and scholarship.
• Most parents would want to keep their young children from watching horror films, just as they might not want them to listen to drill music.