Drill Rap Literacy: Reading Complexity,Counterstories and Critical Pedagogy in the Dutch Drill Scene

Abstract

As the latest and rawest branch of the hip-hop family tree, drill rap has been fraught with tension due to its violent content and ‘fact-fiction hybridity’. As digital dragnets close in on young drillers and drill-related court cases pile up, we seek to decriminalise this subgenre. We do so through the first-ever sociolinguistic analysis of the Dutch drill scene, which stimulates (digital) street literacy and more complex readings of drill as a counterweight to the default response of policing and prosecuting. Inspired by Children First, Offenders Nowhere principles, we seek to open pedagogical gateways to empower young drillers in need.

Introduction: Children First

25 February 2024. A major Dutch outlet (NRC Handelsblad) reports the dead of 26 years old Bigidagoe, who was shot in Amsterdam-West. Like most drill rappers, Bigidagoe’s lyrics often glorified violence and crime, which in this case reflected his life. In 2020, he survived a prior shooting incident and, according to law enforcement, cocaine trafficking financed Bigidagoe’s musical productions. Although he had not entirely moved to the ‘top dog’ position, with approximately 290,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, Bigidagoe honoured his name (Sranang for ‘big dog’) and was quite influential in the Dutch drill scene. Cases like this feed into the popular perception of drill rap (or ‘drill’) as inherently violent and causally linked to criminality. This image leads to the believe that there is some kind of ‘moral panic’ on drill (Lynes et al., 2020), telling from newsrooms, chatrooms and courtrooms around the globe, the Netherlands included.

For sure, drillers’ violent performances do not necessarily invite outsiders to explore the genre with an open mind. Drill is characterised by hyperbolic representations of gang violence. In online videos, male drillers represent themselves as a menace to public safety and opponent drill groups (‘opps’). White horror masks and black hoodies on, they give fingers, carry guns and swing machetes while pretending to shoot or stab (‘shank’). They pray for dead friends and cross their wrists in tribute to jailed members. Loyal to the gangsta rap tradition (Nielson and Dennis, 2019), drillers place themselves at the centre of violence, which is supported by a sound known for its so-called ‘drill’. It requires little imagination to see that these youngsters are far removed from global childhood images of children as innocent and harmless beings (Garlen, 2019). However, Kleinberg and McFarlane (2020) have shown with police-recorded violent crime data that there is no meaningful relationship between drill and ‘real life’ violence; an outcome that problematises existing policies of removing or banning drill productions and taking a prosecutorial approach. Still, a wider trend of ‘policing the beats’ (Fatsis, 2019) is visible – also in the Netherlands, where drill-related court cases have piled up lately.

With this article, we contribute to the growing resistance against the criminalisation of vulnerable and marginalised youth, which we consider drillers to be (Fatsis, 2019, 2023; Hall et al., 2023; Ilan, 2020; Quinn, 2024; Schwarze and Fatsis, 2022). In this effort we feel inspired by Case and Haines’s (2021) Children First, Offenders Nowhere (CFON) initiative that seeks to stop youth justice systems (YJSs) from failing children, by abolishing practices and principles that criminalise children and youth. They argue that, although youth justice was originally founded upon abolitionist principles – that is, the desire to abolish adult measures in response to minor ‘offenders’ – such measures gradually returned (Bowman, 2018; Cox, 2021). As a social construction, youth justice can logically ‘be reconstructed, revised and abolished through the same pressures and interactions that create them’ (Case and Haines, 2021: 4).

Building on Case and Haines’s (2021) argument, we further draw on the work of Billingham and Irwin-Rogers (2022), who emphasise the vital role of ‘mattering’ in the lives of marginalised youth. Their social harm perspective highlights how feelings of insignificance – of not being seen, heard or acknowledged – can contribute to violence and withdrawal. By integrating their insights, we wish to bolster our case for a pedagogy of recognition and engagement, one that meets young people not as problems to be fixed but as persons to be valued. Just as CFON calls for systemic change in how youth are treated within justice systems, Billingham and Irwin-Rogers (2022) remind us that fostering a sense of mattering is not peripheral but foundational to such efforts.

Our contribution to CFON stems from an ethnographic project, running intermittently between 2021 and 2027 in the Netherlands. It asks what role drill and its policing play in the formation of young detainees’ identities and resilience. The project takes place at the online-offline nexus (Blommaert, 2018, 2019), as it sees online environments of drill as an integral part of the offline reality of those involved in the scene – both outside and within custodial settings, that is, as long as detained youth manage to smuggle content and circumvent (fire)walls. Custodial ethnography is planned, but in this article, we reflect on an online ethnography in which we investigate the musical expressions of the Amsterdam-based drill formation 73 De Pijp in their lyrics and clips. In other words, while the current analysis draws on online data that reflect the digital life worlds of drillers, it is embedded within this broader and longitudinal study that engages directly with the lived experiences of young people involved in drill, both inside and outside custodial settings.

Our analysis of these online data is inspired by a sociolinguistics of globalisation (Blommaert, 2010; Mutsaers and Swanenberg, 2012) that is regularly deployed in the study of hip-hop – that is, the larger family tree of which drill forms the latest and rawest stylistic branch (Fatsis, 2023) – but not yet in drill studies per se. It has helped us to understand the ‘global languaging’ that takes place in the scene when drillers deploy globalised linguistic resources that are actively and agentively mobilised to make sense of their local lives in poverty, marginality and area-specific violence. As is happening in the hip-hop scene more generally (Alim, 2009), drillers produce for many more reasons than putting violence on display. By tapping into global resources and adding their own local style to it, various functions are fulfilled: artistic expression, identity marking, impressing opponents, sharing traumatic experiences, offering entertainment, making income, or, in fact, creating an alternative space for hostility that diverts away from actual violence on the streets (see Newman, 2009, for the hip-hop scene in general and Stuart, 2020, for drill specifically).

Approaching drill in all its complexity instead of simply seeing it as an undesirable development, opens up ways for a capabilities approach that has been advocated before in this journal (Williams and Daniel, 2021). From this perspective, ‘human flourishing depends in large part on the ability of institutions to help to facilitate human potentialities and capabilities’ (Cox, 2021: 117). Rather than considering drill as something that needs policing, YJS institutions could adopt a more welcoming stance that ‘champions a ‘positive promotion’ approach over the (criminal justice) emphasis on negative outcomes / behaviours’ (Case and Haines, 2021: 9). With this we explicitly do not mean the ‘excess of positivity’ that youth professionals occasionally tend to impose upon detained youth as a way to brush aside negative thinking and push positivity no matter what (Mutsaers, 2024). Rather, we consider the fact that drillers rap about the negativity and dark sides of their live to be a positive thing, insofar as it may open a pedagogical gateway into their lives; one that youth professionals should step into rather than close. This may enable a vision on what unites these youngsters and aids in addressing root causes of offending, rather than simply preventing (recidivist) offending through individual change programmes that largely leave the world unchanged (Myers et al., 2021).

Through sociolinguistic analyses of Dutch drill, we seek to counter stereotyping and condemnation by helping youth professionals and others to move beyond a thin, ‘street illiterate’ (Ilan, 2020) understanding of drill. We hope, however, that we can also empower young drillers ‘to intervene in their own self-formation and to transform the oppressive features of the wider society that make such an intervention necessary’ (McLaren, 1988: xi). After all, the objectives of a critical pedagogy of the oppressed remain to be as urgent as they were in the heydays of Freire, (1970, 1998), Giroux (1988) and McLaren (Giroux and McLaren, 1994). We need a liberating pedagogy, as a counterweight to an oppressing model that can only say ‘no’.

Reviewing Drill (Research)

Drill originated from Chicago, where Chief Keef went through the roof with ‘I Don’t Like’ (43 mln. views on YouTube) and gained fame as one of the pioneers of drill (Nielson and Dennis, 2019). Other notable artists who stood at the genre’s cradle are King Louie and Lil Reese. Social media platforms like YouTube and Soundcloud have played a crucial role in the global spread of drill, with Do-It-Yourself (DIY) videos depicting scenes of crime-ridden and violent urban life attracting the attention of global audiences. As is true for hip-hop at large (Alim, 2009), drillers easily cross borders with their musical productions, which form a transnational cultural flow involving processes of borrowing, blending and remaking.

The recurring factor in drill is the drillsound, which refers to automatic guns (although other interpretations are in circulation as well; see Oliver, 2023). However, as drill moved from Chicago to other global hubs like New York, London and Amsterdam, artists began to adapt the drillsound by incorporating their own regional and local influence(r)s. Thus emerged subgenres like UK or Dutch drill, in which knifes rather than guns are brandished, due to the simple fact that guns are in shorter supply in these contexts and underrepresented in popular cultures of violence. Still, by maintaining its gritty sound and uncompromising lyrical content, these subgenres remain closely tied to their Chicago roots. ‘Go global while keeping it local’, seems to be the device.

As mentioned earlier, this over-the-top displaying of gangsterism has received serious disapproval in newsrooms and courtrooms alike. Reading the headlines, we see that drill is often causally linked to ‘knife epidemics’ and is regularly called the ‘soundtrack to murder’ (Schwarze and Fatsis, 2022). Similar trends are found in courtrooms. For example, in 2019, the drill duo Skengo and AM received a prison sentence for performing their song ‘Attempted 1.0’. This was the first time in British legal history that a prison sentence had been issued for performing a song. Such developments have also been observed in the Netherlands, where drill-related cases have been accumulating in the last few years. Some academics also think in this direction. Although they did not find a causal relationship, Kleinberg and McFarlane (2020), for instance, concluded that people who frequently listen to drill are more likely to report involvement in criminal activities. Interestingly, the entire point of drillrap, of course, is to showcase violence – which more often than not turns out to be fictional.

Much of the confusion may thus have to do with the ‘fact-fiction hybridity’ (Ilan, 2020) that characterises drill and requires a critical reading of web materials to distinguish street realities from fictionalised lyrical content and homemade videos. As a broader feature of our time, this hybridity makes it very hard to tell actual crime from its mere representation, especially in combination with the DIY-element deployed by drillers who actually grow up in deprived neighbourhoods (Evans, 2020; Fatsis, 2019; Stuart, 2020) and seek credibility and authenticity by representing their lives of abandonment, poverty and violence. Based on interviews with Chicago drillers and their support workers, Evans (2020: 227) found that most drillers ‘carry guns for the internet’, ‘chasing digital clout’. This results in a virtual depiction of gang life, almost resembling an intimate portrayal.

True: the online-offline nexus forms a complex dynamic for youth; one that may translate online bravado into deadly street crime as a final resource to uphold online personae. Tech-savvy drillers who project a tough online image may eventually find themselves sufficiently provoked to translate digital claims into street actions to earn their keep. Yet, from a critical pedagogical perspective guided by CFON principles, this is somewhat beside the point. From this perspective, the drill scene is preferably seen as an artistic platform protected by freedom-of-speech rights, which allows marginalised youth to develop commentaries, express emotions and initiate a career in the music industry. Rather than adding to the devil image, valuing such potentialities and capacities may help to foster a curiosity-driven approach to drill that asks: who are these black-skinned, white-masked youngsters, to speak with Fanon’s (2021[1952]) classic?

Critical scholars have begun to take up such questions. In the introduction to his Ballad of the Bullet, based on an ethnography of young drillers on Chicago’s South Side, Stuart (2020) states that the sudden popularity of drill is only surprising when looked at in a vacuum: ‘It’s what happens when the digital economy and urban poverty collide’ (p. 3). In rich detail, Stuart chronicles the lives of the Corner Boys, who seek a ticket out of poverty through DIY-style drill that commodifies the gang violence that their audiences are so thrilled about. Serious heat from the police; actually getting involved in gang feuds; having their Facebook posts landing them in gang databases; or being confronted with rap lyrics in court: the Corner Boys are willing to accept all these risks in exchange for a small chance of success in the digital attention economy. They use creative online strategies to make ends meet and hope for a life as a micro-celebrity. It deserves note that some Corner Boys actually ‘began displaying and representing violent criminality on the Internet as part of their efforts to reduce their involvement in such behavior in their offline lives’ (p. 39). This implies that drill can function as a protective factor that helps youth to desist crime.

Stuart’s findings are consistent with Evans (2020) in the same city. Evans posits that using social media for self-branding purposes affords young drillers a way out of isolation. It enables them to attain recognition in the music industry and empower their local communities. Evans’s interview data expose a strong work ethic among drill artists and their support workers, which plays an important role in their identity formation. Similarly, Versigghel (2022) indicates that drill can support identity formation and cultural expression for audiences who grow up in impoverished neighbourhoods. For fans, drill may provide a sense of solidarity that is perhaps best illustrated by Rachid, a NYC gang member who participated in Newman’s (2009) study of the lyrical meanings of rap and said that ‘it’s good to hear somebody rhyming about something you actually live through’ (pp. 204–205). In a world in which young people have a constant digital connection, we might overlook the fact that many are lonely and isolated, struggling with their formative phase of identity development.

The Sociolinguistics of Dutch drill

Writing about hip-hop genres that predated drill, Alim (2009) describes them as a ‘space where language ideologies and identities are shaped, fashioned and vigorously contested, and where languages themselves are flexed, created, and sometimes (often intentionally) bent up beyond all recognition’ (p. 2). To an outsider, listening to drill can be rather confusing due to the language gaps that may be experienced. In drill, we see confirmed what Blommaert (2010) wrote in his book The Sociolinguistics of Globalization: what is globalised is not an abstract Language – traditionally conceptualised as a more or less fixed system of signs – but specific speech forms, genres, styles, and forms of literacy practice. Drill’s linguistic variation, truncated repertoires and surprising speech act patterns in which self-referential and audience-directed speech are alternated; all these features amount to a complex, superdiverse and stylised ‘languaging’ that can be hard to follow for the uninitiated. Add to this that ‘rap is generally opaque’ and that ‘transparent readings’ can easily lead to misinterpretation (Newman, 2009: 197), and it becomes clear that superficial readings fall short.

In what follows below, we present a layered reading of lyrics and video performances of the Amsterdam-based drill group 73 De Pijp. This collective was chosen because of its steady line of production, being one of the oldest and more famous groups in the Netherlands, with 135.500 monthly listeners on Spotify and over 10 million listeners for a production like Stoute Jongens (in October 2024). The group drew national attention when one of its beefs with a rival, 24, a Rotterdam-based drill group, escalated in a deadly stabbing at the Pier of Scheveningen. This incident was processed in the 73 De Pijp production De Pier, which provoked a national outcry over the violent dimensions of drill. Our first reading – the ‘dark reading’ – corroborates this view, encountering presentations of hyperbolic violence. A superficial reading of 73 De Pijp songs leaves an impression of highly aggressive youth.

In sociolinguistics, the term ‘reading’ refers to an interpretive analytical approach in which texts, discourses, or social practices are examined within their broader social and ideological contexts. A reading does not merely describe the object of analysis but situates it within prevailing or alternative frameworks of meaning. For example, a dark reading may reflect the dominant societal narrative that constructs drill as violent or inherently problematic, whereas alternative readings allow for interpretations that challenge or complicate such dominant discourses.

In our analysis, we moved on to different readings, uncovering a much more complex discourse with all kinds of language flows, bends and mixings. In other words: we saw a lot of ‘discourse itineraries’, to put it in sociolinguistic jargon (Scollon, 2008). From a sociolinguistics-of-globalisation perspective, the focus rests not on language-in-place but on language-in-motion (Blommaert, 2010). Reading motion in drill productions helps to get beyond what seems stuck at the surface. Our ‘vulnerability reading’, for example, discovers a discursive stance somewhat opposite to the self-presentation by drillers as violent offenders. Sporadically, 73 De Pijp moves out of this established frame and slides self-presentations from dangerous criminals to victims of systemic oppression. Subsequently, our ‘protest reading’ sheds light on the fleeting moments of resistance to such victimisation. On a few occasions, we encountered ‘hidden transcripts’ (Mutsaers and van Nuenen, 2018; Scott, 1990) that contained bits and pieces of protest against a social environment that does not attach great importance to marginalised youth. Finally, our ‘micro-celebrity reading’ uncovers much more agentive power as it offers a take on 73 De Pijp as a group of creative artists who are masters in language mixing and real craftsmen when it comes to appropriating global linguistic resources that they (re)appropriate and sometimes (re)create in their own local contexts in order to fashion their ‘glocalised’ identities.

The selection of 73 De Pijp productions took place in a combined quantitative-qualitative fashion. We identified the most relevant tracks and clips based on popularity and visibility, using Spotify listener data and YouTube view counts and engagement as indicators. This ‘digital mapping’ ensured that our materials were not only culturally significant but also widely consumed. On the basis of this selection, we conducted close readings of the lyrics. Given the lyrics’ density and hybridity – mixing Dutch, English, Sranang, street slang and UK drill idioms (more below) – our translations of them were not merely lexical but interpretive as well, as we aimed to recover meaning within localised, culturally embedded registers. Using thematic analysis, we then coded the interpreted lyrics for recurring themes that emerged from the data (e.g. ‘violence’, ‘money’, ‘family’, ‘resistance’, ‘aspiration’). These coded patterns were further contextualised through the analysis of corresponding video performances.

Our method draws on Blommaert’s (2010) sociolinguistics of globalisation, focusing on language-in-motion and indexical layering, and Stuart’s (2020) conceptualisation of online self-performance as a form of identity labour. Rather than seeking a single ‘true’ reading, our approach foregrounds the coexistence of multiple interpretive possibilities that reflect the heteroglossia and ideologically charged nature of drill. This layered methodology enables a deeper understanding of how drillers mobilise global and local resources to make sense of marginality, articulate protest and assert their presence in both digital and offline worlds.

It deserves note, finally, that in contrast to the ‘dark reading’ that has become mainstream and even institutionalised in big data policing systems that scan and monitor the web for violent drill-related content, our three alternative readings are based on ‘small data’: statistically irrelevant but socially significant data that allow for subaltern perspectives and counterstories that question the common storyline on drill. The most frequently occurring themes in the lyrics were violence, weapons, rivalries and money – consistent with the genre’s aesthetics and expectations. Mentions of family structures (e.g. absent fathers) or expressions of hopelessness and limited perspective appeared only sporadically. However, precisely these rare moments of emotional exposure acquire heightened significance when viewed within a genre that foregrounds hypermasculinity and toughness. Their marginal presence should not be mistaken for marginal relevance. In the spirit of Blommaert, we argue that such instances serve as indexical disruptions – brief shifts in tone and stance that allow for the emergence of alternative subjectivities and critical reflection. In this sense, the thematic asymmetry between dominant and marginal motifs becomes analytically productive, as it offers entry points for the layered readings we developed and reflects the polyphonic nature of drill as a cultural and communicative practice.

The ‘dark reading’

73 De Pijp’s self-presentation of a dangerous group that should not be fooled around with is instantly communicated through the group’s name, album covers, and song titles. 73 De Pijp refers to the Amsterdam neighbourhood ‘De Pijp’ (postcode 1073), but ‘de pijp’ also refers to the loop of a gun. Similarly, covers offer listeners violent images with album titles such as Crimelife 1.0 and pictures of drugs, money, masks, and weapons. Many song titles communicate a glorification of violence as well: 9 MM, Run Man Down, Gl9ck, Stolen Car, Voorwaardelijk (meaning: on parole), Gangsta’dam, Stoute Jongens (Bad Boys) and so on. Play the group’s YouTube Mix and footage of collisions with the law appears within seconds. In various videos, police officers are either just standing in the background or are engaged in stop-and-frisk actions to which, presumably, fellow 73 De Pijp drillers are subjected. In the foreground, other group members perform in an unambiguous way, leaving no doubt about the meaning of it all: they are mocking the law and its officers. This interpretation is made even more plausible by the fact that such shots are often preceded by captures of a public security camera, messaging: ‘we know you’re watching us, but we couldn’t care less’. Such themes are common in gangsta rap, at least since N.W.A’.s Fuck tha police hit.

Such an advanced state of (legal) alienation – where the law and the society that it regulates are experienced as meaningless or even hostile – beams from the lyrics in at least two ways. First, concerning the law, there is the already mentioned lawbreaking violence. Numerous self-referential speech acts are included in the lyrics that can all too easily be interpreted as self-incriminating. Examples from various songs are lines 1 and 2:

9MM: (1) Ik trek die trigga en ik kijk sick [‘I pull that trigger and I look sick’], with ‘sick’ being slang for ‘cool’.

Comfort zone: (2) Schietgevaar, ja dat ben ik [‘Trigger happy, yes that’s what I am’]

In addition, such speech acts are often alternated with audience-directed speech acts in which ‘opps’ are addressed. Such speech acts are typical of the practice in drillrap to make threats to rival groups and ‘dash’ (publicly embarrass) them in so-called ‘diss tracks’. This phenomenon – which often takes place through online videos – is known in gangsta rap as ‘cyberbanging’ (Nielson and Dennis, 2019). In lines 3–5 below, opps are ridiculed for just being a ‘snapchatgang’, that is, for generating a lot of online bravado while actually being ‘neeks’ who better steer clear from street clashes:

Haribo: (3) Any oppboy die ik zie get smoked [‘Any opponent that I see will be gunned down’]

Run man down: (4) Snapchatgang jullie willen geen heat [‘Snapchatgang you don’t want heat’]

Neeks: (5) Alle oppboys zijn neeks [‘All oppboys are nerds / nobodies’]

Second, concerning alienation from Dutch society at large, it must be noted that although the base language of the studied drillsongs is Dutch, most lyrics could not be further removed from standard Dutch. Linguistically, Dutch drill travels far and wide and standard Dutch is deliberately bent up beyond all recognition by means of ‘language crossing’: the stylistic and performative mixing and bending of languages in such a way that it feels anomalously ‘other’ to those who are not part of the acting speech community (Rampton, 2000). Crossing, Rampton (2000) continues, ‘is often surrounded by a great deal of explicit local commentary’ (p. 54) and in that sense, both meanings assigned to the word are valid: (1) there is a lot of code-switching between and intermixing of various languages, dialects and ethnolects going on; and (2) these crossings can make outsiders to the speech community very cross, as in, upset.

Perhaps, Jaspers’ (2005) concept of ‘linguistic sabotage’ works best to describe what is going on, sociolinguistically, in drill songs. In his study of ethnic minority adolescents in Belgium, Jaspers described how youngsters wrong-foot adults and authorities with premeditated syntactic alterations, phonological innovations, morphological twists and lexical surprises, all in deliberate attempts to disrupt linguistic ideologies and norms of monolingualism. Some examples of how this is happening in Dutch drill can be found here:

De Pijp: (6) Bring in je tories want je wordt geboord [‘Bring in your stories because you’re fucked / cheated’]

 Ik push sani in je town [‘I bring drugs into your town’]

Energie: (7) Buurman down in je fucking endz [‘Neighbour down in your fucking neighbourhood’]

J.O.G.: (8) Chef mans face we geven ze scars [‘stab a man in the face, we give them scars’]

These lines offer a remarkable lexical combination of no less than five linguistic sources: English (‘bring in’, ‘push’, ‘town’, ‘down’, ‘fucking’, ‘face’, ‘scars’), Dutch (‘je’, ‘want’, ‘wordt’, ‘ik’, ‘in’, ‘buurman’, ‘we’, ‘geven’, ‘ze’), Dutch street slang (‘geboord’), UK drill vocabulary (‘endz’, ‘chef mans’) and Sranan (‘tories’, ‘sani’), a creole language of the country of Suriname – a former Dutch colony. Syntactically, we see features that are common in youth languages, such as verb-deletion (‘buurman down’ instead of ‘buurman is down’) and article-deletion (‘chef mans face’ rather than ‘chef a man’s face’). Finally, it must be noted that as contact languages, both street slang and creole languages are often characterised by denotational vagueness due to the ambiguity of a signifier’s origin. ‘Geboord’, for instance, denotes both ‘penetrated’ and ‘misled’. Similarly, the Sranan term ‘sani’ has come to mean ‘drugs’ on the street, but your average Sranan dictionary translates it as a ‘thing’ or even – and this is no joke – as a word that can be used anywhere, when you do not know the actual word. If anything, this makes clear that a superficial, mainstream reading of these lyrics is bound to result in confusion. Tellingly, when we inserted the sentence bring in je tories want je wordt geboord in an AI programme, it offered the translation: ‘bring in your friends, because you’re being robbed’.

The ‘vulnerability reading’

A closer reading reveals a discursive position that is opposite to the one-dimensionally tough image that is being created. Examples are not up for grabs, but instances occur in which the drillers’ misfortunes and hardships are made part of the rap lyrics. Strikingly, language variation is reduced in these excerpts as if they are created for a different public. Language crossing still occurs, but standard Dutch features more frequently. We wonder if these lyrical blocs are meant to communicate a message to those outside the speech community but inside authority positions that can have an impact on the drillers’ lives.

9MM: (9) Ik heb alleen een moeder geen vader [‘I only have a mother, no father’], all in standard Dutch

  (10) M’n ma die weet draag die pijp op heup [‘My mother knows that I carry that gun on my hip’], with deletion of personal pronoun (‘draag’ instead of ‘ik draag’) and possessive adjective (‘heup’ instead of ‘mijn heup’)

  (11) Is de life die ik leef en ik heb geen keus [‘It’s the life that I live and I have no choice’], with only ‘life’ borrowed from the English.

In lines 9–11 taken from 9MM (no pun intended), two themes come together. First, a pedagogical theme is eye-catching and reveals particular family structures and responsibilities. Father absence and mother-centricity turn out to be the norm in the lyrics, as is the specific form of parentification that Elliott et al. (2018) have called ‘brothermothering’. This phenomenon tends to exist in single mother households where positions of male authority are fulfilled by older sons who step up to help and protect the family, and in doing so regain a sense of ‘mattering’, that is, of significance and purpose in life (cf. Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2022). Such an inversion of family roles and responsibilities, in which older sons take up fatherly tasks, drastically changes family power dynamics, as we also saw in our study of a youth detention centre on the ‘Dutch’ Caribbean Island of Curaçao (Mutsaers and Meijeren, 2023), where many drillers in the Netherlands are coming from. 73 De Pijp drillers won’t be the first ethnic minority youth ending up in youth detention for zealously protecting mother and siblings, even at a very young age:

Impact:  (12) Deze shit doe ik sinds groep 8 [‘I do this shit since sixth grade’], all in standard Dutch

Schietgevaar: (13) Ren je op mij broer je zakt gelijk [‘If you come for my brother, you’ll collapse instantly’], with n-deletion (‘mij’ instead of ‘mijn’) and syntactic alteration (‘je zakt gelijk’ instead of ‘dan zak je gelijk’).

     Laat hem nooit alleen heb hem aan m’n zij [‘I’ll never leave him alone, he is always on my side’], with the deletion (twice) of the personal pronoun ‘ik’

Skeemen:  (14) Ik voel echt dat die niggas skeemen op m’n gang, blijven op je hoede deze tijden check je fam [‘I really sense that these niggers are scheming on my gang, stay alert these days, check your family’], with Dutchification of the English word ‘scheming’ (skeemen) and ‘blijven’ (stay) in plural instead of the imperative ‘blijf’

Then again, considering the deliberate opaqueness of rap lyrics, lines 13–14 may very well have a different meaning, depending on interpunction: Ren je op mij, broer, je zakt gelijk translates into ‘If you come for me, brother, you’ll collapse instantly’. If that is the case, line 14 may just as well refer to the gun that is always carried on the rapper’s side.

The second theme that surfaces in 9MM is best illustrated by line 11. This utterance goes beyond broken families and authority problems; it indexes a wider problem of marginality and being stuck in life:

Comfort zone: (15) We never came from a comfort zone [original in English]

Ren niet op mij: (16) Wij hebben niets te verliezen [‘We have nothing to lose’], in standard Dutch

9MM:    (17) De life die ik leef is echt niet gewoon [‘The life that I live really isn’t normal’], with ‘life’ as the only English word

In 73 De Pijp’s work, hardship and resilience emerge as important themes, reflecting a complex blend of societal alienation, family loyalty and a tough stance born out of struggle. The lyrics articulate the ethos of overcoming poor circumstances with humility, highlighting a background of poverty and adversity. This humility functions less as a moral stance than as a survival strategy, embedded in the code of the streets where pride and vulnerability meet.

Energie: (18) Sterke tijden waren lijp dus ik kan niet gaan pronken, man ik blijf humble [‘Tough times were crazy, so I can’t go around bragging, man I stay humble’], with ‘humble’ as an indication of language crossing (Dutch-English) that occurs almost constantly

Nobody: (19) Ze wouden mij zien vallen maar toch klom ik toen omhoog [‘They wanted to see me fall, but then I climbed up anyway’], in standard Dutch.

Meanwhile, the lyrics emphasise how socio-economic realities distance drillers from mainstream society, highlighting a sense of resignation to a life path determined more by circumstance than by choice:

Impact: (20) Op de streets, we denken niet aan school [‘On the streets, we don’t think about school’], with ‘streets’ and a syntactic alteration (‘we denken’ instead of ‘denken we’) as examples of language crossing

The ‘protest reading’

On a third interpretative layer the lyrics and visuals show resistance against systematic oppression, inequality and the constraints of the streets. Here, 73 De Pijp can be seen to challenge the societal frameworks they appear to be trapped in:

Ldn2dam: (21) Bricky boy, trapped in the system [Original in English]

These hoes crazy: (22) Mannen seren life voor de kost [‘Men risk their lives to make a living’], with ‘life’ as an English loanword and ‘seren’ meaning ‘to lose’ or ‘to sell’ in street language, possibly borrowed from the Sranang term ‘seri’ (to sell).

Stoute jongens: (23) Zocht op straat we maken geen cent [‘Searching on the streets, we don’t make a penny], with deletion of personal pronoun (‘zocht’ instead of ‘ik zocht’) and the ‘making money’ expression borrowed from the English.

 Ze weet ben op crime, zo kom ik rond [‘She knows I’m involved in crime, that’s how I get by’], with deletion of personal pronoun (‘ben’ instead of ‘ik ben’) and ‘crime’ coming from the English.

These sentences show that drillers express their dissatisfaction about the system that controls them. Crime is explicitly mentioned as the only way to make ends meet. This aligns with recent literature (e.g. Hall et al., 2023; Ilan, 2020; Quinn, 2024; Schwarze and Fatsis, 2022; Stuart, 2020) that points out that drillers come from impoverished backgrounds and are looking for a way to escape a system of oppression and poverty. Especially in line 23, discontent regarding their economic status and the financial inequality that drillers experience becomes obvious. According to Oliver (2023), drill lyrics often address the socio-economic conditions that produced the genre in the first place. Consistent with standard-fare rap, what often follows next is a remark or two about the resilience of self-made men who make it anyway:

Stoute jongens: (24) Wil naar de top, maar ze bouwen een case [‘I want to reach the top, but they’re trying to build a case against me’], with deletion of personal pronoun (‘wil’ instead of ‘ik wil’) and ‘case’ as a loanword.

       We pakken nu shine, maar ik stond in de rain [‘We’re getting attention now, but I was standing in the rain’], with ‘shine’ being a slang word for ‘fame’ and ‘rain’ borrowed from the English

Interestingly, the adversarial perspective of white civil society is deliberately incorporated in 73 De Pijp’s video clips, song texts and the comment sections that they do enable on social media (sometimes, comment sections are disabled). Notably, such materials are not accompanied by a ‘countervoice’, as the drillers do not respond to it in any way. We get the impression that they just want to give these sentiments a place in their productions, as if they want to take the opportunity to make a statement: ‘we know that society lambasts our music, but we choose to follow our own path anyway’. A key example is an interlude in De Pier, where a white man mocks drill in an upper-class voice, calling it no real music (line 25). Written after the deadly Scheveningen incident, De Pier triggered negative media attention and fuelled public debate linking drill to knife crime.

De Pier:  (25) ‘Yeah, that music, uh, I don’t really know. What is it? Drill? It’s all very dark and dubious. And because of that, you attract dark forces. So that’s not helpful; you need to make real music. This level is just … no, sorry. Yes, the whole world is full of that …’ (original in Dutch)

Similarly, in the trail of comments below the YouTube clip Yo (a co-production with #EDG 87 KL), various mocking comments are displayed: (1) ‘As someone who speaks Dutch I can confirm that they are debating Rembrandt vs Van Gogh. Heated debate no doubt’ (original in English); (2) ‘These gentlemen are talking about preserving respect and kindness in our modern society (original in English). Wat een vriendelijke groep mensen [‘What a friendly group of people’, original in Dutch], spera tur cos bai bon cu boso’ [‘I hope everything goes well with you all’, original in Papiamentu]; (3) ‘I don’t speak Dutch but I think they’re singing about tulips and clogs’ (original in English); and (4) ‘As someone who speaks dutch they mean all peace and kindness’ (original in English). Again, more thoroughgoing ethnography is required to establish if this is ‘genuine’ mockery or actually an example of ‘double mockery’ where drill fans ridicule mainstream responses to drill – which could be a fine example of Scottian ‘hidden transcripts’ (Scott, 1990).

A final example of how 73 De Pijp mixes adversarial white perspectives into their productions is a shot from the Gangsta’Dam clip, in which a white women on the phone is suspiciously observing the scene in front of her window. The juxtaposition of this image with footage of a group of masked boys brandishing knives, suggests that the woman is speaking to the police, reporting what she is witnessing. In the clip, this does not seem to deter the group, nor is there any indication in the lyrics or video of a response to the woman.

Or … is there, perhaps indirectly? In the same clip we get to see, albeit very briefly, a shot of a sticker with the text ‘NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL!’, attached to a streetlight and printed in capital letters. The sticker comes from the Vrije Bond (‘Free Union’), which presents itself as an anarchist self-organisation that builds a better world ‘without domination and exploitation, based on cooperation and solidarity. A world wherein everybody can decide for him or herself to shape their lives, based on the principle of equality and the freedom of speech and action’ (see www.vrijebond.org). It is unlikely that this image is random; we interpret it as a deliberate statement against surveillance, vigilantism and the downgrading of artistic productions. As such, it becomes part of a larger narrative, or ‘counterstory’, in which personal struggles are connected to broader social issues.

The ‘micro-celebrity reading’

For Dutch standards, 73 De Pijp has a massive fan base that frequently streams its songs. Views of its YouTube videos run in the hundreds of thousands – even millions – and its Instagram has 54,000 followers (4 November 2024). It is hard to overstate 73 De Pijp’s successful personal branding and online popularity, which makes it notable that the artists hardly make affirmative references to their fame. Instead, making money is prioritised:

These hoes crazy: (26) Doe het voor guap, skip de fame [‘Do it for the money, leave the fame aside’], with ‘guap’ as slang for money, Dutch-English language crossing (‘skip de fame’) and syntactic ambiguity (is it first-person or imperative speech?)

Impact: (27) Spits voor die buit, zoeken tot ik vind [‘Rap to chase money, searching until I find something’], with ‘spits’ being UK drill slang for ‘rapping’

Nobody: (28) Ze weten mijn naam ik doe niet aan fame. [‘They know my name, I don’t do it for the fame’.]

Claiming not to ‘do it for the fame’ seems to align with this idea of a ‘micro-celebrity’, that is, being famous in a particular niche, targeting specific audience, while still acting as a celebrity with all the material wealth that accompanies it. This notion of a micro-celebrity reshapes traditional notions of celebrity (Senft, 2008). On the other hand, it may also have another connotation: being real and authentic. We have seen earlier references to ‘snapchatgangs’ that are ridiculed for being fake and only doing it (i.e. producing drill) for the fame. In that regard, it can be worthwhile to make a connection – as Stuart does in his Ballad of the Bullet – to the work of Bourdieu’s (1996) The Rule of Art; perhaps one of the most influential studies of ‘cultural production by disadvantaged groups’ (Stuart, 2020: 5). In that book, Bourdieu writes about Parisian novelist from lower-class backgrounds whose strategy was to produce novels that exoticised their own already stigmatised group – a genre Bourdieu refers to as ‘autodestructive homages’. Without access to traditional means of establishing professional credibility, they leaned into exaggerated stereotypes and parodies to spark the voyeuristic desires of their audience. Similar to Bourdieu’s Parisian novelists, 73 De Pijp drillers have found ways to cash in on their stigma, transforming negative labels into opportunities for financial gain. Their stigma is rooted in the morally loaded portrayal of themselves as ‘black superpredators’ (cf. Stuart, 2020).

Their goal is to go viral, build micro-celebrity status and achieve levels of financial success that would otherwise be unattainable. This strategy leverages the power of online visibility to disrupt traditional pathways to fame and wealth, with significant implications for both individual and collective identities within marginalised communities (Stuart, 2020). The large number of streams, likes, comments, and other positive affirmations suggests that virality is indeed being achieved. Comments like ‘fire’ and ‘hard’ are frequently encountered, which not only encourage the rap collective but also celebrate its music. This aesthetic is tightly interwoven with the dynamics of digital micro-celebrity (Senft, 2008; Stuart, 2020). Artists such as VK, TY, RB, and Choppa (the artists who make up 73 de Pijp) use platforms like YouTube and Instagram not only to distribute music but also to construct and sustain public personae. This pursuit of visibility creates both economic and cultural opportunities but also demands constant ‘visibility labour’ (Evans, 2020), in the sense that drillers must continually perform hyperreal violence to remain relevant. As a result, the boundary between image and intent becomes dangerously porous. Most tracks with open comment sections receive hundreds – even thousands – of responses, many of which can be read as encouragements to translate online threats into real violence.

Although Dutch drill targets a particular niche, this niche is by no means nationally bounded. Just go to any comment section and you’ll find a multilingual environment with comments written in Dutch, English, French, Ukrainian, Papiamentu – to name a few – and respects being paid from Germany, Albania, Poland, Northern Ireland and further afield. Such an international public does not emerge naturally or automatically. We know – with Warner (2002) – that a public ‘is typically a relation among strangers, a relation that comes into being due to the joint attention that people give to texts’ (Mutsaers, 2019: 185). It is discourse – in this case the discourse of Dutch drill – that helps to conjure a public into being. As we have seen, a public is not open to indefinite strangers and various ‘counterpublics’ may emerge. Warner calls a public ‘poetic world-making’, by which he means that ‘it seeks to specify in advance, in countless ways, the lifeworld of its circulation: through pre-existing forms and channels of circulation, discursive claims, topical concerns, speech genres, idiolects, stylistic markers, address, lexicon, interlocutory protocols, etc.’ (Mutsaers, 2019: 186).

It is its own merit that 73 De Pijp successfully connects to global circuits of communication and reaches an international public. Not only are the artists well versed (‘literate’) in the genre’s key features – such as taunting rivals, ‘keepin it real’ and staying local – they also do so as true-to-form polyglots, which makes it easier for international audiences to ‘feel the drill’ and relate to the artists. In addition to the numerous instances of language crossing, some of which have been discussed in this article, 73 De Pijp invites drillers from abroad, like the famous duo Skengdo and AM from the United Kingdom – famed not only for their music but also for receiving the first prison sentence in British legal history for performing their song ‘Attempted 1.0’ (see above). In the co-production Ldn2dam (London to Amsterdam), we hear Skengdo in this characteristically British accent. It is though such ‘global languaging’ that 73 De Pijp has managed to pursue a successful path towards international fame, rooted in a highly localised micro-celebrity status.

Conclusion

As social media policing units proliferate, digital dragnets widen, and prosecutorial approaches to drill gain traction, drillers will – paradoxically – experience more surveillance, subjugation and stardom. Every driller behind bars or every ban on a drill production is likely to boost the genre or its next iteration due to the fact-fiction hybridity through which real-life events (such as imprisonment or a criminal behaviour order) are incorporated in drill songs, combined with fiction, and commodified on the Internet. It seems to be a never-ending story; one that begs for counterstories like the ones presented in this article.

This performative ambiguity has serious legal implications. As Nielson and Dennis (2019) detail in Rap on Trial, drill lyrics are increasingly weaponised in courtrooms as prosecutorial evidence. In the Netherlands, too, drill lyrics have been extracted from context and framed as direct admissions of guilt. Kubrin’s (2005) foundational work in rap literature warns against such literalist readings, emphasising that rap lyrics are a form of artistic expression, not confessions. Sanders and Wernaart (2023) argue that drill rap, while often linked to criminal behaviour, serves as a crucial outlet for marginalised youth to express their experiences with poverty and social injustice. They caution that misinterpreting these lyrics can infringe upon young people’s rights to cultural participation and freedom of expression. Drill requires a nuanced sociolinguistic lens that recognises metaphor, satire, and exaggeration – not criminal intent. To misread drill is not just to misunderstand art; it is to endanger the rights and voices of marginalised youth who speak through it.

Through a first-ever sociolinguistic analysis of Dutch drill, we have attempted to appreciate its complexity, both linguistically and socially, and move beyond the ‘street illiteracy’ of criminal justice agents (Ilan, 2020). This has led to different ‘readings’ of – in this case – the Dutch drill collective 73 De Pijp, of which the ‘dark reading’ that is dominant in mainstream approaches is only one mode. This reading reveals a deliberate and defiant self-presentation of toughness and lawlessness, combined with frequent mockery of law enforcement and alienation from white civil society. The distance that is taken from the socio-legal order is also a linguistic distance, attested by the numerous examples of ‘linguistic sabotage’ and extreme cases of ‘language crossing’ that have the tendency to make those outside the speech community very cross.

In addition, three different readings developed. The ‘vulnerability reading’ unveils the emotional and personal challenges faced by drillers. The lyrics occasionally shift to the hardships of their lives, including broken families, poverty and the struggle to survive. However, these moments of vulnerability are not framed as weaknesses. Instead, they reveal a survivalist mentality born out of difficult socio-economic conditions. A ‘protest reading’ emerged, as a clear undercurrent in drill became apparent. The drillers express dissatisfaction with the system they feel they are trapped in and rap about crime as a way out. In an act of double consciousness (Du and Bois, 1994[1903]; Fanon, 2021[1952]; Gilroy, 1993) 73 De Pijp artists look at themselves through the lens of white civil society and by doing so seem to raise Du Bois’s world famous question: How does it feel to be a problem? By not responding in any way, the artists appear to be claiming the kind of sovereignty that helps them to transform Fanon’s ‘white masks’ from imitations of ‘white civilization’ to the diametrically opposite. In a literal manifestation, the white horror masks that drillers often wear seem to reflect this transformation. Finally, the ‘micro-celebrity reading’ connects to the capability approach to drill which we advocated in the introduction. This reading focuses on 73 De Pijp artists as micro-celebrities who challenge traditional pathways to fame by offering an alternative model of success that resonates with marginalised youth and is centred on online fame, niche popularity, performed authenticity and new ways of ‘mattering’.

Once we go beyond first impressions and see the fuller picture of drill, including its ‘lyrical artistry, social commentary, and commercial success’ (Quinn, 2024: 11), we may come to think of drill songs not as (pre)criminal acts, but as outcries by youth who are actually screaming at the top of their lungs that they want to have some autonomy and support in dealing with the tensions of life. As such, drill songs may become pedagogical gateways into the life worlds of drillers, inviting youth professionals to step in and embrace a critical pedagogy that goes beyond simply saying ‘no’ and that appreciates the multidimensional portraits of drillers.