Donnaven Clark
Comp english
4/17/22
The Bronx Killer
The city of New York is almost at its best time of the year; summer; finally the weather is getting clearer and that means more and more people will be outside having the time of their lives. The parks will be busy, parties will be active, and non-stop teenagers like myself just won’t be going home. Sounds like fun and everybody is going to be talking about it. Unfortunately however when there is a positive to something there is always a negative as well, and in the case of high amounts of people being outside crime rates are guaranteed to increase as well. To those that aren’t unfamiliar with the streets of New york; gang violence and other harsh events happen really often in the five boroughs making it a very scary place to be at any time of year especially during summer. Out of the five boroughs the two that are most popular right now are the Bronx and Brooklyn. These two boroughs gained their popularity through music which is great the bronx and brooklyn gave birth huge rap names, like 6ix9ine tekashi, cardi B, Jay Z, Pop Smoke, and even pop artist alicia keys, these are just small examples of some of the mainstream artist that we hear and they are an example of the good that could come out of the New york music scene; drill rappers, or underground rappers are artist that usually come from gangs and focus on mostly killing, shootouts, robbing, and killing their “opposition”, opposition being other drill rappers that are apart of other gangs in their lyrics. Constantly dissing the dead members of enemy gangs drill rap is known more for its hard beats and the disrespectful lyrics; Most rappers that are in the drill scene as well are kids around my age, some being even younger and in their early teens, and with the sudden rise in audience mostly from around the ages of teenagers to adults, tons of kids are being influenced in the wrong direction; they are the real problem with New York right now, these are the new up and coming rappers that are blowing up, some popular examples is: Kay Flock, Sha Ek, Dougie B, and Dthang. These artists all live in the Bronx and they are around my age, out of the four names I gave two of them are cousins, and the other two are just affiliates with other gangs, but blood does not matter they still make songs about how they would kill each other and their friends, and actually go through with the killings. Out of the four names I listed as well two of them stay in close neighborhoods making it extremely easy for violence to reach the streets.
Kay flock and Dthang are the two upcoming drill rappers that have probably started to gain the most attraction out of all the drill rappers. These two are the cousins mentioned earlier and have potentially started an era of wrongdoing in the Bronx. Currently right now both of the cousins are being held at Rikers island. Kay Flock or Kevin Perez is in rikers island for alleged First degree murder, where he shot and killed a 24 year old man out in the street and ran away; Kevin Perez was also facing two charges of “criminal weapon in the second degree”. The other cousin Dthang is the originator of Bronx drill music, and is a bit more disclosed with information regarding his name and age, but he was charged for unauthorized gun possession
There have been a lot of young victims that have already been taken sadly due to bad guidance; a perfect example is Ramon gil medrano also known as Rah Rah gzz; I grew up going to the same school as Ramon; he was about a year younger than me and was apart of the gang/music violence scene passing away from fatal gun wounds while he was in the back of a uber car. He was one of the victims during a very intense killing spree last year of May passing way before he could turn 17; his murderers: this murder spree of last year “invovled 13 people and which 5 of them were just 16 years of age.”(Darcel D) Tyquan Howard and Alec Mcfarlane two 16 year old kids were charged with “second degree murder” and “manslaughter for the case of Ramon”(Darcel D). “Jahlil Califf, 16, and Justin Baez, 18, were charged with second-degree Murder and Manslaughter in the death of 13-year-old Jaryan Elliott;”(Darcel D) this was another case of young people taking the lifes of other young kids, all because of the gang affiliation that they represent has problems with each other.
These were just some of the more known cases of murder and crime that is going on right now in the bronx; these young rappers have brought such an influence into the bronx that it was getting hard for even the mayor Eric Adams was concerned about the dangers of drill rap and for a small while he tried removing drill rap from the scene completely. Eric adams even called out social media platforms because they were allowing promotion of the guns, drugs, and murder. This shows just how dangerous drill rap really is and it is essential that we start taking repercussions and bring more awareness to the dangers of drill rap. I am only 19 years old, and there is kids younger than me suffering from the gang violence and influence of drill rap and it is killing off my generation.
Bloom, Madison, and Matthew Strauss. “Kay Flock Arrested on First-Degree Murder Charge, Lawyer Investigating Allegations.” Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 5 Jan. 2022, https://pitchfork.com/news/kay-flock-arrested-on-first-degree-murder-charge-lawyer-investigating-allegations/.
“NYPD Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for March 2021.” The Official Website of the City of New York, 6 Apr. 2021, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0406d/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-march-2021.
“Drill Rap – If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | the Daily Show.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Feb. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0l7eJXOfsc.
