Drill Rap is finally here in the UK! Originating in Chicago the gangster rap on steroids has been taken to the ears of the UK rap fans by Brixton Hill rappers 67. The family made up of ASAP, LD, Dimzy, Monkey, SJ and Liquez have become known for there murderous bars, dark beats and have a reputation to match. After performing at Boiler Room TV and just before their latest project the ‘Lets Lurk’ mixtape dropped we sat down with the Drillers to find out everything about the genre that has caught everyone by surprise.
A lot of people are debating over whether or not you are the true pioneers of UK Drill Music, tell us how drill Music started?
Drill Music started in Chicago but we brought it to the UK with a new style. We are the UK pioneers
What characteristics define you as a drill rapper?
When you listen to a drill artist, if you listen to a real drill artist you know they’re real if you can understand everything they say, you can picture it, you can relate to their situation, they can talk about something that happened to them and you’ll be like “ yeah I remember when that happened” If you listen to our Music and you like us you will actually respect our music cos you understand where it comes from, that’s the realness.
Why did you choose to do Drill Music instead of the UK wavy rap, Gangster rap or Grime that is being made in the UK?
Because it relates to us, we’re living a hype lifestyle, the music’s hype so it fits in well.
Give us 3 words that sum up UK Drill Music?
Noisey, Gassed and Drilling,
Is Drill Music is specific to the beats or rappers flow?
Flow and delivery, because you can spit drill bars on a Carns beat (Carns Hill, Producer) , like people say Carns beats aint Drill because he uses different types of drums to everyone else, but to us he’s got one of the best drill beats out there, ‘PCD’ is a mad beat.
You guys are very big on the family thing and not the gang labels and stereotypes, how did the family start? How did you lot all come together?
We’re all friends from school, we all chilled in New Park Road, 67 aint a gang it’s a family we grew up together.
We wanna clear up a rumour that we see in lots of trolling comments, was LD ever a camera man?
Yeah, actually personally I wasn’t a cameraman, I had my own camera team called SOTV and I used to get paid off Youtube, that’s real stuff there real facts! And I’ve never filmed for none of these guys that are claiming that I’ve filmed for them that’s a fact as well
We just interviewed the Godfather of Grime Wiley and he said that he’s really feeling what you guys are doing to the point that he said he wants to put a Drill track on his upcoming album ‘The Godfather” What do you think about that?
That’s proper, we actually spoke with him about that, he said he likes all of us especially Dimzy, he likes that everyone’s got their own style and he wants us to bring that to him, like give him something to work with, so if its not too late we’ll probably drop something for him as well. Big up Wiley!
How did the collaboration with Giggs on Let’s Lurk come about?
The Landlord! Landlord! The Landlords son really and truly was our supporter, telling his dad “yo do a tune with 67, do a tune with 67” so he contacted us, naturally we made it happen and we made a big tune that right now has about 6 million views. Big up ML, that’s his son for creating this whole situation.
Would you ever do a collaboration just for the money?
Yeah, we all need money! It depends though, we wouldn’t make a tune with just anybody. Don’t get it twisted people have offered us money and we still wont do it, we have to feel you, we cant just do music with you cos you’re paying us, we have to actually feel you as well as you paying us. Not gonna lie we’ve done music before with people that have paid us and regretted it, we done the tune! We’re not fake enough to do it and not give it to you but we didn’t respect their music afterwards, we regretted it and that’s just cos we catted for money and that, sometimes money’s not always the motive, sometimes you’ve gotta think about it like is it really the right move?
Drill Music for us is a real embodiment of the street life to the point where it’s an embodiment of the aspects of street life that we almost didn’t want to be out there in the public eye. What impact do you think Drill Music is gonna have on the next generation of young people?
They’re saying violent and that yeah, but that’s only for a stupid minded person, you cant actually use that for messing up other children, every single day we turn on the TV and there’s loads of stuff like that on all day long. If you go outside you see things that you don’t wanna see, or your children to see, its everywhere regardless, so they can’t actually just blame a genre of music on messing up the population. Just don’t hear man and say because we’re explaining what we did to a man that that means you must go and do it, is that your life?
We are rapping our life, it’s not your life, don’t try and live our lives don’t try and be us, be you. That’s the reason we are doing well cos were being us, we don’t try and be Section Boyz, Section Boyz stay in their lane, we stay in our lane other people stay in theirs Skepta stays in his lane, that’s y everyone’s doing suttin different.
What does the word Music mean to you?
For us Music is our real life, our struggle, now you can see that we are getting somewhere, we’re flipping it around, you can hear it in our bars we’re more boasy and that, you can tell we get more money now, we get paid from shows, we’re happy about that, so Music is our journey its our little diary if that makes sense.
Music did it for us, if we weren’t doing music right now man would be on the roads slanging right now as we speak, picking up the phone or suttin tryna go buss it, might get a phone call and have to jump in a car and do some stupid stuff, Music’s proper changed our lives around still.
You guys just did a Boiler room set, which is something a lot of the older generation grew up on, it’s a big platform, what does it feel like to be reaching different audiences of real music fans as proposed to just man that wanna see your next video cos they are fans of you?
It’s hard to explain, cos you see when we done Boiler room we are seeing fans that we’ve never seen, they all look weird to man, not in a rude way but these are people that we don’t see in our every day lives, they’re just here and they’re vibesing to mans music and they know some of the words and that so its suttin different. Like we saw one guy that looked like a fed in the crowd and we were performing but keeping an eye on him, but fam the guys singing every song like bar for bar, that’s proper!
The tour is coming up, what we can expect from your live performances?
We’re ready! We’re most looking forward to Birmingham and Manchester cos they are just so different, and a lot of Birmingham fans have been onto us contacting us like “when you lot coming down?” and you know what Bristol’s gonna pop!!
We see that you guys do features with different guys from the surrounding areas of Brixton hill with just one or two of you on the track do you plan your features to keep it a tight family thing or are you open?
Nah we don’t mind doing features with people, but each of us on the track still represents us as a whole, so we don’t really see it as a big difference, we just hope everyone went ham on their track.
With UK Drill Music now, through you, reaching all different UK city’s via the tour etc where do you hope the genre can go in the future?
Hopefully it surpasses Grime and becomes the number one thing soon, think about it, there’s a lot of Drill artists, there’s a lot of artists that do drill but they don’t get recognised so hopefully it will grow to give them their recognition.
What is Drill fashion? What can you see becoming the stand out style for Drill Music?
There’s no fashion, it’s from people looking suave to people doing bootings in the skinniest jeans ,so you can’t really say there’s a fashion,
We can see that all of you have got fresh sneakers on and different styles what are your favourites?
Liquez – Jordans – LD– Any type of Airmax that can get me away from the Jakes – Dimzy – Huaraches – Monkey – Jordans
67 Lets Lurk is out now and available to download via itunes, follow 67 on Twitter to keep up with their Musical journey at @Official6ix7.
Since this interview 67 have won a GRM x KA Drinks Award for ‘Best Mixtape’ for ‘In Skengs We Trust’ and dropped their mixtape ‘Let’s Lurk’ that went to number one in the itunes chart in 8 hours, we would like to say congratulations and keep winning!!
Words: @Mr_TrappedMag – Photography: Nicholas Sandzi – @Nicholas_Sandzi
