Image via YouTube/FlowtasticTV
In late January, up-and-coming rapper Nas Blixky was shot in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Garden neighborhood. Days later, the New York Daily News ran a story in which his family spoke on his behalf, claiming he was going to drop the “Blixky” from his name and overhaul his lyrical content. “I told him he’s better than that,” his stepfather said. “You want him dead? He’s dead. He’ll be back with better music and better lyrics.”
Nas Blixky hasn’t confirmed or denied his parents’ claims, but a recent video shows him in a hospital bed, rapping, “Lost some loved ones in the trenches, got me sliding with this blicky.” It’s unclear which direction he’ll go, but his stepfather’s wish for “better lyrics” is reverberating throughout New York.
A day after Blixky’s shooting, artist and dancer TDott Woo was fatally shot in Brooklyn on the same day he had sign a record deal. After news broke, Hot 97’s DJ Drewski reacted to the ongoing violence in the most actionable way he felt he could, by announcing that he will no longer be playing diss records on his radio shows New at @2AM and The New MVMT. On Instagram, he wrote, “I’m not supporting no more diss/gang music! If ya dissing each other in the songs, don’t even send it to me!” Drewski added, “We are losing too many young men and women to the streets!”
The reaction was widespread. Drewski tells Complex that “99%” of the responses have been positive, noting that local community leaders and pastors have applauded him and invited him to attend church services and meetings. Hot 97 and Apple Music personality Ebro came out in support of his decision, noting that he had already refrained from playing diss records. Ebro also took to Instagram to challenge Hot 97 DJs TT Torrez and Funkmaster Flex to do the same. Joe Budden recently had a segment on his podcast titled “We Don’t Support Your Beefs Anymore.” It seems like many people in and out of the rap world feel like diss songs are contributing to gun violence, but Drewski was the catalyst for making those feelings tangible.
On the flip side, some people have criticized his decision, arguing that boycotting diss records won’t change the social conditions that cause gang violence, and it will hinder artists’ careers. Fivio Foreign recently told TMZ, “It’s not the music that’s killin’ people, it’s the music that’s helpin’ niggas get out the hood.” He had just left a meeting with New York officials, DJs and family members of slain New York rappers where they discussed “the future of drill on the airwaves,” according to TMZ. Rising Bronx rapper B-Lovee echoed Fivio’s sentiment on Instagram Live, noting, “Music is not the reason why niggas is gettin’ up and killin’ niggas. Music don’t make people do anything.”
While some people may have misinterpreted his decision as a ban on all drill music, Drewski implores, “It never was just drill music, but it turned into that.” He clarifies that his decision is specifically about “any lyrics that can incite or lead to actual street violence. If they don’t mention names or gang sets and they’re speaking generically, I’m cool with that.” His issue is with disses “where the artists are directly name calling and sending violent threats at one another. When an artist is insinuating they made an act of violence against someone and in return may be smoking on them. When an artist is talking down on or against the opposite gang set.”
“We just don’t want to add fuel to the fire that’s already going on,” he says. “Because I’m seeing it firsthand—I know the artists, I’m speaking to the artists. They say, ‘Drewski, we don’t want to have to do none of this. It’s just, we know when we put a diss out, it’s going to get the views on YouTube.’ So I know they don’t even want to be a part of it. But because they’re knee deep in it, their egos, it’s hard for them to speak on it [and] say, ‘We not doing this.’ So I said, ‘Let me be the catalyst, let me open that door.’”
Drewski, who is white, says he understands how his identity may have played into some of the negative reactions to his decision. “When you see a photo or video of DJ Drewski, and it’s a white kid, it’s like, ‘Hold on. One, why is he speaking up, and where is it coming from?’ Because unfortunately, there’s misconceptions, and you have the whole culture vulture thing that people like to dive into. My focus is not on that, but I understand why people could be negative. I just try to stay focused on what the message is and the positivity. And if I can enlighten someone, if they take from what I’m saying, that’s cool. But if they can’t figure it out, the world keeps going. I just feel like, if you knew me for who I am and me as a person, you’ll understand a little more and you won’t have to question it.”
The veteran DJ has been on the pulse of the New York rap scene for the better part of a decade. “I just don’t talk about that stuff, but I’m usually ahead of the wave when it comes to the music scene in New York,” he says. “I’m the first one to play A Boogie on the radio. I’m the first one to put Lil Tjay, Pop Smoke, Fivio Foreign, Sheff G, Sleepy Hallow, 22Gz [on the radio]. If I’m playing these artists first and contributing to their success and their career, I feel like I’m guiding them the right way and trying to help them.”
Several other New York City DJs followed Drewski’s lead by voicing their own plans to stop playing diss records, including Power 105 DJ Gabe P and D-Teck, who tells Complex, “We got to do this with no fear, because at the end of the day, it’s our social responsibility. I don’t care if they don’t like it. [I’m] 10 toes down on stopping the bullshit.”’
D-Teck is a veteran DJ who hosts Wazzup Radio online and plays on New Rochelle, New York’s WVIP 93.5 and Madison, Wisconsin’s WORT 89.9 FM stations. He says he’s long been tired of artists provoking each other and dissing the dead in their lyrics, noting that multiple times a week, he gets submissions that he has no urge to play because they’re too disrespectful.
“We know the culture. People speak about their environment, how they grew up,” he says. “But what is causing a lot of these issues is people disrespecting each other directly. ‘Oh, I pull up on your block, pull up at their grave, I’m smoking on you.’ I feel like as a creator, you still have a social responsibility. So even though, yes, I’m all for the freedom of expression and freedom of speech, but remember, you’re not just going to ‘kill your opps’ [on a record]. You just influenced another set of people to continue that cycle.”
Many artists in the Brooklyn drill scene have taken cues from their Chicago drill predecessors by closely narrating the city’s ongoing gang rivalries, including the Woo vs. Choo divide. Drewski credits artists like Curly Sav and Bambino for being the first Brooklyn drill rappers, but also says that records like 22Gz’ “Suburban” and Sheff G’s “No Suburban,” two opposing disses, helped “ignite” the modern wave of Brooklyn drill and set a precedent where many artists are throwing direct threats at rivals and even dissing dead enemies.
Renowned Brooklyn drill songs like “Big Opps America,“ “Talkin Spicy,” “Blixky Inna Box,” “Hit List,” and “Folk in The Trunk Pt 2” are laden with brazen threats to rivals. And it’s difficult to ignore that those disses dovetail with an increasingly deadly gang epidemic in New York over the past several years. The correlation has created an outward perception that drill music consists of nothing but gangbanging and disses. But Drewski is quick to shoot that down.
“[Look at] Pop Smoke ‘Dior.’ CJ’s ‘Whoopty’ is not a diss record, he’s just using the slang and words,” he says. “And those are the bigger records, the ones that catch mainstream radio, the ones that catch Billboard. So it shows you right there, [you] don’t have to diss to catch a big drill record. There’s different ways. Now you’ve got R&B drill, people singing on it. There’s other ways to do it without dissing someone. Yes, the origin might have started with dissing, but it’s evolved so much that the music has to evolve with it.”
Coey Productions, CEO of the Talk Of The Town media outlet, which in part covers New York drill artists, agrees that drill is a multi-faceted subgenre.
“Drill music has different formats,” she says. “I feel like people are not listening to the genre as a whole. People are only talking about the diss tracks. But drill overall has different sounds, gives different energies and different messages.”
Coey appreciates the vitality of the genre, but acknowledges the prevalence of disses, which she feels artists do because it’s a proven strategy to get major label attention.
“The biggest songs low key do have [disses], but who made them the biggest songs? Fans did that,” she says. “When that song does get big, labels hit them up. The fans and the A&Rs and artists think that’s the only way out simply because, ‘When I do this, I get all this traction.’”
Coey, who has been interviewing artists in the scene since its inception, says she was initially “shocked” by Drewski’s post because “he’s one to break artists.” She says she’s not a fan of artists dissing the dead, but doesn’t agree with an outright cease and desist on diss songs.
“I’m not anti-diss records. I’m anti-name-dropping, I’m anti talking about people that’s no longer with us. I’m anti things like that,” she says. “But as far as no diss records ever, that’s a part of culture.”
Coey remembers instances of not realizing certain drill songs were disses until after the fact: “When I heard [disses] in Brooklyn drill, I didn’t know [they were disses], like 22’s biggest song ‘Suburban.’ Only if you was in the gang stuff, you knew it was a diss record. For people that didn’t live out [in Chicago], look how long it took us to find out Tooka was a person. I feel like we didn’t know. If we knew [they were disses] we probably would’ve gone about it differently, but we didn’t know.”
Her admission reflects a scene with fans who clamor to hear disses, as well as others who stream records not knowing that they’re supporting a diss that could fuel violence. Coey P believes that instead of refusing to play certain records, people should be more understanding that artists are simply exercising the dynamics of supply and demand in order to get out of the streets.
“These kids are trying to be connected, trying to get spins and whatever. They don’t know how to do it,” she says. “So they’re just doing what they know, and what they saw working. They’re really just on some, ‘Music is my only way out. We know when we give the fans what they want, that’s when the labels start calling.’ It’s literally a cycle repeating itself.“
Everyone Complex spoke with for this story says that a collective sense of urgency created the violence, which is ultimately caused by poverty. Artists are desperate to get off the block, and they’re willing to drop shocking disses to get there. Those songs reflect a violent climate that DJs like Drewski and D-Teck are trying to stifle by not giving airplay to them. And Coey says that the violence fuels her desire to “keep artists busy” with interviews.
“I be fiending to sit down with artists, just because I don’t know what tomorrow would bring,” she says. “I’m eager to keep artists busy. Because once they go back home, we don’t know what’s going to happen, or we don’t know where they’re going to go. So I feel like it’s more of an urgent thing with us, just because things are happening so fast. We want to sit down with everybody. We want to try to talk to them before they make a bad decision.”
Everyone is trying to do what they can to avoid violence. It just so happens that, in the artists’ case, their chase for views ends up potentially stirring more drama. Ultimately, these DJs agree that the violence is a social issue that boycotting disses alone won’t stop.
“I think everyone could just do their part,” Drewski says, “especially influencers, by not promoting it, not supporting it. It starts there, as influencers. Now there are people in the community that have been there for a long time, that are outside on the ground, in the streets, trying to make changes. Also, I feel like we’ve got to give these young artists alternatives. If we’re saying, ‘Don’t diss people to get lit,’ how else can they get lit? How else can they feel accomplished? I think it’s important to give them an alternative, especially when making music.”
D-Teck says that respected figures should try to be “diplomats” and encourage rival artists to make music together. “If you’re making money together, there’s no reason to hurt you,” he notes. “Now you’ve got to tour together, now you’ve got to perform in the same state together. You’re going to kill a person you have a hit song with? There’s different ways of bridging the gap. We’ve just got to be creative with it. We’ve got to come to the drawing board and try to make it happen. We’ve got to bring the great minds together and come up with ways.”
Coey feels like we should strike at the root of poverty that causes violence by giving kids “more opportunities,” explaining, “A lot of change has to happen amongst the community. More so, as far as safety, [offering] different opportunities to keep kids busy. Kids are getting heavy charges at young ages, can’t get a job, and only know one way out. So it’s definitely [a good idea to] provide more opportunities for the youth, so they don’t feel the need to grab a gun.”
Many of those wayward youth that Coey speaks of turn to music as a productive outlet. But even as musicians, they’re criminalized and scapegoated as the cause of crime by local politicians and police departments. In New York, the rise in gun violence has fueled “crime surge” headlines that are ripe for tough-on-crime mayor (and former NYPD officer) Eric Adams to capitalize on with predatory policing. The drill scene, with prominent rappers condemned as faces of the gang epidemic, will continue to be stifled by the NYPD. Drewski says his call for artists to stop dissing is an attempt to help make themselves less of a target.
“The mayor is calling the president of the United States on gun violence to come to the city,” Drewski says. “Who do you think they’re going to point to? Let’s be ahead of it so you’re not a target. That was my whole way of thinking, like, ‘Let’s calm down, so we’re not in the light. So it doesn’t slow up the money. So it doesn’t cause people to lose the opportunities.’ Rappers are already targets. Once you become a popular artist and you have influence, you’re a target. Now you’re inciting the violence. They’re going to come for you quicker than ever, because you’re promoting it in a sense. So it was already happening. You’ve just got to be ahead. You’ve got to play the game the smart way. You don’t want to be the artist that they’re watching, because look what happens.”
Drewski says that he will continue to play drill records, and has done so in the days since his post. He looked at his call-out as a “moral” decision because he “knows this isn’t right.” DJ D-Teck says he “wasn’t thinking about filtering nobody’s music until I was just thinking about so many people dying, man.” He says he feels like “we are a part of the problem because we’re giving these people a voice.”
Ultimately, Drewski wants artists to consider the impact of their voice. “If you’re a young leader, if you can make a diss record and have a million people pay attention, that means they’re paying attention to you,” he says. “So if you can make a drill record without inciting violence, they’re still going to pay attention. The fear from the artist’s side is like, ‘Damn, if I switch it up a little bit, are they still going to respect what I do?’ Yes, if you’re a real artist. You’re going to get support from everyone else, because everyone is tired of the dissin’. Your real fans, who you will make money from and who will come to your shows, they’re going to stick with you. But you’ve just got to make that step. It takes the artist themselves to say, ‘I’m going to do this,’ and other people will follow.”