Drill gets blamed for a lot of knife crime and youth violence. But those narratives rarely include the people living it.
Loquil, 19, from Peckham, isn’t speaking from headlines, he’s speaking from experience. Alongside him is Certi, who offers a slightly different perspective acknowledging that while music can shape emotion, its influence has limits.
What Loquil describes is a culture documenting it.
Drill, in this framing, is less a cause than a language. It may intensify feeling, even provoke response – but it doesn’t create the conditions it speaks from.
The question, then, isn’t why drill sounds violent.
It’s why the realities behind it remain unchanged.
What emerges isn’t a simple defence of drill, but a more complex question: does the music create violence, or does it reflect it?
I sat down with them to talk about growing up, making music, and what gets missed in the conversation.
Who are you, and where are you from?
Loquil: I’m Loquil. I’m an artist, 19 years old from Peckham.
What was it like growing in Peckham?
Loquil: I didn’t have anything to compare it to. I hadn’t really been to “nice” areas, so what I was living felt normal. I just got used to it.
What kind of things did you get used to?
Loquil: Police sirens all the time. People acting suspiciously, fights, violence.
At the time, none of it felt strange. It was only when I started going to other areas that I realised, it’s not normal.
What first got you into music, and what keeps you going now?
Loquil: Music’s always been my way of expressing myself. I started playing the guitar as a kid and it always made me feel calm. As I got older, it became deeper – my music’s really shaped by what I’ve seen and experienced growing up.
Hearing my track on Capital XTRA for the first time was mad though. I grew up listening to that station, so that gave me the inspiration to keep going.
Do you think drill music plays a role in violence, or is that overstated?
Loquil: It’s overstated. People were getting stabbed long before drill. The music didn’t create these situations.
Music affects emotion, though. Whatever you listen to can shape how you feel. So, drill might influence people, but only to a certain level.
What about cases where lyrics seem to reference real violence?
Loquil: Some people talk about what they’ve done, and that can provoke reactions. Things can escalate, but if it wasn’t drill, it would be something else, Snapchat, Instagram.
What about claims that drill lyrics “predict” or reference real crimes?
Loquil: I don’t agree with that. Saying something in a song doesn’t mean the music is causing anything.
What do you make of headlines like “one in three homicides linked to drill”?
Loquil: It’s misleading. Drill isn’t negative. People are using it to get out of bad situations; At the end of the day, it’s just expression, people telling their stories.
What role do platforms and labels play in all this?
Loquil: Platforms are making money off everything. People post all kinds of things online, and companies like snapchat profit from it.
They should be held accountable.