New York City Mayor Eric Adams isn’t for drill music. During a press conference on Friday, he expressed his concern for the Brooklyn drill scene.
He linked the music to gun violence and urged social media companies to remove material connected to the “alarming” rap subgenre from their platforms.
“I had no idea what drill rapping was,” Adams said, “but I called my son, and he sent me some videos, and it is alarming. We are going to pull together the social media companies and sit down with them, and state that you have a civic and corporate responsibility.”
He also compared the music videos to tweets by Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter following last year’s insurrection at the United States Capitol.
“We pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing, yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence, we are allowing it to stay on the site, because look at the victims,” he explained. “We’re bringing them in, we’re going to show exactly what is being displayed, and we are alarmed by it. We are alarmed by the use of social media to really over-proliferate this violence in our communities.”
Adams also referenced the recent killings of 22-year-old Tahjay Dobson, who was shot and killed in Brooklyn last week, and Jayquan McKenley, an 18-year-old rapper from the Bronx known as CHII WVTTZ.
“There are thousands of Jayquans in our city right now,” Adams said. “Thousands of children experiencing homelessness and poverty, who need educational support, who are at high risk. We cannot let thousands of children lose their lives to violence and neglect. Like many young men, Jayquan was an aspiring rapper. ‘Aspiring’ is a word that means hope, but his music was anything but hopeful.”
The NYC mayor ended his speech by revealing plans to have a roundtable meeting with “very top-known rappers” in the Brooklyn drill scene, with hopes to help stop the violence.
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