GANG CULTURE, RAP MUSIC, STREET SLANG AND POLICING
I have written elsewhere on this site about my own unusual forays into forensic linguistics, whereby I have helped legal defence teams, police forces and other interested parties in decoding, interpreting and assessing the slang used by gang members, an authentic urban language variety which is shared with rap music genres, particularly Drill music.
The citing of rap lyrics in the context of criminal trials and attempts to ban Drill lyrics is very controversial and some academic linguists, musicologists and criminologists argue that they should never in any circumstances be admitted in evidence – a stance I sympathise with, but feel is mistaken.*
One London Met Police officer with whom I have worked has written about his own recent activities at the intersection of music, youth culture and youth violence. The article offers a very rare professional insider’s perspective on the issues in contention, and with Michael Railton‘s permission I have linked to it here…
An update on the unusual role of an ‘expert linguist witness’
Elsewhere on this site I have written about the ‘street slang‘ used by gang members and other young people in the UK, a variety of language also featuring in the lyrics of Drill and other rap music genres. In October 2020 I was invited by the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics to talk about my role in translating and commenting on this language in the context of criminal investigations and trials.
My contribution to this event, with those of other specialists, together with some answers to follow-up questions from the virtual audience can be accessed here…
The prosecution of actual or supposed gang members, many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds and are victims themselves of coercion, trafficking, even modern slavery, is hugely controversial, as are attempts by some law enforcers to criminalise Drill music, its performers and its enthusiasts and the language that it uses.*
Rap lyrics appear to be poetic or literary texts, and may be fictional, but many professional rappers and their amateur imitators routinely mix creative fiction conventions, metaphors and imagery with real-life facts, introducing real names and references to real places, incidents and actions for ‘authenticity’ and effect. They also frequently borrow or steal images, words and whole sequences from other rappers, and impersonate actors in the real world such as killers or drug dealers who they have learned about from media reports or by word of mouth on the street.
Even more confusingly, many young rap enthusiasts nowadays use the language of rap and its lyrical conventions when they are communicating in quite different contexts. I have encountered many examples of messages between friends, entries in journals or prison notebooks, editing an online persona for chatting in forums, etc. that use words, phrases and references familiar from lyrics as used in audio/video music performances.
There are now academics and activists seeking to question official attitudes to the policing of youth crime and to question the validity of presenting rap or rap-related lyrics as evidence of wrongdoing.* There are also currently many agencies, charities and other stakeholders working with young victims, young perpetrators and their families and friends in order to analyse, publicise and seek solutions for the social stresses that foster gang culture. For my small part, I’m concerned, though, that these efforts, even the well organised periodic campaigns by police to control and reduce ‘knife crime,’ are still piecemeal and only partially coordinated across the country.
In November I talked on the same subject at Warwick University‘s Applied Linguistics Seminar…
One month on, and a small sign that mainstream media may be paying a little more attention to gang realities…
Thus is rappers Krept and Konan’s 2019 commentary on the driller’s culture and attempts to ban drill lyrics. Essential reading/listening for anyone struggling to untangle the unresolved complexities of the issue…
How could an obscure, elderly linguist have anything relevant to contribute to the debate now – belatedly – taking place on knife crime in the UK? It is many many years since I hung out, ineffectually feigning menace, with a gang of suburban mods (in the days when ‘bovver boots’ were the only dangerous item of subcultural paraphernalia), many years since I taught in an inner city London school and watched as younger teens gradually became disaffected and detached from family life and adult society. Much later I investigated and wrote about the successive waves of tribal youth culture – hippies, neo-teddy boys, punks, new romantics, rave aficionados, hiphop enthusiasts and the rest – who occupied the space reserved for ‘folk devil’ in the periodic ‘moral panics’ that the grownup public, with the help of the media, has always indulged in.
I was always interested in the outward signs and symbols, the accessories and the poses that these groups used to design and to project their identities, simultaneously signalling their belonging and their rejection of outsiders. I was more than anything interested in the special language that they used, generally characterised as ‘slang’, to communicate with one another and to baffle and dismay their perceived enemies – parents, teachers, the forces of social conformity in general.
It’s only by deciphering and understanding this sort of language – or rather these languages – that we can hope to enter the world of peer-groups, in-groups and gangs, to come to make sense of their rituals and obsessions, their thoughts and feelings. I have collected the slangs of adults and of younger speakers operating in all sorts of contexts, publishing a succession of dictionaries and articles over the years and teaching and broadcasting about these and other ‘nonstandard’ and controversial areas of language such as business jargon, fashion and lifestyle buzzwords and the ‘weasel words’ of politicians.
I wrote last year about the distressing, frightening language used by members of street gangs who identify with the Drill music genre, and on this site you can find my updated dictionary of the terms they and their followers and imitators use, terms which many other quite innocent and uninvolved young people will be familiar with, but which are alien and incomprehensible to most adults. There are links to news articles accompanying the Drill Dictionary, and other articles on youth slang and so-called MLE on this site too.
The phenomenon of Drill, to a lesser extent of Grime music and the gangs who use their style of rap and hiphop songwriting and recording, is so closely linked to the knife crime ‘epidemic’ that is being discussed as I write, that the connection can’t be downplayed or ignored. Today’s gangs, with their territorial disputes, drug-based economies and hypermasculine culture of bragging and ‘dissing’ differ from earlier incarnations in that they declare their allegiances and flaunt their activities semi-publicly online, using messaging, social media platforms and video recording.
I’m not of course suggesting that all the disturbing messages being exchanged by the gangs are accurate or sincere, or that the knifings and shootings they boast about have all really taken place. But I would propose very forcefully that anybody who is trying to analyse or engage with their behaviour must analyse and engage with what they themselves are saying and the language they use.
My own take on this is not just that of an interested outsider. For a decade now, and increasingly over the last five years I have been helping the police forces who are trying to control street crime and the lawyers who are defending those accused (nearly all of them teenagers). My task as a language analyst and an expert witness is to translate and comment on the slang terminology found on confiscated mobile phones, obtained by surveillance and electronic intercepts, or used in the course of live interviews. I’ve found that the officers in question and the legal representatives are dedicated, unprejudiced, painstaking and privately appalled at what they witness day-to-day. They may become familiar with the exotic, distressing language they are exposed to, but they require an expert objectively to interpret and assess the written or recorded evidence they work with, if necessary, too, to stand in court and testify on their or their clients’ behalf.
There are now a number of experts on the ‘multiethnolects’, the new urban speech patterns prevalent among younger speakers that mix elements of native and minority languages. Professor Paul Kerswill and Professor Jenny Cheshire were the first to name the phenomenon as MLE – multicultural London English – and have written extensively on it. There are also expert forensic linguists, such as Professor Tim Grant of Aston University, who employ linguistic methods in the analysis of criminal language, enabling them for instance to identify authorship and authenticity of anonymous messages and online communications by paedophiles and others. My own claim to expertise is that I am one of very few who focuses on up-to-date slang and on items of criminal vocabulary (the deliberately secret languages known as ‘cryptolects’), rather than the scientific analysis of longer sequences of speech or text.
In looking at recordings of gang member’s conversations, for example, it’s crucial to know that a burner is a handgun; dotty means shotgun, Rambo, ramsey, shank or nank is knife. When looking at jottings in a teenager’s notebook or listening to a hardcore Drill track recorded by a gang associate it’s essential to identify trap as a term for selling drugs or the location where it takes place, plug as a drug source, dip as stab, op as enemy, duppy as kill, dasheen as run away. The same words, catchphrases and slogans are shared across London and into other UK centres: the same mindset with its obsession with respect, its reverence for violence and its cruel bravado seems to apply everywhere.
"Every generation pretends gang crime is a new problem."
Rapper and author Akala says the social indicators of violence have "remained identical for almost 200 years". pic.twitter.com/aJO1raMFnn
Among the voices raised in the latest debate, Akala’s stands out as representing real experience of, and sympathy for the victims and perpetrators. I only feel that he underestimates the levels of violence tolerated and celebrated, the extent of the ill-gotten wealth and the technical sophistication of the gangs of today. Rappers routinely claim that their lyrics are a fictional reflection of an imagined street life, a poetic evocation of rage and intensity rather than a call to arms, but the words written by young knife-carriers that I have had to translate are exactly the same words used by the rappers. In some cases the rapper is the perpetrator – the killer himself. The young people living in the postcodes most affected by knife crime are of course dealing with the new reality every day, as explained here.
"Yeah I've got a knife right now."
These 15 and 19 year old gang members say carrying a knife is a "risk you've just got to take" because the penalty is "get killed or go to prison." #dispatchespic.twitter.com/sIeEzVyVqC
— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) March 5, 2019
Beyond the gangs young people are speaking and writing and broadcasting about the pressures and oppressions of urban lifestyles. A good example is the short film on the inner city life, Drawn Out.
Knife crime is intimately bound up with gang slang and vice versa. To try to understand the killings and the woundings and their perpetrators and victims without understanding what they themselves are saying makes tackling the hugely complex problem much more difficult.
As a footnote, I have had a lot of very interesting and constructive feedback (suggestions, criticisms, donations of new terms) arising from this article and from my broadcast on the same subject on Voice of Islam radio. I also discussed all the issues involved with Rob Booth, Social Affairs Correspondent of the Guardian, who has published several insightful articles on innercity stress and street crime. His piece is here…
An update: in August 2020 the Sun newspaper reported on the new use of TikTok to post gang videos. Despite the sensationalist format the substance of the article is accurate…
**Please do contact me if you can supply examples of street slang for my databases. Contact me too if you need to interpret street talk or criminal slang yourself, or if you would like me to contribute to projects in this area.**
In May 2022 the LondonReview of Books reviewed Ciaran Tharpar‘s memoir of his time as a youth worker in South London and his experience of the gang milieu…
The latest in a long series of moral panics (the term used by sociologists since the 1970s) exploited by the UK press and now subject of rancorous political debate, the issue of knife-crime and killings by street gangs, mainly in London, is genuinely concerning and is only now receiving the attention and analysis it demands. A side-effect of media interest is that the language used by the gang members and by the music genres that celebrate them is being recorded – haphazardly and not always accurately – for the first time. The musical genre in question is UK Drill, a successor to the ultra-hard-edged Trap Rap (from The Trap, slang nickname for the local area where drugs are dealt) that appeared first in Chicago in the 2000s. Drill (the word can signify shooting but has many other slang senses) has been adopted and adapted by hyperlocal urban communities in the poorer parts of London and, despite their claims, doesn’t just evoke the harsh realities of life on inner-city estates, but often glamorises it and seems to promote an ethos of territoriality, boastful masculinity and murderous retaliatory violence.
So far only very few reporters have managed to penetrate the groups whose members occupy and fiercely defend their microzones, fighting for control, too, of economies based on drug trading. The rappers emerging from the same postcode- or estate-defined enclaves compete and feud electronically, dissing and threatening their rivals in their lyrics – and in a few cases have actually been implicated in killings or woundings on the street.
In May 2018 the Metropolitan Police intensified attempts to ban videos associated with the music genre and the gangs caught up in street violence:
Since beginning this project I have managed to engage with some members of this subculture and find out more about their values and the way they encode them. In the meantime I have begun to assemble a lexicon of the most significant key terms they use, in a slang which mixes US hiphop argot and Caribbean expressions transposed to or reinvented in London (harking back to the Yardie gang culture of the 1980s). So far just a glossary, my list is far from complete, so please help me add more items if you can, or correct my mistakes. Here is this work in progress as it stands, now updated for July 2020, followed by some relevant links…
125 – scooter
3 – free (call to free a respected associate or known person)
Active – dependable associate
– involved in gang activities
Ahk, Akhi – brother, friend (from Arabic)
Amm – cannabis (abbreviation of Amnesia, a potent strain)
Askari – police (from Arabic and other African languages)
Back out – draw (a weapon)
Bagged – caught by the police
Bagging – stabbing in the lower body
Bally, Bali – balaclava
Bando – abandoned property
Bands – coloured elastic bands tying batches of cash
Banger – hit, successful song
Bap – the sound of a shot or gunfire
– to fire (a gun)
Bars – lyrics
Beef – dispute, feud
Bells – bullets
Binned – shot
Birded off, birded up – imprisoned
Bitz – one’s neighbourhood
– drugs weighing more than 7 grams
Blam – shoot
Blow – leave, escape
– ‘take off’, achieve career success
Blunt – cannabis ‘spliff’
Bones – dead
Booj, buj – heroin
Bookie, buki – suspicious
Bora, borer – knife
Botty – firearm
Box – prison
Boxed, boxed in, boxed up – imprisoned
Bozz – leader
– excellent
Breeze off – leave town, disappear
Bruck, bruk – broken (down), broke
Bruckshot – sawn-off shotgun
Buj – obnoxious person
Bun – light up (a cannabis cigarette)
– shoot, eliminate
Burner – gun
Burst – shoot
Cabby– cigarette containing cannabis and cocaine or cannabis and crack mix
Cake – crack or cocaine
Cally – cannabis
Can – prison
Car, cah – because
Cat – drug user and/or drug purchaser
CBO – criminal behaviour order
Cheffed (up) – stabbed, killed
Chete – machete
Ching – knife
– to stab
Chinging – chilling and hanging out
– stabbing
Civilian – non-gang-member, non-combatant
Clap – attack, shoot
– steal drugs
Codes – ‘postcode areas’, zones where gangs dominate
Corn – ammunition
Crash – raid, invade
– shoot
Crashing corn – shooting your gun
Crib – home
Cro – cannabis
Cunch – out-of-town locations where drugs can be sold
Cutter – knife
Cuttin – leaving, running away
– mixing or adulterating illicit drugs
Darg, dargie, dawg – male friend, ‘homie’, male active on the street, gang member
Dark – heroin
Dash – throw
– run (away)
Dasheen – running away, fleeing
Diligent – admirable, brave, cool
– dependable associate
Ding dong – dispute, brawl
also dinger, dinga, ding – cheap car
Dipped – stabbed
Dipper – knife
Don – respected person
Dottie, Dotty, Dotz – shotgun
Doughnut – idiot
Drawn out – involved in gang culture, under pressure from street crime
– lured, rendered vulnerable
Drenched – stabbed
Driller – shooter, gang member
Drilling – attacking, aggressing, invading
Dumpy – shotgun
Dun – kill(ed), punish(ed)
Duppy – kill, dead
Elizabeth – money
Endz – one’s neighbourhood
4-door – saloon car
Febreze – spray a place to remove the smell of cannabis
– get rid of evidence of illicit activities
Feds – police
Field – danger-zone, combat area
Fishing – looking for victims
Flake – cocaine
Flashed – stopped, pulled over e.g by police
Flicky – switchblade knife
Food – drugs
Fry – shoot (at)
Gassed – excited
g-check – aggressively check someone’s gang credentials
Gem – weak person
Get the drop – acquire necessary information
Giraffe – £1000
Glide – drive into enemy territory
GM – (fellow) gang member
Go cunch/country – leave the city to sell drugs in rural/seaside locations
Got – attacked, robbed
Grubby – authentic, tough (neighbourhood)
Guv – prison officer
Gwop – money
Habsi, hapsi – black person
Hand ting – pistol
Hitter – gunman
Hottie – SIM card
Iron – gun
Jakes – police
Joint – gun
Jump out – undercover police on patrol
– emerge from a vehicle
Juiced – confident, energised
– bloodstained
Khala – black person
Khalas!– ‘that’s enough’, stop!
Ketchup – blood
Kick down doors, kick in doors, kick door – raid a domestic location
Kwef –violence
Kweff, Queff – kill with gun or knife, harm, attack
Kweng – cut, stabbed
Laces – ammunition
Lacking – caught unawares, without backup
Landing – prison, cell
Lane – main street, urban area
Layers – protective clothing
Leggin (it) – escaping, running away
Leng – gun
Let rip – fire a bullet or discharge a firearm
Light – cocaine, crack
Line – a drug-dealing operation or network
Link – contact, source for drugs
– make contact with, meet, collect
Lizzies – money
– mobile phones
Loud – cannabis
Lurk – stalk a victim, prowl around
M – murder
Machine – gun
Mac(k) – automatic firearm, Mac -9 or Mac-10 small machine gun
Mains – close companions
– streets, urban zone
Mash – gun
Matic – gun
Matrixed – placed on the London Met police gang database
Mazza, Mazzaleen – madness, crazy situation
Ments – mental, crazy
Milly – a 9mm pistol
Moist – disgusting, pathetic
– cowardly, weak, afraid
Monkey – £500
Mop – large gun
Move – criminal operation, raid or attack
Nank – knife, stab
Nap nap – kidnap
Need – cannabis
Niff – cocaine
No face – masked, with identity concealed
OJ – ‘on job’, productive and successful in street activities
Old Bill – the police
On papers – on parole or probation
On road – outdoors, active in the streets/neighbourhood(s), eg engaged in selling drugs
On tag – fitted with an electronic surveillance device
On volts – intent on or engaged in violence
Ooters – shooters
Opps – enemies
Opp-block – enemy territory
OT – ‘out trapping’, ‘out there’ or ‘out of town’, away on business, dealing in urban or country locations
Ox – razor, blade
Pagan, paigon – untrustworthy person, enemy
Paper, papes – money, cash
Passa – dispute, dramatic event
Patch – territory
Pattern – arrange, sort out, set up
Patty – slow-witted, ‘clueless’ or deluded person
– (white) female
Pave – streets
Pay – profitable activity, reward
Pebs, pebbles – pellets or deals of heroin, crack or steroids
Ped – moped
Pen – prison
Pepper – spray with shotgun pellets or bullets, shoot
Plot – plan, set up
– hang around
– conceal
Plug – a contact for drugs
Plugging – hiding drugs in rectum
Poke – stab
Pole – shotgun, gun
Popo – police
Posted up – hanging around, positioned to sell drugs
Pree – to check out, assess (a person)
Proper – excellent, admirable
Ps – money
Push, pusha – bicycle
Put in/on a spliff – killed
Rack – quantity of money, £1000
Rambo – large knife or machete
Rams, Ramsay – knife
Rep – promote or publicly declare for (one’s area, gang)
Ride out for (someone) – to defend, even if guilty
Riding dirty – going out armed and/or in possession of drugs
Rise – aim (a weapon)
Riz – cigarette papers
Road – street-smart, active in street culture
Rotty – firearm
Rusty – antique or old firearm
Sam, sams – samurai sword or large knife
Score – kill or injure an enemy
Scoreboard, scorecard – list of enemies killed, injured or defeated
Scram – gun
Scrum – attractive female, sex
Shank – knife
Sh, shh – ‘don’t mention this’, censored item
Shaved – insulted, humiliated, punished
– stabbed
Sheets – cigarette papers
Shoes – guns
Shot – buyer of drugs
Shotting – dealing drugs
Shouts – greetings, acclaim
Skate, skeet – run away
Skeng – knife, gun, weapon
Skududu – rapid gunfire
Slammer – prison
Slatt – cry of affection, respect
Slew – ruin, defeat
Sliding – driving into enemy territory
Slime – friend, associate
Smoke – kill
– disappear
– conflict, violence, hostility
Snitch – informer
Soak – stab
Special K – ketamine
Spinner, spin-ting – revolver
Spinners – petite females
Spitting – rapping
Splash, splash up, splash down – stab
Squirt – spray acid (over someone)
Stacks – large quantities of money
Stain – rob
– robbery victim
Stepping on toes – trespassing on or attacking enemy territory
Throwing up signs – making gang-related gestures with fingers
Ting – girl
– gun
Trap – neighbourhood, ‘ghetto’, area where drugs are sold, temporary location for dealing drugs
Trapping – hanging out, selling drugs or waiting for buyers to contact
Trey, tre – pistol
Tum-tum – gun
Tweed – cannabis
24s – all day
Wap – gun
Warhead – cigarette containing a drug
Wass – stupid person
Weston – handgun
Wetter(s) – knife
Wetting – stabbing, killing
Whip – car
– break down (a drug) into smaller parts
Wok, wok house – prison
Woosh – shoot
Worksy – busy, diligent
Yammed – robbed
Yard – home
Yat – girl
Yay – crack
Yé – personal style, skill
Y.I.C – ‘youngest in charge’, young gang member taking or given responsibility
Yute – young person or young people on the street
Zombie – zombie knife
Zoot – cannabis cigarette
I’m keen to add more authentic terms and for my list to be corrected or commented on by those in the know. I’m very grateful indeed to all those who have already contributed, in particular Josh Jolly, Creative Director for PressPlay Media, Farhaz Janmohamed, George Baker and Nelson Bayomy and to the many students and Drill and Grime aficionados who have donated language.
You can find a dictionary of multi-ethnic London slang and other examples of so called MLE (Multicultural London English) here on my site. I have extensive files of youth language, available to researchers, journalists, etc. on request, and here are some more street slang terms from the UK Rap and Grime milieu, many also used by Drill aficionados:
tony thorne 