Call me a Spartan- I’ve compaed it to ‘protect your neck’ before insofar as it presents us with a whole new cast of characters all with distinctive, characterful (by drill standards) vocal delivery; Blanco’s smokey vocals, zico’s baritone, miz boisterously shooting off like firework rocket. Its infinitely quotable; “need id if you’re not from ends”, “shakes from the spear like William” etc. the “300, 294 for the 6 that’s locked in pen” is an example of drill’s numerical preoccupation which runs through the gang names (410, 67), atist names (c1, h1, r6) as well as the lyrics. It reflects a bleakly reduced view of human life; the inversion of patrick mcgoohan's “I’m not a number, I’m a free man”. This internalisation of the disposability of their own lives in gang warefare.
Karma- most drill mccing is based on what I’d call ‘carni flow’; flows that use the same rhythms as soca/uk funky drums. Russ and taze stick most rigidly to this kind of flow and it’s what gives them that real bounciness and buoyancy. The “lewisham… free my bros out the institution” stretch is great. Also oboy’s “eugh eugh man’s face, eugh eugh man’s chest" always makes me laugh.
Wait- It was zone 2’s no hook that luke used to illustrate his point about the mono-sylabic centrism of uk drill and it's apparent in this as well. “dip urr Skid skurrr” is a good example of drill being drawn towards mary poppins-esque onomatopoeia and nonsense words in order to attain phonetic buoyancy.
Scoreboard- “how do I beef these rapists” is so childish. “holes in pricks like crumpets” is an example of reynolds’ favorite thing when uk ‘urban’ artists use these very quaint englishisms; he always talks about giggs rapping about parsnips. "custard creams" is a recurring reference in drill for example.
i'll do the more aother time.