Rapper killed in London knife attack spoke of drill music's influence on crime

A London drill rapper who was killed in a knife attack on Wednesday night recently admitted that the genre was contributing to violence in the capital.

Moscow17 rapper Incognito, whose real name is believed to be Siddique Kamara, was stabbed to death in Warham Street in Camberwell in an incident which saw two other people taken to hospital by air ambulance.

The attack happened in the same street where 17-year-old Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton - also a member of the collective - was found with a fatal gunshot wound in May.

The group's tracks have received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Some featured references to other groups in the capital, including long-running rivals Zone 2 from Peckham.

In one track, Moscow17 told Zone 2 to "check the scoreboard", while another asked "How you gonna make it even?".

A Zone 2 lyric in response told their rivals they would "roll up and burst them".

Earlier this year, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick called on social media platforms such as YouTube to take down videos that glamorised violence, and, in an interview with Link Up TV earlier this year, Incognito spoke about the effect of drill music on crime in the capital.

"You see with the crime that's happening right now, music does influence it. You've got to put your hands up and say drill music does influence it," he said.

"But knife crime and gun crime has been going on way before drill music, so if you want to talk about 10 years, 20 years, people were still getting cheffed up (attacked with knifes)."

He added: "There (are) many ways to solve it - you can bring out youth clubs, you can bring out many other things, invest money in other things to help the community, but you don't want to do that - you just want to use an excuse with drill music."

At the time of Rhyhiem's death, his mother, Pretana Morgan, called for a halt to the wave of violence in the capital.

She said: "Let my son be the last and be an example to everyone. Just let it stop. What must be, must be."