Wallace referred to the violence as a riddle that needs to be solved. “I think the riddle wants us to point the finger at each other, but those that know, know that there’s a system in place that removes 50 schools from the city of Chicago. That knows that the unemployment rate of Black men is damn near 48% right in the state of Illinois,” he said. “Our folks are not prone to the streets, but we’ve been grown in the streets.”
After the shooting outside Mello Buckzz’s party, people took to social media to express their thoughts on drill music. Collectively, the comments became an interesting conversation about whether Chicago should do away with the subgenre altogether or if the issue lies within Chicago’s deeply rooted gang culture.
Local comedian and viral sensation Larry Legend wrote on Twitter that the shooting is one of the reasons why he doesn’t support drill.
“It had its time, we’ve seen the damage and it don’t help nobody but Dwights,” he wrote. “They sold y’all on a dream that this was a way out but nobody escapes a life of revenge. The only people who profit and live a nice life off this shit is people like [music executive] Lyor Cohen. Lil Durk became a superstar and it cost [him] everything. Drill is WACK.”
Formerly known as Chin Chilla Meek, rapper Chimeka also took to social media to express her feelings on the recent events. “The fact that Chicago praises murder music only to turn around and say ‘idk how this happened’ is insane! Y’all asked for this!” Chimeka got her start around 2012, but was tossed into the drill subgenre alongside contemporaries such as Sasha Go Hard, Tink and Dreezy. In a 2018 interview with The TRiiBE, Chimeka said, “Everybody wasn’t drill in Chicago. It wasn’t a sound that represented all of us.”
Rapper Joel Q also joined the conversation online. He expressed his thoughts on the tragedy in some Instagram videos, followed by a post with the words “Drill is dead.”
“I was getting text messages. I was getting DMs, and I’m like, ‘What is going on,’” said Joel Q, who hails from the West Pullman and Roseland neighborhoods.
“I felt obligated to check in and see what was going on, but also use my platform to have a voice, because we also know that unfortunately, the artist who was in that unfortunate event is somebody who creates music that expands the behavior that’s already going on in these unresourced, or disinvested neighborhoods,” he said.
Joel said he took to social media to double down on a post he made earlier in the year. His message at the time also encouraged an end to the drill movement.
“At the end of the day, it’s not a true reflection of who we are as Black people. It’s a reflection of who anybody can be under the right circumstances,” he told The TRiiBE. “That’s what these shorties, for the most part, don’t understand. You all are injecting this in your body. So you live in it. You talking it, you hearing it, like, eventually that’s going to become you.”
Power 92’s DJ Nehpets told The TRiiBE that his fellow DJ friend was at Mello Buckzz’s release party that night. He was relieved when he heard his friend was OK.
“When I saw him, I just told him, ‘man, I’m just so glad you’re here,’ because I’ve dealt with that personally, in my own personal space, of somebody coming to shoot up a spot,” Nehpets said. “It’s so unfortunate, because innocent lives get hit, get killed, all because of a personal situation that’s going on.”
Nehpets added that Power 92 makes a conscious effort to clean up the music it plays as much as possible.
“If we didn’t edit them songs, you wouldn’t hear anything on the radio.” he said.
Drill tracks have often been fueled by conflict. Oftentimes, Nehpets said, he has no clue which songs will cause an issue if played, but he has been approached at parties and asked specifically not to play certain artists due to current beefs and feuds.
