UK Drill is Breaking Through With or Without a Drake Co-Sign

Someone in the corner of the rap internet had to have anticipated a link-up between Drake and a UK drill superstar. “Only You Freestyle” – a collaboration between the Canadian rap megalith and British rap frontrunner Headie One – is a partnership that YouTube commentators wet the bed over. (You know the ones: “[UK artist] feat [US artist] would be [fire emoji fire emoji fire emoji]” (1.3k likes), commented beneath a grime video.)

Released on Monday evening, “Only You Freestyle” is the latest in UK drill drops from Drake, after his Behind Barz freestyle for UK rap YouTube channel Link Up TV in 2018 and solo track “War”, which dropped on Christmas day in 2019. This extremely hyped collaboration, however, is the first time he’s featured on a track by a UK drill artist ("Only You Freestyle" is released via Headie One's YouTube).

It’s an undeniable statement. Headie One is steadily reaching the imperial phase of his career – his 2019 tape Music x Road is objectively the best UK drill mixtape of that year – while UK drill is taking its impact global, influencing a burgeoning wave of New York-based rap acts, including the late rapper Pop Smoke and G4 Boyz. Add a multi-billion streaming artist like Drake in the mix and woi: it’s an explosive cultural moment.

The track is produced by lauded UK drill producer M1OnTheBeat, who has been behind the boards on UK drill anthems like Loski’s “Money and Beef”, as well as recent turn-ups from Digga D (“Woi”), and an unexpected – but very brilliant – collaboration between UK drill artist Unknown T and UK music legend D Double E (“Double Trouble”). Tonally, “Only You Freestyle” slots neatly into UK drill’s aural parlance. Some have remarked that Drake sounds off beat (he’s not); others have revisited the accusations of culture vulturing that have beleaguered the Canadian since he jumped on stage with UK rap crew Section Boyz almost half a decade ago.

Drake is a fan of UK music. We know that for sure. Skepta, Giggs, Loski, Octavian, Wiley, Jorja Smith, Sneakbo, Sampha – at what point do we get over our cynicism about which artists he likes? Drake has helped to break, shouted out, collab’d and co-signed enough UK artists over the past decade that he’s arguably sacrificed a portion of his North American fanbase just to indulge a raging hard-on for British culture. There’s an element of business involved too, of course – working with your favourite British artist could bring new fans in new territories for the Canadian – but at this point, for an artist who regularly gets millions of plays, it’s also kind of irrelevant. Instead, this link-up is the next in a series of steps for UK drill as it journeys around the world with increasing dominance.

UK drill has already cycled through several lives since it careened onto the streets of south London, in 2016. Bringing UK flavour to a sound that originated in Chicago with the likes of Chief Keef a few years earlier, the UK strand of drill immediately found a foothold among teens set adrift and buffeted by an age of post-recession uncertainty. Psychedelic but melancholy early tunes like 67’s “Lets Lurk” captured the intense, claustrophobic paranoia of mid-2010s Britain – a world of brain-fuzzing, super-strength ammi skunk and adversity, where young kids met tragic, early ends, and politicians turned a blind eye, either caught up in party politics, Brexit, or simply too racist, unaware or unwilling to tune into the struggle faced by Britain’s cash-poor teens.

Like gangsta rap in 1990s America, UK drill gave young artists an escape route. The genre blew up in Brixton first, then via Tottenham crews like OFB (whose members include Headie One), and then across London, via crews like east London’s Homerton (V9, KO, Unknown T) and west London’s 1011 (Digga D, Sav’O). While the similarly homegrown UK genre of grime had to rely on pirate radio to gain an audience, UK drill benefited from the democratised, crowd-led platforms of social media. It quickly racked up numbers on the likes of YouTube and Snapchat because it was new, but also because it was direct, speaking to an experience of young people outside of traditional media.

By 2018, the year Drake released his "Behind Barz" freestyle, UK drill had garnered a make-or-break level of mainstream media attention. On the one hand, videos like Headie One’s “Golden Boot” and Zone 2’s “No Hook” had clocked up millions of views – a strong feat for a grassroot genre no more than a couple years old. On the other, Bad Media had come calling. UK knife crime offences had hit a record level, and the genre had become a scapegoat due to its proximity to street level violence.

The Times newspaper splashed the genre across their front page in spring 2018, accusing radio DJ Tim Westwood of hosting videos by gangs that incited violence. Several prominent UK drill videos were banned from YouTube after a campaign by the Met Police, including CB’s “Take That Risk”, produced by “Only You Freestyle” producer M1OnTheBeat and MKThePlug. Some crews were even told they could no longer make music without police approval, like 1011. (Recent research from the British Journal of Criminology argues that banning drill actually does more harm than good.)

The furore over UK drill in 2018 could have easily lead to its demise, but it now appears to be in rude health. Early crews like Harlem Spartans and Homerton and OFB paved the way for their group’s own respective solo stars – Loski and Unknown T and Headie One – who, then, in turn, helped to show big label businesses that the genre was profitable. Today we’re now in the third phase of UK drill. Big stars like M1llionz and Dutchavelli have releases that sit under the Sony and Warner umbrella, and now legacy artists are pushing the genre forward with new colour.

By the time Drake hit up Headie to do the “Only One Freestyle” (a press release says Drake reached out via Insta), UK drill had already taken off around the globe. Before his untimely death, Pop Smoke was entranced by the work of Ilford producer 808Melo. He produced Smoke’s breakthrough hit “Welcome to The Party”, which has since become late 2010s/early2020s musical lore. Headie One’s tunes, meanwhile, have been broadcast everywhere from the Burberry runway to Anthony Joshua’s living room. UK drill is no longer a hyperlocal genre, but a lucrative opportunity to create a global scene. Does the genre need a Drake co-sign? No. But being picked up by one of the world’s biggest rappers is symptomatic of its entrance onto the world stage. It was breaking through with or without his co-sign – "Only You Freestyle" just accelerated it.

Drake will probably chart well regardless of who he works with, but the collaboration makes algorithmic sense for someone like Headie One, especially in the streaming era. Appearing next to Drake on a service like Spotify will help launch the Tottenham rapper to a new audience, which in turn could help tune that audience into the artists that Spotify or Apple or YouTube then serves up next to a Headie One tune. It's arguably the same numbers game that plays out time and time again by any number of UK and US rap artists. People frequently buddy up on all-star rap collaboration tracks in dizzying, obtuse partnerships, but at least, here, with Drake’s love for the genre, the match-up makes artistic sense.

Still, “Only You Freestyle” isn’t the best UK drill track of the year – far from it. That can go to Kwengface’s “Auntie” or M1llionz “Y Pree” or something from the new V9 or Unknown T mixtapes. Headie spins Drake, and Drake is, well, mostly just Drake being lame but rich rap nerd Drake. It is, mostly, artistically underwhelming. Is it a historical, meaningful collaboration though? Yes. It’s a behemoth link-up; one that comes at a key moment in UK drill and Headie One’s rise. It’s going to be referenced for years.

@ryanbassil