The rapper son of Mayor Eric Adams he disagrees with his father about drill rap, saying in a recent interview that it was “outrageous” that Hizzoner called for a ban on the genre that glorifies violence.
speaking to bright complex of pop culture In a story published Thursday, Jordan Coleman said his 61-year-old father doesn’t fully understand drill music, a gritty, nihilistic style of rap that glorifies guns, drugs and violence against rivals.
“Coming out saying that the exercise scene will be banned is outrageous, because you can’t ban a music genre, any kind of music genre,” the 26-year-old first son told the outlet.
In February, Adams called social media companies to ban drilling music after an 18-year-old rapper of the genre, Jayquan McKenley, aka Chii Wvttz, was shot and killed outside a recording studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
He blamed gender and your presence on major social media platforms for “contributing to the violence” seen throughout the country, calling it “one of the rivers we have to dam.”
“You have a civic and corporate responsibility,” he told social media companies at the time.
“We took Trump off Twitter because of what he was saying. However, we are allowing the music [with] Arms display, violence. We allow this to remain on the sites.”
Adams explained to reporters that he didn’t know what drill rap was until his son sent him videos of Brooklyn-born musician Pop Smoke, another drill scene rapper. who was killed in a home invasion in Los Angeles in 2020.
Shortly after the press conference, Coleman, who also works in Jay-Z’s Roc Nation film department, texted his father to tell him he was wrong.
“Dad, you can’t speak for me. I have drilling rappers on our label as clients, and I like drilling music. You can’t ban a genre. And I’m not sure why you said what you said, but I disagree,” said Coleman who wrote in the text.
“And he said, ‘I understand what you’re saying, and you can disagree. We come from different times.’”
While the two may not always see eye to eye, Coleman said understanding that his father is a product of a different generation is what “puts everything into perspective” for him.
“So he was like, ‘Hey, I said what I said, and I’m going to own it. What I am saying and what I am doing can be two different things. But what I’m doing is the right thing to do,’” Coleman recalled.
“You have to understand that it is a style that people choose. There is abstract art where people throw paint on a canvas and then call it abstract. And then there’s mumble rap, and there are other subgenres within hip-hop. His version of hip-hop was a little different from what my version of hip-hop is today.”
Following the controversial comments, Adams sat down with a group of drilling artists and had a “great conversation” about the genre in which he explained that his main problem is how music promotes violence in real life and how it is used to antagonize rivals.
“And they listened to me,” Adams said after sitting down.
“And we are going to implement something in the next few days to address this issue. It was a great conversation and I was happy to have them there.”
It’s not immediately clear what Adams meant by “throw something”, or if he ever did.
However, Coleman said his father came to understand his son’s perspective and realized that “you can’t take something away” “just because you don’t like it or there’s controversy behind it.”
“As the mayor of any city, you want your city to be safe and people to have fun in your city. You want people to come there, not to kill people, but to spend money and have fun and make memories,” Coleman said.
“So I think their focus was on social media companies not to promote the boast of killing each other.”
Even so, he acknowledged that it is a difficult line to follow “because that is what that culture consists of.”
The City Council did not immediately comment.