Ballad of the Bullet Book Review

The Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy by Stanford sociologist Forrest Stuart is an essential read for all Chicagoans, but especially for those who care about Chicago’s rap music scene. It is also an important read for anyone who cares about the public health crisis of gun violence in Chicago, because it details the complex cycles of poverty and trauma that produce much of the interpersonal gun violence in the city. However, contrary to what some city officials might say, drill music does not cause violence; it is a response to violence, as this book demonstrates. Responding by criminalizing rap music only makes the problem worse by further entrenching the violence and using up resources that could instead be used to address the root causes. Dr Lambros Fatsis, senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Brighton, said that there is no evidence that drill music causes violence, and that “most criminologists would say poverty and social inequality are always the main drivers behind violence but somehow that doesn’t have the same ring to it [as drill music].”

While it is imperative to transform the structural conditions that produce interpersonal violence, a required first step is understanding the problem as it exists today, which this book helps to do. The Ballad of the Bullet provides a crucial look into the lives of some of the most oppressed and least heard Chicagoans: poor Black youth who are constantly demonized, surveilled, and policed by the city. Stuart follows a rap group named Corner Boys Entertainment (CBE), from the fictional South Side neighborhood of Jackson Park (the names of all the main characters and their rap group are anonymized). Stuart provides a detailed look into what drew them to rap music and why they believed it was their only way out of poverty. Stuart also details CBE’s production and videography techniques, social media use, and the promises and potentially deadly perils of living the life of a drill rapper. However, the most important parts of the book come when Stuart details the larger structures that produce such perilous lives.

A revealing part of the book comes in Chapter six when one of the most famous CBE members, Junior, gets paid to fly to California and hang out with a wealthy rich white kid named Chad. This is probably the funniest part of the book, as Chad generally acts exactly like what you would expect from a Chad, embarrassingly trying to emulate Junior by using Black Chicago slang and attempting to become a drill rapper. However, when Chad finds out through Stuart that Junior is actually homeless, he is horrified; not because homelessness itself is horrifying, but because it contradicts Junior’s social media brand of a rich rapper, which by association could negatively affect Chad’s brand. So Chad pretends like he doesn’t know about it, and he never asks Junior about his homelessness or his struggles with poverty. Stuart writes, “Chad’s use of Junior to help reframe his own life trajectory — as a series of rebellious choices rather than disappointing failures — required that Junior’s participation in gangs, violence, and drill rap remained a willful choice to ‘be bad,’ rather than the result of poverty, segregation, or other social disadvantages. Think about it: If Junior’s actions were merely survival strategies for someone lacking the safety, comfort, and opportunities provided in places like Beverly Hills, then what, exactly, was Chad’s excuse for acting like Junior?”

Stuart believes that this dynamic can actually widen the cultural gap between Black and white Americans, leading privileged people like Chad and their families and friends to believe that people like Junior’s lives are purely a product of personal choice, instead of larger structural dynamics under racial capitalism. Though it does not have to be that way. Drill music can actually draw these two communities closer, because there are people in both communities who are fans of the music at the end of the day. Leor Galil, music critic for the Chicago Reader, wrote that “since Chief Keef’s breakout in 2012, drill has too often been the target of wrongheaded public hand-wringing — as though the music is a cause of violence rather than a reaction to violence, which itself is fueled by generations of suffering from economic neglect and systemic racism. Drill can help listeners from outside the communities that produce it empathize with people who continue to endure these injustices at the hands of local leaders who, say, claim to be progressive but refuse to redirect any of the $1.65 billion police budget [now $1.9 billion] to fund neighborhood services.” If Chad did not act like such a Chad, he might have empathized more and offered to use his ample resources to help Junior solve his issues with poverty and homelessness instead of just using him to try to get famous on Instagram.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like Chad who profit off the status quo of poverty, violence, and premature death for far too many people, even if a few like Chief Keef make it out. Another essential part of the Ballad of the Bullet is its examination of all of the people and corporations who profit from drill music and gang rivalries — without having to deal with any of the deadly risks — such as third party blogs and Youtube channels, social media companies, advertisers, record labels and management, and more. Far from empathizing with the oppressed and working towards the eradication of oppression, these profiteers perpetuate and deepen the feuds that lead to bloodshed, because “violence sells.” Clueless white fans like Chad also contribute to this cycle by picking sides and cheering on deadly gang beefs like they are sporting events. Ultimately however, these dynamics illuminate the fact that capitalism is the larger system that keeps the vast majority of racialized people poor, oppressed, and alienated from their labor while a few people make obscene profits. In the words of PIC abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “capitalism requires inequality, and racism enshrines it.”

The police are there to manage this permanent, violent inequality that exists under capitalism. That is why, as Stuart writes, drill rappers are more likely to end up in prison than in the music industry in the long run. Drill rappers come from some of the most segregated and impoverished neighborhoods in Chicago, so they are among the most policed populations in the city. The Chicago Police Department also heavily surveils the social media content and music videos produced by drill rappers. Several of the Corner Boys have run-ins with the law throughout Stuart’s book, and Stuart often provides them with crucial material support like rides to court. This part of the book takes on a special relevance after the racial justice protests of 2020 in response to the police murder of George Floyd and too many others in Minneapolis, Chicago, nationwide, and worldwide. If more fans of drill music recognized the predatory dynamic between police and rappers, then more would hopefully join the ongoing Movement for Black Lives, and demand that their cities divest from policing and invest in holistic resources that actually prevent violence and make people safer.

Unlike the police, Stuart actually attempts to understand the people who he investigates, and he finds that drill music is actually more often an alternative to violence, rather than a cause of it. Members of CBE are decidedly not as violent in real life as their music would suggest, as the book demonstrates. The primary goal for CBE in making music is to become famous and earn enough money to leave their dangerous lives behind, while supporting their families and bringing their friends along with them, just like Chief Keef. Importantly, Stuart also details how drill music can provide feelings of empowerment and fulfillment in the lives of people who often have a hard time finding it elsewhere in our oppressive and racist society. This applies to both the producers and consumers of drill music, as Stuart writes, “many of the same neighborhood conditions that initially compelled drillers to engage in digital production — physical insecurity, lack of upward mobility, and a desire for recognition — also drive local consumption practices. Among other things, drill content provides South Side teens with valuable resources for coping with loss, motivating scholarship, organizing peer groups, and staying safe.”

Ultimately, the most important takeaway comes in the book’s conclusion chapter. Stuart writes, “We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that these digital production practices are, at the end of the day, a reaction to America’s grossly unequal distribution of wealth, power, and status. They’re a response to racial and class oppression. Facing a broader society that has, time and again, demonized them, marginalized residents are appropriating new media technologies to build lives denied to them. Like the Corner Boys, they’re willing to risk their lives for the slim hope of a better future. This means that any attempt to curtail this phenomenon requires that we eschew current desires to somehow ‘cure’ these cultural producers. Instead, we need to make a concerted effort to reverse the political disinvestment and economic dislocation long crippling their communities. The Corner Boys’ struggle for dignity and survival captures but a handful of the human costs if we refuse this responsibility.”

This responsibility includes radical systemic change and deep investment in the social supports that have been proven to reduce violence such as violence interrupters, restorative justice, therapy, healthcare, housing, employment, and much more. However, it is simply a budgetary fact that the level of investment that is required is not possible as long as the city of Chicago spends over 40% of the city’s funds on policing and refuses to tax the rich. This is mirrored and made worse by the federal government’s spending priorities, which focus more on policing and militarization than social services. As the Florida-based racial justice organization Dream Defenders writes in their “Freedom Papers,” “The US government spends nearly 9 times more on war than it does on education, housing and healthcare and over 20 times more than it does on unemployment. These wars are waged in the name of our safety, but they don’t keep us safe — this is a lie they use to keep us fearful of one another so that they can continue to make billions off of destroying the lives of poor people in our communities and around the world.” Until this reality is faced and ultimately transformed, the violence will sadly continue. Nevertheless, The Ballad of the Bullet remains an essential document of Chicago history.