[Alzo] A lot of drill artists have been killed.
Why is that?
Because it come from a real place.
Go boom, boom.
[Preem] Guns, money, violence,
it gets concentrated in our neighborhood.
[Alzo] The dream is that success
will help them escape it.
[people clamoring]
New York City mayor called for a ban
on drill-related videos and social media posts.
Do these rappers understand the risk that they're taking
when they get in the booth?
It's definitely a trap. It's the trap.
[Natashya] Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won the presidential election,
replacing populist leader Rodrigo Duterte,
who's been called the Trump of the East.
What do you think the impact of disinformation was?
Fears are growing that democracy is backsliding.
Do you believe you will find justice
under a Marcos-Duterte administration?
dramatic music
[shouting]
mellow hip-hop music
[emcee shouting indistinctly]
[crowd cheering]
[Alzo] We're at Rolling Loud
Music Festival in Miami,
here to meet Fivio Foreign,
who is the biggest drill artist
in the country right now.
[Fivio] I need y'all to sing this shit
to the top of your fucking lungs.
[Alzo] To his fans, drill is the realest version
of rap that exists,
with practically every artist
allegedly gang-affiliated.
While violence has been associated with rap
for decades, critics blame drill
for amplifying feuds between rival gangs.
At least 30 drill artists were killed in New York,
Chicago, and London in 2021 alone.
Fivio gained the top spot in the drill scene
after his predecessor was murdered two years ago.
One of the sad things that I recognize is,
a lot of drill artists have been killed.
-Yeah. -Why is that?
The "rapper," period,
is the most targeted person
in the world, I believe.
If one person go up,
everybody like, "Man, that nigga--
who that nigga think he is?"
That's all they know.
There's a lot of rappers dying
and going through it.
Why do you think drill in New York City
is so big right now?
Because it come from a real place,
-know what I'm saying? -[Alzo] Yeah.
Gang rivalries, easy-to-get guns,
livestreaming, and drill rap
are turning out to be a potentially deadly mix.
[reporter] In recent weeks, two drill rappers
have been murdered in Brooklyn.
[Alzo] With gun-related deaths
at their highest levels on record,
New York City mayor Eric Adams called for a ban
on drill-related videos
and social media posts in February,
saying that the viral beefs
displayed between artists online
were being played out in real life
on the city's streets.
It was beefs and disrespects
that all drove some of these incidents.
[Alzo] The NYPD referenced those same social media posts
and videos after rounding up 20 alleged gang members
in a mass arrest last spring.
They called it Operation Drilly.
[Alzo] Social media is how drill artists
build their audience, and they often rack up views
by dissing rival gang members and rappers on Instagram Live.
Their feeds can provoke swift
and sometimes deadly retribution.
[Alzo] One of the artists who embraces this approach
is Sha EK, a 19-year-old drill rapper
from the South Bronx who we attempted to meet
outside the Bronx Criminal Court
on his way into a hearing,
but we didn't even get that far.
[person shouts]
[horn honking]
[Alzo] We were just standing outside the courtroom,
waiting for Sha EK to go to see the judge,
and all of a sudden, this rough cat over here
from another set
threw up his gang signs,
and Sha EK and all of his crew
just ran after old boy,
and the next thing you know, police come out from nowhere.
[Alzo] We later learned that this fight stemmed from a beef
Sha EK had with another drill artist
who dissed his recently deceased father
in one of his songs.
Talk to me about beef in drill rap.
Why is there so much beef in it?
[hip-hop beat playing over speakers]
Suck my dick
[Alzo] This is one of the lyrics.
"How your last name Bills and his last name Rich
"and both of y'all niggas is broke?
I be takin' niggas as a joke."
[Alzo] "Fuck ya manager, he gettin' smoked.
"Them bullets gonna hit his body,
hollow tips, they gon' make him choke."
[laughter]
Much of your career has been built on dissing people.
Do you do it because you think
that's what the audience wants to hear?
And what about the potential consequences?
[Alzo] For just about every drill artist
who tells stories of the hood,
the dream is that success will help them escape it.
But the closer they get, the more targeted they become.
TDott Woo was on the cusp
when he was gunned down in his own neighborhood.
His death is rumored to have been in retaliation
for the murder of a rival gang member the day before.
[reporter] Tonight these groups gather
to remember 22-year-old Tahjay Dobson,
but many knew him by his rap name, TDott Woo.
[person] Cannibalism amongst our own people.
That has to stop.
We have to be out here standing up,
telling the young brothers not to do this.
Everybody's just killing each other, killing each other,
so I'm just--want God to stop the gun violence
and make, like, stuff work.
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[Preem] I got you, like, right there.
Right there.
[Alzo] In large part, drill music is associated
-with violence and killing. -[Preem] Mm-hmm.
Why do you think that's the case?
I mean, 'cause that's what we have in our community a lot,
most of the time, and that's what we glorify.
Guns, money, violence,
it gets concentrated in our neighborhood because,
one, that's the fastest way to get to where you wanna go.
-Yeah. -You know what I'm saying?
[Alzo] And what is it about these cats
where they feel the need to drop names?
It's almost like they self-snitching.
It's for disrespect because it's a--
it's a tit-for-tat thing.
Not for nothing, I got the same feeling.
They took my brother, you see what I'm saying?
I'm a little older than these sort of cats,
so it's just like...
It's like, "I know better. Do I wanna do better?"
It's all about the mindset and jealousy
that we just inbred in the hood.
[Alzo] If you're trying to get out of it,
and a lot of these young cats see
one of the main ways to get out
is to rap about the violence
that they see in the environment,
and then rapping about it can lead to the violence
that they talking about.
-[Preem] Yeah. -To where even if you do...
get a chance to make money and get out,
you may not be able to spend it.
-[Preem] Yeah. -Because you dead.
[Preem] Yeah. Yeah.
It's definitely a trap.
Yeah, it's the trap.
[Alzo] Law enforcement is trying to break
this cycle of violence among drill artists.
The NYPD has a task force
dedicated solely to monitoring the hip-hop community.
Derrick Parker, better known as the Hip-Hop Cop,
started this unit back in the '90s.
Do you think it's the music
that's making the youth turn to violence?
It's part of everything. It's the music.
It's the culture. It's social media.
Remember, art imitates life.
I mean, you can say art imitates life,
but it's also art can reflect life.
-[Derrick] Right. -[Alzo] You know?
And a lot of what they're seeing in the street
is what they're talking about in their music.
When the music itself that you talk about
or you rap about becomes true to life,
where, for example, you're on trial
for murder of a certain individual
and then in that rap music song,
you talk about killing him or shooting him,
this is why the government's gone after them.
But what about the music industry itself?
What about the record labels who incentivize these artists
rapping about what they rap about
and doing what they do in the streets?
Trust me, I'm with you with that because--
but you're right.
It starts with the record labels as well.
They should be held accountable, too,
about these artists.
[Alzo] When artists stir up shit,
it gets a lot of attention and, eventually,
multimillion-dollar record contracts.
But with all the recent killings,
some in the industry are trying to change that.
[Rocky] Come on, we wanna hear you a cappella. Come on.
Who am I signing tonight? That's the question. Come on.
[Alzo] We're about to meet this guy Rocky Lee,
and he represents a lot of new, up-and-coming drill artists.
Right now, he's having a session
where he's actually auditioning new artists
to see if he wants to sign them to his company.
Rocky Lee signed TDott Woo to a record contract
on the same day he was murdered.
After TDott's death,
he stopped other drill artists on his label
from using specific names
when rapping about rivalries in their lyrics.
RIP, Naz, they know I'ma tweak, bitch
Niggas flew, I already peeped it
Fuck everybody, I stay on defense, glah
[Rocky] That's that drill right there.
Do these rappers really understand
the risk that they taking when they get in the booth
and talking about who they killed
and they disrespecting people,
you know, that then died and all of that?
[Rocky] I'ma be honest, that's 100%.
You a big artist, I'ma rap about you
so you can come rap about me.
It's a publicity stunt, but it's also dangerous.
That's a hell of a publicity stunt
if death is maybe on the other end of it.
As artists risk their lives to make it big,
major record labels go out of their way to make bank
while keeping their hands clean.
They often subcontract smaller labels like Rocky's
to limit their liability.
Big CEO labels don't care
about who they sign or what they sign.
Or they'll do a third-party signing
where they'll get a label like me,
"Yo, if you sign so-and-so, we'll pick you up
and we'll pay you directly for that artist.
We just don't want the issues on our hands."
Do you think major record labels encourage artists
to perpetuate violence in the music?
I say yes and no.
They're not doing it directly,
but by you letting them keep doing it
and after you seeing more than ten people died,
you're encouraging this now 'cause you're paying them.
[Alzo] Given the money involved,
the NYPD is now targeting
the revenue that artists and labels make.
They're preventing venues in the city
from allowing controversial artists on their stage,
but if they consider the risk of violence to be low,
permission to perform is granted.
lively percussive music
[person] A'ight, let's go.
[Alzo] Some drill artists are attempting
to work with law enforcement
to keep drill from being a magnet for violence
and protect the art form.
Aah, we right here! Yo, bro, nah.
When you say, "Where my OG fans at?" bro,
go into singing "Beam," a cappella.
That's how you start it off, bro.
Hold on, hold on.
[screams]
[Alzo] Brooklyn-based drill artists
Kyle Richh, Tata, and Jenn Carter
aren't even old enough to drink yet,
but they've already emerged
as some of the most promising newcomers in the drill scene,
and they haven't relied on dissing their rivals by name
to break out.
[Alzo] Because of this, the NYPD is allowing them
to perform in DRILL NATION,
the first drill concert to take place in New York City
since mayor Eric Adams' crackdown.
Some folks in the drill scene feel like
they need to rap about all of the rah-rah and the killing
to get the views and to get the likes.
Do you feel like that's what the audiences wanna hear?
Dissing equals controversy.
A lot of rappers, they like to diss
'cause they know that's what get the views.
That's when the blogs is posting.
They amping the shit up.
That's how niggas get their attention.
But we not like that, feel me? We different, bro.
-So y'all don't diss? -Nah.
[Alzo] Wait, hold up. Hold up, Tata.
You leaned and giggled when you said that.
Hold up, hold up, why you put your mask on
when you said that?
Ain't gon' lie, bro, for me,
if you say something about me, I'ma say something about you.
-[Kyle] Hell yeah, bro. -[Tata] But it's just not
the first thing that comes to my mind
when I'm writing a song, bro.
[bouncer] If anybody got a VIP ticket,
make y'all way to the front.
[Alzo] Shortly after we met them,
Kyle Richh, Jenn Carter, and Tata were signed
to a multimillion-dollar deal with Republic Records.
For them, drill continues to provide a space
to describe their world,
and if they can avoid getting caught up
in the culture of violence,
it may provide an opportunity to escape it.
What does drill mean to y'all?
For me, I rap based on how I feel, bro.
There's mad shit going around me.
Only way for me to express my feelings is through a pen.
I put everything in my music, bro.
Everything.
[Jenn] I started rapping,
and my first song, I wrote it as, like, a story.
Like, it was just me talking about what I was going through,
people I lost, [indistinct],
niggas that was going to jail at the time.
That's how I deal with my emotions.
[Alzo] Yeah.
'Cause I don't be talking to nobody.
-That's real. -Yeah.
[Alzo] When it's all said and done,
what is the main objective of this whole thing?
[Tata] I want me and my niggas to be comfortable, bro.
Just living how we wanna live, bro.
[Kyle] I wanna leave a positive impact
on the community and everybody around me.
Me personally,
I wanna be able to support my moms and my sister.
These niggas, too, bro, I started with them,
and I wanna--I wanna be finished with them too.
dramatic music
[crowd chanting] BBM!
[cheers and applause]
[announcer] Announcing the arrival of president-elect
Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr.
[cheers and applause]
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. just arrived for his inauguration,
and the people here are so excited.
The mood is euphoric.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., popularly known as Bongbong
or by his initials, BBM,
won the presidential election this May by a landslide,
replacing populist leader Rodrigo Duterte,
who's run the Philippines for the last six years
and has been called the Trump of the East.
He pushed the country towards authoritarianism,
killed thousands in his brutal war on drugs,
weakened trust in mainstream media,
and tanked the economy,
pushing more Filipinos into poverty.
Now the country has a new leader.
[people] speaking Filipino
[Natashya] But Marcos Jr. is not a new face.
He comes from a notorious political dynasty
and represents much of the same as strongman Duterte.
He ran in a campaign that was essentially a continuity
of Duterte's leadership,
who remained widely popular despite his tyrannical rule.
It's a historic moment,
particularly since Marcos Jr. was elected
almost four decades after the People Power Revolution
ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.,
his own father, in the mid-'80s.
[Ferdinand Jr.] I once knew a man
who saw what little had been achieved since independence
in a land of people
with the greatest potential for achievement,
and yet they were poor.
But he got it done.
So will it be with his son.
[Natashya] Marcos Sr. ruled for 21 years.
He declared martial law in 1972
under the guise of increasing threats of communism
in an attempt to hold on to power.
foreboding music
[Natashya] Marcos Sr.'s brutal regime,
which enjoyed U.S. support,
killed, imprisoned, and tortured
tens of thousands of Filipinos.
[people screaming]
He's also accused of stealing billions of dollars
from government coffers,
leaving the Philippines in massive debt
and shattering the economy.
The Marcos family's excesses are well-documented,
from Marcos Sr.'s wife Imelda's 3,000 pairs of shoes
to her displacement of hundreds of Filipinos
to create a safari park.
But Marcos Jr. hasn't acknowledged
these frivolities, let alone the atrocities
under his father's dictatorship,
and his victory marks an astounding return of the clan
to the country's highest office.
Now fears are growing that democracy is backsliding,
and many are wondering how the Philippines got here.
foreboding music
[Natashya] Jaime Olaivar lived through martial law.
His father was detained during Marcos' regime
for exposing military wrongdoing.
After Duterte threw his weight behind Marcos Jr.,
Olaivar became a supporter,
a reality his children can't understand.
I believe that no foolish leader will...
...make the same mistake.
The Marcos family didn't even admit
the mistakes that they did.
[Jaime] My concern is only economics.
Marcos.
Is it frustrating to you that your father uses
different sources of information from you?
The situation that we're facing right now is very hard.
These are fake news.
These are made just to get views.
It's really sad,
and we're very afraid of what's going to happen.
[Natashya] Many Filipinos, like Jaime Olaivar,
are particularly vulnerable to disinformation online.
The Philippines is often referred to
as the social media capital of the world,
where people spend four hours of their day
on social platforms,
almost double the global average,
and data is dirt cheap here.
The Marcos family denies engaging
in disinformation campaigns,
but analysts say the Marcoses brilliantly harnessed
and weaponized social media for years,
enabling influencers and vloggers
to amplify their version of history.
Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza is a journalist
who has been studying disinformation
in the Philippines since 2016.
What sort of disinformation have you seen
about the Marcoses that benefited them?
[Gemma] The thing that's really significant
in circulated-- and you see this here--
is the keyword about the communist insurgency.
And you needed that to explain why
Marcos had to declare martial law.
[Natashya] This is incredible because you see
that the narrative on martial law
started as early as 2016.
-There is a spike there. -[Gemma] Yes.
They only talked about martial law
in the context of denying abuses,
but what they did was, they ramped up more
on supposed "achievements" of the Marcoses.
[Natashya] The massive amount of disinformation
spread across the country in 2016
had a dramatic effect on public opinion.
After weeks of negotiations, we managed to speak to a man
who didn't work for Marcos Jr.'s camp specifically
but was part of the troll farms
responsible for that spike.
What would have been an appropriate description
for the work that you were actually doing?
Did it matter that these memes or accusations were factual?
And what do you think the impact
of disinformation was on the elections?
[Natashya] Among those who tipped the polls
to Marcos' favor were
the most economically disadvantaged voters.
The worsening poverty in the country
and perceived failures of liberal democracy,
along with the myths spread online,
ignited nostalgia in Filipinos for Marcos Sr.'s iron rule.
[Natashya] Even for Filipinos
with painful experiences of martial law,
the revision of history online helped earn their votes.
But one of the key reasons
Marcos Jr. was able to secure the presidency
is thanks to Duterte,
with whom the Marcoses unified forces.
In 2016, Duterte controversially allowed
the burial of Marcos Sr.
in the National Heroes' Cemetery,
essentially whitewashing the martial law period
and helping rebrand the Marcos name.
Among the recent wave of authoritarian leaders
across the globe, Duterte was one of the first
to ignite distrust in mainstream media,
allowing disinformation to fester.
His drug war, targeted towards the poor,
was to them tangible proof of discipline and impact.
[crowd cheering]
[crowd cheering wildly]
[Natashya] Now many fear that democracy's at stake,
especially since Marcos' vice president
is none other than Duterte's daughter, Sara.
One of the key issues the new administration must face
is accountability for her father's drug war,
which the U.S. and the UN have condemned.
Just like Duterte, Marcos Jr. said
he won't help the International Criminal Court
investigate extrajudicial killings
committed during the war on drugs.
[Ferdinand Jr.] We have a functioning judiciary,
and that's why I do not see the need
for a foreigner to come
and do the job for us.
[Natashya] With a Marcos-Duterte alliance,
drug war victims believe
they may never find justice for their loved ones,
especially since no one has been held accountable
for the abuses under martial law
from nearly four decades ago.
We're about to meet a mother whose two sons were killed
in Duterte's drug war.
It's been five years,
and she's still searching for answers.
somber music
Fifty-seven-year-old Sarah Celiz's two sons,
Almon and Dicklie,
were allegedly murdered by police in 2017.
Almon was a victim of mistaken identity,
while Dicklie was last seen with cops
before his tortured body was found.
Celiz is now left to care for 11 of her grandchildren.
How many months after Almon died did Dicklie die?
-[Sarah] Six. -Just six months?
[Natashya] What is it that you want for your sons?
[Natashya] Do you believe you will find justice
under a Marcos-Duterte administration?
[Natashya] This year marks 50 years
since martial law was declared.
Carmelo Crisanto, who lived through martial law,
is working to preserve evidence of the regime.
[Carmelo] Inside these boxes are the dockets...
and stories.
[Natashya] Wow.
[Carmelo] I would say this is
11,103 horror stories.
They're terrifying because many of these atrocities
happened to ordinary people.
But how many were hurt by the martial law period?
It may be actually more than 200,000.
Is there any fear that with the new leadership,
these might disappear?
The fear is there.
My task is to digitize all of this
so that we will always remember.
Has anyone been held accountable for these crimes?
The essential truth is, not one state officer,
military, police has ever been convicted
for gross human rights violations.
That's a sad fact.
That's the kind of culture of impunity
that has prevailed.
unsettling music
[Natashya] Authoritarian leaders around the world
are closely watching the historic comeback
of the Marcos family to power.
Their return is strengthening
the wave of strongman politics
not just in the Philippines but globally,
serving as a warning sign of what distortion of history
and disinformation can accomplish
when left unchecked.
dramatic music