ABSTRACT
Despite a long history of policing against Black music subcultures, mainstream criminology has shied away from exploring their discriminatory suppression by law enforcement agencies. Understanding how Black music genres are policed as sonically disturbing and lyrically suspicious, however, exposes why they are targeted as sources of deviant behaviour in the first place. Drawing on UK grime, UK drill and Brazilian baile funk as examples of contemporary rap that are heavily criminalised, this chapter (re)introduces Black music genres as victims of institutionally racist processes of state regulation and social control that police rap music as unwelcome noise, and treat rappers as a threatening and uncivil presence in urban public space.
