Over the last few years, ‘road’ culture has seeped into popular mainstream consciousness, influencing everything from fashion to the rise of UK drill and grime music, chicken shop reviewers, comedy skits, memes, brand endorsements and collaboration deals. Many would say this is a golden era for the culture, especially when we look at the recent award successes of the likes of Skepta, J Hus and Stormzy.

But whilst road culture is celebrated and deemed as ~cool~ in mainstream digital spaces, those who are considered ‘road’ (like every-day-person-on-the-street-with-300-followers-on-Insta road) have a stigma attached to them. Think about it: if someone called you ‘road’, you wouldn’t entirely be comfortable with that label. It is difficult to deny that members of this culture are often depicted as violent, undereducated and poor people who spend most of their time outside on the streets or on the stairs of an estate block, trapping or riding out on opps and other activities. Generally, they hold a stigma of being a scourge to their community.

Though not entirely the sole machine perpetuating the stigma, the media’s crusade against the hoodie has really helped to demonise the tracksuit by portraying it as a uniform for criminals, and although there are many other outfit choices, it’s common knowledge that the tracksuit is synonymous with road culture. So subsequently, by demonising the hoodie, the whole road community gets demonised even though wearing a tracksuit is not proof of criminal intent. Perhaps it’s worn to reflect the casual and relaxed attitude of its people? Or, maybe it’s just for comfortability and warmth? The style and fashion of the roads has often been overlooked in regard to its influential power amongst millennials, but over the last few years, many brands have begun to recognise this potential.

It’s no coincidence, then, that the popularity of puffer jackets, side pouches, sports brand sponsorships and even Skepta’s SK Air Nike collaboration coincided with the popularity of grime music. It’s also important to note that much of the popularity of the fashions, and the whole culture by extension, is due to the fact that it is fetishised by a particular group of society: white middle-class youths. All over social media, we see examples of this demographic visiting chicken shops and areas that carry that working-class aesthetic like it’s a day out at the safari. Often, the culture is almost treated as some sort of Halloween costume and this heavily contributes to the reduction of the actual people of the culture and subsequently the stigmatisation that they face.

I have been in so many Twitter arguments and face-to-face debates as to whether grime and UK rap (or “road rap”, if you want to call it that) are to be blamed for the negative portrayal of road culture and its people. There is usually huge emphasis on the violent, misogynistic, crime-endorsing content of the music and how it encourages these issues within the culture. Now, although there are many other variables to consider, I agree with that notion in the sense that it may perpetuate such ideologies, but it’s not the source of the issues within this community. Regardless, I always direct people to consider a different way of looking at the music. I tell them to look past the flashing images of trapping or flamboyantly spending money on a new Roley or violence against pagans/opps/anyone silly enough to try a ting.

Look past those images, put them to the side for a moment, and consider the context which these images spring from. What purpose does this music serve to the artists and the listeners who come from a similar background to the artists? Life in an inner-city, low-income council estate is not an easy thing. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but most of the time it’s just pure unimaginable madness. I want you to consider two possibilities: one, where you grow up on an estate, have a decent childhood and teens, then go to university or get a job and not really get what all the fuss is about; the second, where you grow up on the same estate and somehow find yourself in the midst of drugs, guns and knives, being swept up in the turmoil of losing friends and your freedom, but eventually discover that you have a talent for music and that music helps your sanity and offers you a viable career path.

Rappers and grime MCs who have grown up amongst the trauma of drugs and violence potentially benefit from talking about it in their music, as it allows them to process it. According to Howard Pinderhughes, a professor who looks at ‘Trauma At The Community Level’, young people who grow up experiencing traumatising events and conditions are significantly affected, and this is usually manifested in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) related issues. For Pinderhughes, in the case of community trauma, the ‘Post’ in PTSD should in fact stand for ‘persistent’ or ‘pervasive’ as the trauma is ongoing and yet to past (unlike a soldier who returns from the war). The role music plays in relieving mental health issues, such as PTSD and depression, is well documented. So is it not so that the music created by these artists—who talk about their everyday traumatic experiences—is indeed their therapy?

Let’s look at K-Trap, one of the most honest and complex rappers in the UK at the moment. K-Trap recently dropped an absolutely fire mixtape called The Last Whip, and this body of work ticks all the boxes of what we expect from the new wave of UK drill-rap. But what is important about the mixtape is that K-Trap invites us into a private session of processing trauma and self-reflection. In one song, “Sauce On Spill”, he tells us of a young boy who carries a kitchen knife that he has previously used to stab someone. Usually, one would get rid of a knife that has been used in a stabbing, but this boy refuses to do so because of the volatility of the streets and also because it originally belongs to his mother. The boy is a walking paradox—a unique intersection where fear and maternal attachment frame the traumatic truth of this particular incident. K-Trap acknowledges how crazy and twisted this situation is, expressing his desire to leave this world; a sentiment his revisits from another angle on “Paper Plans” (his ad-lib game is immense on this one).

If you listen to many grime and UK rap artists, they often talk about wanting to leave street life behind. Here, K-Trap de-glamourises the bando, stating that its terrible conditions are sufficiently below that of a legal job (normally, in other rap songs, you’d get the impression that a traphouse is a bouncy-castle land of fluffy drugs and easy money). Moreover, his disenchanted attitude towards riding out on big drops reinforces this idea. He doesn’t want to participate in this move but, somehow—maybe for financial reasons—he still ends up in the car with a strap. K-Trap lives up to his name, in the sense that he seems to be trapped in a world of drugs and violence. He gives the impression that he does what he does to maintain, but he would rather leave this life behind.

This is the type of shit you tell your therapist. Some people are fortunate enough to be able to have access to a therapist, some people keep a journal or a blog, and some people—like K-Trap—turn to music. Furthermore, I think we should not only recognise the music of road culture as a form of community music therapy but as a financial gateway for many of the young working-class to improve their lives. And whilst we’re recognising that, I want us to also recognise the culture not as a brutish or comedic troupe, and its people not as violent and undereducated criminals. Instead, I want us to recognise that without road culture, we wouldn’t have grime, and the landscape of UK rap would look very different from what it is today.