The DC drill scene has been blowing up over the past few years
with the rise of popular rappers like No Savage and Walk-Down Will.
But behind the music is a deadly war that has been going on for decades.
Let’s take a closer look at the War in DC:
Simple City vs 37th.
Washington DC is the US capital and usually tied to politicians and the government.
But for a small city, it also has some of the most crime in the country.
The rise of the DC drill scene has showed the world a different side of the city,
where shootings and murder happen every day.
Two hoods in Southeast DC – Simple City and 37th
– have been at war since the 90's.
But now the beef is spilling over into the music.
Rappers from both hoods have started to get attention
by dissing each other in songs, which has led to more violence in the streets.
Simple City is a hood surrounding Benning Terrace, a public housing complex
in the Benning Ridge neighborhood.
Rappers from Simple City include Walk down Will, Balla and Disrespectful Swag.
37th is a hood right around the corner, like 5 minutes from Simple City.
Rappers from 37th include Shy Glizzy, No Savage and Young Jose.
37th first got attention in the rap game with the rise of Shy Glizzy and the Glizzy gang.
Shy started making waves in the early 2010s with tracks like Awwsome and White Girl.
He was part of the XXL 2015 Freshman Class.
Plus, he was featured on the 2017 track Crew along with GoldLink and Brent Faiyez,
which got nominated for a Grammy.
So Shy Glizzy put 37th on the map
and gave them the upper hand on their rivals from Simple City,
who had no popular rappers at that point.
But Shy had a sound and style that was a lot different than todays drill sound.
In April 2016, a Simple City rapper named OG Man Man dropped a track called Truth,
which made headlines for its wild level of disrespect.
In the song, the rapper takes shots at another rival rapper named Big Flock,
who had accused him of being a snitch.
In the video, OG Man Man goes to the gravesite of one of Big Flock’s homies, C-Diddy.
He can be seen pouring champagne and burning things near the grave,
the ultimate sign of disrespect.
It wasn’t a huge song,
but it made headlines in the rap media because of how wild it was.
Then, just a few weeks later OG Man Man was shot
on the 4400 block of F Street in his own hood of Simple City.
He was at a cookout when he got shot
and there are rumors that he was backdoored by his own people.
Some thought he took things too far with the Truth video and had to be dealt with.
After that, Simple City didn’t have many rappers who were making waves.
But that all changed with the rise of DC drill.
The movement started gaining attention with a rapper named No Savage from 37th.
No Savage started dropping music in 2019
and built a buzz with grimy street bangers like Reaper and Angelz and Gangstas.
His music started blowing up after one of his old songs got leaked
and everybody in the neighborhood started passing it around.
The song wasn’t even fully finished and didn’t even have a title,
but people were feeling it so much that it helped him blow up in the city.
Early on it seemed like No Savage and his homies had problems with the OG rapper from 37th,
Shy Glizzy.
The younger generation felt like Shy blew up and didn’t do enough for the hood.
But they eventually put those problems aside
and he and No Savage were featured on the track Mood Switch in 2021.
So, it seemed like 37th had the DC rap game on lock
with one of the biggest artists from the DMV
and one of the hottest up-and-coming rappers linking up and repping the neighborhood.
But it ain’t take long for street politics to get mixed in with the music.
In 2019, No Savage and Young Jose dropped a track called Shots for Everybody,
where they took direct shots at their rivals in Simple City.
Balla and Disrespectful Swag, two rappers from Simple City
would clap back with their own diss track over the same beat called Everybody Gets Shot.
Balla and No Savage are actually cousins.
They were originally cool with each other, even though they were from rival hoods.
But at one-point Balla allegedly shot at Young Jose,
who is one of No Savage’s closest homies.
Young Jose would rap about it on Shots for Everybody, dropping the line
“how you miss all them shots with a chop”.
This would force No Savage to cut ties with Balla and start dissing him.
Balla would respond to Young Jose’s diss by rapping
“yeah I missed all them shots with a chop
I think this rollie ***** up my aim”,
confirming the rumor.
At some point, No Savage was also shot at and grazed in the head.
Balla would address this rumor on the track Flush Em where he raps
“Hit in his head, you ain’t slide
how you savage?”
So, tension was heating up
and the beef was making its way into the music for the world to see.
Around that time, No Savage’s rival would start making music
under the name Walk Down Will.
This created competition over who would be the hottest up-and-coming rapper from the DMV.
Walk Down Will started rapping in late 2019 but has already built a solid buzz in the city.
Walk Down Will was already well known in the city before rap.
He is one of Simple City’s most active members and was known for putting in work.
He is originally from 501, a different hood in Southeast DC,
but moved to Simple City later on.
Since Walkdown Will has made his debut,
No Savage has continued to apply pressure to Simple City
and diss his opps at any chance he can get.
No Savage even had a rapper under him
named AhkDaClicka, who started making music just to diss the opps.
AhkDaClicka was originally from New York but raised in DC.
His rap name is a play on the 1080 Clickas, Walk Down Will’s gang,
which is meant to taunt his opps from Simple City.
Ahk turnt up the rivalry between 37th and Simple City
by dropping 2 back to back diss tracks in November and December 2019.
First, he dropped Yo2daBlow with JlowBG.
JlowBG is a rapper from 21st aka DaBlow.
On this track, both rappers took shots at Simple City,
which allegedly led to shootings in all three hoods.
But if that wasn’t enough, Ahk followed up with another diss track a few weeks later
called Straight Faxxs where he takes shots directly at Walk down Will.
On the track he raps
“Just give me a glock and point me to the opps
How your name walk down but you run
used to be 501”
So on the track, Ahk questions Will’s street cred
and disses him for claiming a different hood before switching to Simple City.
On the song he also talks about smoking on dead opps
and takes shots at the entire gang.
After Ahk dropped back-to-back disses, WalkDown Will was forced to respond.
Before that, he wasn’t known to talk about the beef in his music.
But once his name was dropped, he knew it was war.
A few days later, Walk down Will previewed his own diss track
called “Directed to Da Opps”.
On the track, he mocks Ahk and other members of 37th
for doing a lot of dissing but not knowing how to move right.
After Akh dropped Straight Faxx,
some of Walk Down Will’s homies caught the rapper lackin on the train without his gun.
Nothing happened, but they used this as a way to diss him for talking tough
and not being ready for the action.
Comon now, you supposed to be opping *****
Yeah get off the train comon
But the beef wasn’t just in the music and over the next few weeks
shootings popped off in both hoods.
The war between the two gangs been active since the ’90s
but the music only turned it up and made bodies start dropping.
On January 8th, 2020, police arrived to the 1300 block of 7th Street Northwest
after hearing gunshots at 11:30 pm.
There they found 18-year-old Malick Cisse aka Ahk Da Clikka shot in the head.
Police say he was targeted and that a white-colored SUV pulled up on him
and fired a shot, killing him.
After investigating,
police discovered that the rapper was set up by a female
who Dm’d him on Instagram.
The girl told him to meet her at Shaw Train Station at 11 pm.
So Ahk and another person went there to meet up with her.
She told them she was outside, but they couldn’t find her.
So Ahk’s friend went inside the train station to try to look for her,
while he waited outside.
At some point, after his friend left, a white SUV pulled up and shot Ahk
before smashing off.
His friend found him shot in the head after coming out of the train station.
He was rushed to the hospital but later pronounced dead.
Police searched his phone to find out why he was at the train station that night
which is when they found the DM’s from the girl
who never actually showed up to the train station.
After a few months of investigating,
police issued a warrant for Walk Down Will
in connection with the murder of Ahk Da Clicka.
They discovered that Walk Down Will had access to the girl’s Instagram account.
Plus, he had a reason for wanting AhkdaClicka dead,
after he made a diss song about him that went viral in the DC area.
But the rapper spent the next few months on the run while police tried to find him.
First, they tracked him to Cali by using pics he posted to his social media
to pinpoint his location.
But by the time they arrived, he was already gone.
They eventually caught up with him back in DC,
where he was shooting a music video for his track Warning.
The video dropped the day after he was arrested on May 8th, 2020.
The intro to the video shows a clip of the police
pulling up to the scene to arrest the Will
on charges of premeditated, first-degree murder while armed.
Since then , Walk Down Will has been sitting down fighting for his freedom.
He was denied a bond and will have to stay in jail until his trial,
which could take several years.
But while locked up, Will is staying productive
and keeping his name hot in DC.
He recently dropped a video for the song Talk of the Town
featuring Goonew back in October.
Balla recently did an interview
where he said that Will really had nothing to do with the murder,
but the police were just trying to pin it on him because he’s a hot rapper.
The feds don’t have much evidence to tie Will to the scene
other than the fact that he had access to the IG account that lured Ahk there.
But a lot of other people also had access to that account.
Plus, Will says he was shot on the same night Ahk was killed,
which provides him with an alibi.
But Ahk was unarmed when he got killed,
so it could not have been him who shot.
But the police say that Will just shot himself to throw the case.
In December 2020, Will did an interview from jail
where he seemed to be in good spirits and confident that he’d be coming home soon.
He said jail was like a playground to him
and he felt nothing but love from his city since he went away.
So even though things aint looking good right now,
there is hope that Will could come home and still have time to be a successful rapper.
It don’t seem like the war between 37th and Simple City will end any time soon.
But hopefully, the ones who found a way out through music make a change
before it's too late
to enjoy everything they've worked for.