Shortly after the deaths of two aspiring rappers earlier this year, New York City mayor Eric Adams appeared to take a hard line against drill rap, stressing in a February speech that social-media companies should pull the genre’s displays of gun violence from their apps, comparing the removal to Trump’s Twitter suspension. His words sparked a backlash as they not only seemed to toy with the idea of censorship but also evoked the language of authorities’ long-standing moral panic over music created by Black and brown artists.
Adams, a former NYPD cop, walked back his comments after a meeting with several rappers — including Fivio Foreign and Maino — which he described as a…
