Drill rapper, 17, offered £150k record deal as he awaited murder trial
A TEENAGE drill rapper jailed for life for murdering a rival gang member was offered a £150,000 music deal while awaiting trial.
Jayden O’Neill-Crichlow, 17, raps under the name SJ and has performed with former BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood.
A member of the Original Farm Boys collective, he raps alongside Kemani Duggan, whose father Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in 2011, leading to riots in London. O’Neill-Crichlow was part of a group armed with knives, a sword, a handgun and a shotgun that cornered father- of- one Kamali Gabbidon-Lynck, 19, in a hairdresser’s in Wood Green, north London, and stabbed him to death.
It came after his friend Jason Fraser, 20, was stabbed eight times and shot. He survived, partly because Mr Gabbidon-Lynck distracted the attackers by driving at them.
The group later bragged about the shocking violence in a rap video.
O’Neill- Crichlow, a former youth footballer, was offered a recording contract while in jail after being arrested on May 16 last year following the February 22 murder, the court heard. He and four other gang members – Sheareem Cookhorn, 21, Tyrell Graham, 18, and Shane Lyons and Ojay Hamilton, both 17 – were all jailed for life at the Old Bailey on Monday.
The court erupted in violence during sentencing when a man climbed over the rail of the public gallery and attacked prison and police officers.
A video of O’Neill-Crichlow’s track, Youngest in Charge, was posted to the OFB collective’s YouTube page in June last year and has been viewed more than 10.7million times.
The song refers to ‘splashing’ rivals – meaning stabbing – and features the lyrics ‘I’ve just seen an opp [rival gang member], let me take him out’, followed by gunshot sounds. Last June a performance hosted by Westwood featuring the killer and other rappers was uploaded to the DJ’s own YouTube channel. Mr Gabbidon- Lynck’s mother Melanie has called for radio stations to stop promoting drill music, which often involves gangsters goading each other into violence.
‘Why is it justifiable for music to be released about children killing one another and celebrating murders?’ she said.
O’Neill-Crichlow, Lyons and Hamilton were jailed for a minimum of 21 years each for murder. Graham and Cookhorn were found guilty of Mr Gabbidon-Lynck’s murder and the attempted murder of Mr Fraser. Cookhorn will serve at least 28 years and Graham 25 years.