A known killer was sentenced to life in prison for killing a 16-year-old London student in 2009 in a horrific crash at a bakery.
The other man, known as Ten, is a balaclava-wearing rapper from south London who rose to a small profile with the drill genre of music, which deals with themes of prison life, crime and bloodshed.
Two people with once separate identities become embroiled in the UK after a tabloid investigation this week claimed Jake Farhi, conditionally released for bakery murder, and artist Ten are the same person. It happened.
That conclusion, in turn, shed new light on TEN's lyrics about murder, bloodshed and weapons. It also contributed to the ongoing discussion about drill music, a style of hip-hop that artists claim is a creative way to express their experiences. But authorities have accused the genre of playing a role in inciting violence.
Mr Fakhri was found guilty of murder in the death of 19-year-old Jimmy Mizen, who was fatally injured when a glass baking dish was thrown at him during a fight. The plate hit Mizen and shattered him, severing an artery in his neck and causing him to collapse from blood loss.
At the time, Fakhri said he was innocent and had acted in self-defense. He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 14 years, and was conditionally released in 2023.
A day after this article was published in The Sun on Wednesday, Mr Fakhri was taken into custody for violating the rules of his conditional release, a Probation Service spokesperson said in a statement.
The nature of the violation was not specified, nor was there any clear connection between him and TEN. But the newspaper said the Mizen family deserved more than “watching their son's murderer brag shamelessly about his heinous crimes.”
TEN raps about being a “street killer” and “brandishing a knife.” Some of the lyrics include swear words. “Have you ever seen a man's soul fly out of his eyes and his breath disappear? I wanted more and made fewer mistakes. I saw blood spilling on the same floor where he had been left. I saw it.”
“The fact that he's making money off of what he did to our son, killing people, makes money,” Barry Mizen, Jimmy Mizen's father, said in an interview Saturday. I think that's wrong,” he said.
Margaret Mizen, Jimmy Mizen's mother, described her experience listening to TEN's music and hearing explicit references to her son's murder in the lyrics: He took Jimmy's life. ”
But the Mizens are also concerned that rap music like Ten's can encourage violence and drugs among impressionable young people.
“It's almost like a war on our streets, and this kind of music is aiding and abetting it,” Mizen said.
Britain's national broadcaster, the BBC, came under fire last year for featuring TEN's music on a radio show introducing new British artists. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office told the BBC that the broadcaster needed to “answer some questions very quickly”.
A BBC spokesperson said in a statement that it played two of Ten's songs but did not include the graphic lyrics highlighted in the tabloid report. There are no further plans to perform Ten's music, she said, adding, “We were unaware of his background and in no way condoned his actions.”
Attempts to contact Farhi on Saturday were unsuccessful, and the Instagram and X accounts linked to the TEN Spotify page have been made private. A statement posted to his Instagram account on Friday, appearing to be from Mr Fakhri, apologized to the Mizen family “if my words have caused any harm or distress”.
“I want to make it clear that none of my lyrics are directed at victims or their families,” he said, adding that the lyrics were “artistic expressions” of life in prison. “I'm not going to romanticize those experiences, but they are part of my past that shaped me,” he said.
Since his release, he has focused on rebuilding his life, he said, adding that he has completed his sentence. He said he never intended for anyone to die.
“All I want is a chance to move forward with my life,” he said.
Born in Chicago more than a decade ago, drill music has spread to cities such as London, New York and Stockholm, sparking debates about the balance between censorship and public safety.
Artists and fans argue that these songs are a form of self-expression that reflects the frustrations of struggling communities where issues such as gang warfare, gun violence and poverty are part of their lives. There is. Some groups have criticized the focus on drill rap as discriminatory.
But authorities and officials have accused the music of glorifying and inciting violence, and have even scrutinized the song as evidence of potential criminal activity. Drill rappers say they have been banned from performing in New York, where violent crime has skyrocketed in recent years, and are under strict control in London.
“It's not that I want him to stay in prison,” Mizen said, adding that Farhi could have chosen to write music expressing remorse for what he did. “That means I want him to change.”
She was worried that all this attention would further enhance the fame of her son's killer.
“He will become a celebrity in some people's eyes,” she says. “That's the culture we live in. And that's what worries me.”
