Hip Hop and it's Flirtation With Drugs

What does the songs "White lines" by Grandmaster and Melle Mel, "Purple Pills" by Eminem and D12, "Perkys Calling" by Future, and "Can’t Feel My Face" by The Weekend all have in common? Drugs! Hip Hop has had a love affair with drugs from its onset, a love that is seemingly tied in deep to the soul of the Hip hop community, on many levels.

Where did this love for drugs start?

As is usually the answer in the life story of children, it started at home in the neighborhood. Hip hop was originally birthed in New York, around the timeframe of 1973. And for a while it was mostly positive. Dancing and being the better MC was the thing. Hip Hop was in love with life and the life of many revolved around Hip Hop. New York City was booming all the while in the drug trade. Marijuana was always a part of the drug trade but relatively minor. Heroin and cocaine, which later would be cooked and named crack, were the big drugs in the neighborhood and those in the boroughs of New York would watch their neighborhood hustlers go from broke and gritty to polished and refined almost overnight with the sale of these potent drugs.

The sale of these drugs and the epidemic brought by them Nixon’s War on Drugs and the Rockefeller Laws, which was purposely brought to target the melanin-filled community. Hip Hop, a genre that from the onset has been based on self-expression and fighting oppression, began to embrace the neighborhood “dopeman” who had defied the odds and the oppressive government alike. Many even began to look up to the local hustlers.

Fast forward to the 90’s and the whole temperament on drugs had changed. UGK dropped “Pocket Full of Stones” and No Limits’ Master P dropped “Mr. Ice Cream Man” suggesting that in Hip Hop culture it was anything but a war on drugs. Drugs had become seen as way of bucking the system and an exit out of the systematic oppression that the darker skinned community were faced with on the day to day. These rappers became seen as not only hustlers but heroes who had overcame their odds to become rich. The community began to fall in love with the very idea of finding a way out by going against the system. Henceforth the community began to fall in love with the idea of selling drugs and “hustling” to gain wealth, financial stability, and ultimately power.

Sliding into the 2000’s, T.I dropped “I’m Serious”, an album considered by many to be the actual beginning of trap music; a genre whose artists rap about hustling drugs to survive. This was followed up years later by Young Jeezy’s Thug motivation 101, and the scene exploded! Trap music took off, with other big named rappers such as Gucci and Yo Gotti joining the fray.

Hip Hop’s audience, up and coming teens, were heavily influenced. Thug Motivation 101 went double platinum and the number of trap rappers skyrocketed as did the mention of drugs in music.

Why? Because no matter how far time has progressed, the Black Community is still weighed down by systematic racism. They are still feeling the pressure of having to fight an uphill battle. And they seek a way out of this cycle. It is not even surprising that the newer generation of Hip Hop has shifted to celebrating using drugs like cocaine and Percocet as much as hustling, because the motivation behind it is as clear as day.

Hip Hops flirtation with drugs is its flirtation with the one thing every person and thing on this planet wants but the members of this community, the African American seems to be consistently denied in form. Freedom!