Is Crack REALLY Wack?

Whenever I'm on any sort of Hip-Hop forum and we have those 'Who Do You Think Are The Top 3 producers', SOMEBODY will say 'kanYe West' (rightly so) and SOMEBODY in response will say some ol' bullshit like, he just takes a song, throws some drums on it and he gets a hot track. He don't do nothing but sample they say. Well, imma take after the Louis Vuitton Don today and basically pull a blogging jack move but this is more out of respect.

I was going through my old XXL magazines and I stumbled upon this amazing piece on the relationship between crack/cocaine and Hip-Hop/Rap...


What I've done however, is throw my proverbial drums on this incredible piece of writing and shortened it ever so slightly, (shoutout to all my semi-literate fans) for your reading pleasure...



Enjoy mothafuckers.

Crack is wack. It may be hard for younger readers to believe, but at one point, this was the dominant philosophy in Hip-Hop's musical output, if not in the life of the community. For instance in 1983, Melle Mel released 'White Lines (Don't Do It)'', which was meant to serve as a cautionary tale. But, even then, a conflict existed. According to legend, the song began as a celebration of cocaine use, not an admonition, and Mel was rumored to be skied-out during its recording. Tellingly, the tune sounds like a powdered trip through the Alps, except with a crazy bass line, lol.

This could be seen as Hip-Hop's early fascination of rap's long & conflicted relationship with cocaine. Rappers, like DMX & ODB have been involved with high-profile arrests in which they were discovered in possession of crack cocaine that was allegedly for personal use. If DMX's BET reality show 'Soul Of A Man' and post Def Jam album 'Year Of The Dog' was anything to go by, it's safe to say that DMX must've put Amy Winehouse on...

In today's scene, it seems that the world revolves around the trade of crack and all the highs and lows to a marriage of unbridled aspiration and deep despair. From rappers such as Lil' Wayne, who having been under the wing of Cash Money since he was knee-high to a brick and has no verifiable trafficking history to others such as Juelz Santana who's given himself the pop-friendly moniker as 'Human Crack In The Flesh', it seems cocaine rap aswell as stripper rap (Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur), is the choice of the new generation.

Authenticity, of course, is put at a premium in Hip-Hop. But while today's iceman MC's have their legitimate records of drug dealing, their rhymes relay the honest truth. Real or not, the stories told in the music don't often delve past the fiduciary gains of the drug trade. From form to function to focus, cocaine rap has fallen foul to the mentality style and design. Flows trump subject matter, thrills beat insight and the return is more important then the lives lost. The game has become trapped in the trap, and it's dope boy magic.

The illicit mythos created by the snow-shovelling starts is so dominant over the current rap scene that artists such as Outkast, Little Brother, kanYe West, Lupe Fiasco etc, are revered by so many simply because they've refrained from relying so heavily on crack talk.

While it would be a bit ignorant to use the entertainment medium to wholly convey the Black 'urban' experience, what crack rap implies about certain realities cannot be ignored. On his debut album, 'Reasonable Doubt', Jay-Z rhymed that...

''All us Blacks got is sports and entertainment''

...and whether art has imitated life or life has imitated art, that statement or other statements of its kind, have been taken on as a mantra by a generation, with the idea that drug selling is a last, but viable, alternative. A more dangerous option, but one much more practical, at least in terms of finding actual employment. As Pusha T once rhymed on the track 'Ultimate Flow' off the 'We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. II' mixtape, young Black males...

''Only know two ways of gettin', either rap or unwrap''

It seems contrary to what Biggie told us on 'Flava In Yo' Ear' (Remix)', UPS is NOT hiring. Trade schools, driving a cab and getting a college education aren't the most viable options either.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is that narcotics are no longer being presented as simply a way out of the ghetto, but as a practical road to real-life riches. On 'Ready To Die', Big was all too happy to leave the street life behind. ''I'm doin' rhymes now,'' he stated. ''Fuck the crimes now. Come on the Ave. I'm real hard to find now.'' But by his second album, due to perhaps a realization that the music industry is a one-sided relationship, with the artist as an underpaid whore, he'd revamped his image. Though he was, by all accounts, never more than a mid-level hustler, he emerged as a boss in his rhymes, boasting that...

''In '88, sold more powder than Johnson & Johnson.''

The underlying dispatch was that the Notorious B.I.G was simply not the alias of Christopher Wallace, but the cover of the Black Frank White, the Verbal Kint to a man who was not primarily a rapper, but a drug lord.

The upgrade though, from crack to cocaine in Hip-Hop is something that's been more recent though. Young Jeezy tells us...

''Soft beat faster, so, nigga fuck crack. It get you more time anyway. And I ain't cooking shit, you get more time anyway.''

Translation, lol? If you're looking for fast money, cocaine would be more profitable than crack because there's less preparation involved, and with the unequal sentencing guidelines dictated by U.S federal standards, it would behove you to invest your resources higher up the proverbial totem pole.

However, we must not forget that crack/cocaine Hip-Hop has been central to certain milestones in the genre. One is Jay-Z's 'Reasonable Doubt' which shifted conversation from the grind of hand-to-hand sales, all the way to out-of-town trips and overseas contacts. Another is Raekwon's 'Only Built For Cuban Linx..., a record that introduced an unbridled and a lasting affair with organized crime through a mafioso lens (regardless of the fact that the Italian mob stayed away from narcotics for most of its reign, and when they DID get into drugs, their operations were brought down with vigor).


In the wake of the aforementioned albums, and other post-millenia albums such as The Clipse's 2002 release 'Lord Willin', Crack Rap 2.0 has produced artists such as Young Jeezy, who manages to reveal details of the trade, running out of rubber bands, product wrapped in duct tape hidden in dirty laundry, without ever exposing those around him. Then there's Rick Ross, whose music captures the highs & expansiveness of the country's major drug port without ever reaching past generic descriptions of bricks and more cars, more clothes and more money to blow.


However, sometimes we have to forget the thrills, and the flossiness (yes, I made that word up in light of my sleep-deprived state) and acknowledge that crack rap is a sinister conspiracy. The victims of the mutually exploitative drug trade are rarely regarded in rap's action adventure version. Instead, they are treated like a lingering fraction of the equation, rounded up to the next thrill. Every crack rock that is sold, is sold to a real person, simple as that, but we have substituted that compassion into a punchline (albeit, I've heard excellent ones in my lifetime). Same could be said for the collateral casualties of the violence that accompanies the drug game, not the snitches, not the rival dealers, not the bad guys but the 13yr old yout caught up in the senseless turf wars or maybe that stray 5yr old girl who gets hit with the stray bullet.

In conclusion, rappers cannot be held solely responsible. We as consumers of the product have all agreed that, when it comes to our entertainment, we value aesthetics and fantasy over responsibility and reality. We can deny this all we want, but the covers, releases and charts don't lie. We all love that White Girl...




(Yes, I was finding any sort of reason to put her picture. Dammmnnnnnnnnn)