Drugs have always played a role in popular music, from '60s acid rock and the ganja-slowed rhythms of reggae to grunge's heroin-wracked self-loathing.
But none of these narcotics have influenced a genre as intensely as crack cocaine has hip-hop.
For the past year, the subgenre known as crack-rap -- AKA cocaine rap or, more poetically, trap-hop -- has dominated the charts. Nearly every major hip-hop album has sniffed around the subject, but rather than describing their own habits, these rappers have been boasting about drug-dealing day-jobs.
Veteran Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface named last spring's critically acclaimed solo CD Fishscale -- slang for pure-strain cocaine -- and sprinkled stories of drug lords and street-sellers among his '70s soul samples. Meanwhile, oversized newcomer Rick Ross -- a former dealer whose nom-de-rap was borrowed from imprisoned L.A. crack kingpin "Freeway" Rick Ross -- blew up with his Miami anthem Hustlin', on which he brags about being into "distribution" and knowing Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega. The song sold a million ringtones before he dropped his chart-topping debut album, Port of Miami, and was re-released as a remix with Jay-Z and Young Jeezy.
In fact, Young Jeezy, a raspy-voiced Atlanta MC who goes by the less-than-subtle alias "The Snowman," just debuted at the top of the U.S. Billboard charts with his second coke-obsessed LP, The Inspiration, a swaggering follow-up to last year's smash Thug Motivation 101 that brought crack-rap into the mainstream by making dope-dealing seem like an appealing vocation.
Now it would be much easier to dismiss the entire movement as just more amoral fantasies for the suburban set if it didn't also include Clipse, a sibling duo from Virginia Beach whose recently released Hell Hath No Fury was hailed by many not only as the year's best rap record, but as one of the year's overall best: review compiler Metacritic.com rated it 2006's third most-acclaimed album, nestled between Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.
The cover features Malice and Pusha-T perched on a gas-fired oven, presumably for cooking their product, wearing lopsided crowns. But they belie their crack-slinging braggadocio with starkly experimental but deeply funky beats from popular producers The Neptunes that use wheezing accordions, metallic clanks and minimalist drums to reinforce their lyrics' paranoid and fatalistic subtext.
"I, like you, had to come from up under the basement/ just like you had Satan trying my patience," Pusha raps solemnly, before adding, "I wish to see all my niggas rise up/ get that money ... piggyback from out the ghetto before time's up."
Clipse may see the drug trade as a necessary escape from ghetto life, but even they ignore the irony of how it makes the buyer's metaphorical prison ever more secured. One of the first "conscious" rap records was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's White Lines (Don't Do It), but that was 1983 and concerned the upscale coca leaf derivative, seen as a symbol of decadence but not destruction.
The rise of crack in the inner-city was a bigger-than-Katrina disaster. Hard living became impossibly harder as streets filled with amped-up addicts looking for a fix.
When hip-hop first emerged in late-'70s New York, it was block party music, fuelled by breakdancing b-boys, record-scratching DJs and upbeat MCs. But the optimism surrounding this new cultural outlet was battered by crack.
In the late '80s, Public Enemy railed against crack's devastation with Night of the Living Baseheads. The startling video depicted zombified addicts while Chuck D cursed brothers who "sell to their own, rob a home/ while some shrivel to bone."
P.E.'s puritanical raps were somewhat discredited by member Flavor Flav's own crack habit, while more light-hearted rappers of the day, like De La Soul, started to seem hopelessly out of touch.
Crack provided employment to discouraged youth who saw selling rocks as the best means to make money. This often created urban war zones that groups such as Compton's N.W.A. depicted in their controversial lyrics.
On the other coast, the biggest New York stars were also dealers-turned-rappers, including drive-by shooting victim Notorious B.I.G.
This freebased capitalism was a dark twist on the American dream, but at least the '90s-era rappers were rhyming about the crack-embattled environment they grew up in. By 2000, the epidemic had somewhat abated, but crack has not only become a more popular subject in rap than ever, it's being rhymed about by young men who may not even remember the original plague. These aren't just vicarious fantasies for rap fans, but for the rappers themselves. They rarely discuss the deadly effects, instead concentrating on how to cook it, bag it, sell it and buy bling with the profits.
This caveat emptor attitude glorifies dealing without glorifying consuming -- everyone abides NWA's mantra "don't get high, off your own supply" -- but it inherently glosses over the societal effects. When Juelz Santana calls himself "human crack in the flesh" or when Young Jeezy sports his snowman logo T-shirt (since banned in many American schools) they're ignoring the moral implications of their actions on their own neighbours, which promotes putting both sellers and consumers in harm's way.
Considering how many metaphors crack-rappers use to discuss their alleged activities -- at least partly to avoid potential legal implications -- crack itself has become a metaphor for power, money, and respect.
Nobody does this better than Clipse, whose words are so clever, efficient and dark they artfully describe the horror-show toll cocaine has taken without having to condemn it. But if the Clipse brothers are full-fledged street poets, most of their peers are selling simple escapist fodder, music with a visceral kick that loses its rush all too quickly.
Gangsta rap was about the side-effects of crack, but this is just about selling the goods. There are only so many ways to talk commerce, even if it is illicit, and Clipse just used up most them.
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Hip-hop's addiction to crack
Some artists glorify the cash made selling the street drug, while ignoring its grotesque social effects
By Joshua Ostroff, For CanWest News Service
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Link
But none of these narcotics have influenced a genre as intensely as crack cocaine has hip-hop.
For the past year, the subgenre known as crack-rap -- AKA cocaine rap or, more poetically, trap-hop -- has dominated the charts. Nearly every major hip-hop album has sniffed around the subject, but rather than describing their own habits, these rappers have been boasting about drug-dealing day-jobs.
Veteran Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface named last spring's critically acclaimed solo CD Fishscale -- slang for pure-strain cocaine -- and sprinkled stories of drug lords and street-sellers among his '70s soul samples. Meanwhile, oversized newcomer Rick Ross -- a former dealer whose nom-de-rap was borrowed from imprisoned L.A. crack kingpin "Freeway" Rick Ross -- blew up with his Miami anthem Hustlin', on which he brags about being into "distribution" and knowing Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega. The song sold a million ringtones before he dropped his chart-topping debut album, Port of Miami, and was re-released as a remix with Jay-Z and Young Jeezy.
In fact, Young Jeezy, a raspy-voiced Atlanta MC who goes by the less-than-subtle alias "The Snowman," just debuted at the top of the U.S. Billboard charts with his second coke-obsessed LP, The Inspiration, a swaggering follow-up to last year's smash Thug Motivation 101 that brought crack-rap into the mainstream by making dope-dealing seem like an appealing vocation.
Now it would be much easier to dismiss the entire movement as just more amoral fantasies for the suburban set if it didn't also include Clipse, a sibling duo from Virginia Beach whose recently released Hell Hath No Fury was hailed by many not only as the year's best rap record, but as one of the year's overall best: review compiler Metacritic.com rated it 2006's third most-acclaimed album, nestled between Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.
The cover features Malice and Pusha-T perched on a gas-fired oven, presumably for cooking their product, wearing lopsided crowns. But they belie their crack-slinging braggadocio with starkly experimental but deeply funky beats from popular producers The Neptunes that use wheezing accordions, metallic clanks and minimalist drums to reinforce their lyrics' paranoid and fatalistic subtext.
"I, like you, had to come from up under the basement/ just like you had Satan trying my patience," Pusha raps solemnly, before adding, "I wish to see all my niggas rise up/ get that money ... piggyback from out the ghetto before time's up."
Clipse may see the drug trade as a necessary escape from ghetto life, but even they ignore the irony of how it makes the buyer's metaphorical prison ever more secured. One of the first "conscious" rap records was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's White Lines (Don't Do It), but that was 1983 and concerned the upscale coca leaf derivative, seen as a symbol of decadence but not destruction.
The rise of crack in the inner-city was a bigger-than-Katrina disaster. Hard living became impossibly harder as streets filled with amped-up addicts looking for a fix.
When hip-hop first emerged in late-'70s New York, it was block party music, fuelled by breakdancing b-boys, record-scratching DJs and upbeat MCs. But the optimism surrounding this new cultural outlet was battered by crack.
In the late '80s, Public Enemy railed against crack's devastation with Night of the Living Baseheads. The startling video depicted zombified addicts while Chuck D cursed brothers who "sell to their own, rob a home/ while some shrivel to bone."
P.E.'s puritanical raps were somewhat discredited by member Flavor Flav's own crack habit, while more light-hearted rappers of the day, like De La Soul, started to seem hopelessly out of touch.
Crack provided employment to discouraged youth who saw selling rocks as the best means to make money. This often created urban war zones that groups such as Compton's N.W.A. depicted in their controversial lyrics.
On the other coast, the biggest New York stars were also dealers-turned-rappers, including drive-by shooting victim Notorious B.I.G.
This freebased capitalism was a dark twist on the American dream, but at least the '90s-era rappers were rhyming about the crack-embattled environment they grew up in. By 2000, the epidemic had somewhat abated, but crack has not only become a more popular subject in rap than ever, it's being rhymed about by young men who may not even remember the original plague. These aren't just vicarious fantasies for rap fans, but for the rappers themselves. They rarely discuss the deadly effects, instead concentrating on how to cook it, bag it, sell it and buy bling with the profits.
This caveat emptor attitude glorifies dealing without glorifying consuming -- everyone abides NWA's mantra "don't get high, off your own supply" -- but it inherently glosses over the societal effects. When Juelz Santana calls himself "human crack in the flesh" or when Young Jeezy sports his snowman logo T-shirt (since banned in many American schools) they're ignoring the moral implications of their actions on their own neighbours, which promotes putting both sellers and consumers in harm's way.
Considering how many metaphors crack-rappers use to discuss their alleged activities -- at least partly to avoid potential legal implications -- crack itself has become a metaphor for power, money, and respect.
Nobody does this better than Clipse, whose words are so clever, efficient and dark they artfully describe the horror-show toll cocaine has taken without having to condemn it. But if the Clipse brothers are full-fledged street poets, most of their peers are selling simple escapist fodder, music with a visceral kick that loses its rush all too quickly.
Gangsta rap was about the side-effects of crack, but this is just about selling the goods. There are only so many ways to talk commerce, even if it is illicit, and Clipse just used up most them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hip-hop's addiction to crack
Some artists glorify the cash made selling the street drug, while ignoring its grotesque social effects
By Joshua Ostroff, For CanWest News Service
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Link
. I assume he was trying to make somekind of white, canadian version of ebonix. 
