In May of 2012, B.o.B released Strange Clouds, which my eighth grade self pegged as the best thing since sliced bread (or, more accurately, the best thing since B.o.B Presents the Adventures of Bobby Ray). As thirteen-year-old me listened to the songs over and over again, bad renditions of the verses and choruses became typical sounds in my house. At some point while I was singing the chorus to the title track, my mom pointed out how unfortunate it was that her preteen son was rapping about “pouring and lighting it up.”
My mom was right to question my B.o.B imitation for a multitude of reasons, but her disapproval also represents a strong trend in America to put down hip-hop artists for rapping about drugs. We all know the rhetoric from the often conservative and always concerned members of society who see hip-hop’s drug jargon as the downfall of modern society, but as the genre continues to establish itself as the most socially and culturally important music of its time, it’s important to ask ourselves whether lyrics about drugs deserve the outrage they often receive.
First, it’s important to note that hip-hop is intended to reflect the life, habitat and background of the rapper. From Illmatic to good kid, m.A.A.d city, popular and acclaimed hip-hop is almost always reflective of the streets that its artists rose from. The lyrics are often not intended to glamorize drugs, but are meant to depict the reality of an America hardly ever seen by the genre’s listeners. As T.I. said in an interview with Trevor Noah this past fall, “If you want to change the content of the music, change the environment.”
Additionally, rappers’ songs are often misused, or the lyrics are ignored. Take Future’s “Perkys Calling” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools.” “Perkys Calling” was a hit off of Future’s recent Purple Reign. The Atlanta based rapper is known for his music about various hard drugs, and his trap-rap aesthetic has become a favorite for young people to get lit to. This track, however, features the often present and frequently ignored sensitive side of Future, as he raps about his dependence on drugs and how it affects his sober self. The case of “Swimming Pools” is even more blatant and famous. The song became a party anthem in the early 2010s, despite featuring lyrics that detail the issue of peer pressure and very clearly color Kendrick’s stance as anti-alcohol. In these cases, rappers are using their platforms to show the dark side of the substances that they’re often attacked for supporting.
Ultimately, even when hip-hop artists do romanticize drugs, their influence and character are often far better than their criticism would imply. Take Flatbush Zombies and Chance the Rapper as examples. Flatbush released an album last year titled 3001: A Laced Odyssey, a play on words that highlights LSD, as many of the songs on the album do. The group is not made up of demons, however, and has been a positive influence on New York City since their inception in 2010, even performing at a free concert that required its attendees to get tested for HIV in order to enter. Chance the Rapper also has an entire mixtape devoted to LSD; Acid Rap; and recently donated $1 million to Chicago’s public school system, launching an arts and literature fund with it.
Regardless, even the most drug happy rappers shouldn’t need to prove themselves through philanthropy in order to sing and rap about their realities. Perhaps, if we reconsidered the criticism we often deal them, we could instead focus our energies on bettering said realities for the next generation of Hip-Hop artists.