Yes I am a drug addict. I had almost 4 years clean but relapsed and wound up in the hospital after an overdose. I am currently in treatment trying to trace back when and how my addiction started, and my love for rap keeps coming up. Let me be very clear: in no way, shape, or form am I blaming rap for my addiction. That would be completely ridiculous. A lot of the choices I have made I am responsible for and will be the first to admit that. However it is no secret that the current state of mainstream Hip-Hop is littered with references to drugs, specifically lean, Xanax, and Percocet. I mean for fuck’s sake one of Future’s most popular song literally just repeats “Percocet…Molly Percocet.” I always say a rapper has “made it” when he has suburban white girls screaming his lyrics at a house party. So now you have guys like Future, Lil Uzi, 42 Dugg, or Lil Baby blasting at every party basically glamorizing the use of opiates and benzos. Even fucking Drake is doing it (love the guy but he does not hesitate to jump on anything trendy). Does this mean that every experimenting teenager who listens to rap is bound to do hard drugs? Fuck no. What it does mean, however, is there is an additional way to justify drug use. It’s almost an incentive to get high. Of course this falls way outside normal teenage peer-pressure and impulsive behavior. But it more so fortifies internal and external narratives leading to drug use. I can only speak from experience so here is mine:

I grew up idolizing rappers. When I was eight I remember watching the music video to 50 Cent’s “Many Men” over and over for reasons I cannot explain. I’ve listened to Rap my whole life and I will never stop. Something about the music and its associated aesthetic gives me a sense of power I cannot explain. Perhaps it came from desire to individuate myself as a black man from my white peers. I always thought rappers were “cool” and in high school I began to obsess over their music. I loved it all. The music, the fashion, the accessories, and of course its mostly positive association of drug use. The realest thing Offset ever said was: “Pop a Perc, kinda nauseous.” That’s what it’s actually like a lot of the time. But something about smoking a blunt in a Rolls Royce appealed so much to me and I am not sure why. It just looked sick. So yeah I smoked weed everyday for like 5 years, and given that I was known for smoking a ton I figured leaning into this aesthetic was the best way to establish a unique identity. So I bought some cool clothes, some of which I still fuck with today, and made it clear I wanted to have the aesthetic of a rapper (I was really into Lil Yachty junior year idk why but s/o Boat). Throughout all this I start experimenting with other stuff, mostly Xanax and Oxycodone, and a strange thing started to happen. I was popping pills as Quavo so elegantly rapped “Pop a perc just to start up.” “Holy fuck” I thought, “I’m doing it! I’m a rapper!” Yes it sounds ridiculous but filming myself with pills in my mouth listening to rap felt so powerful. Another way to think about this is how drinking is so normalized in the majority of mainstream music; it’s literally everywhere. “Pour up, drank” “Brush my teeth with a bottle of a jack” and my favorite, “She made us drinks to drink, we drunk ’em, got drunk.” It’s hard to listen to music without hearing something about how drinking may serve a specific purpose, both good and bad. But it’s mostly accepted. Why is that? I have no clue. Drugs are obviously a different story. At the end of the day I do not anticipate a Morgan Wallen remix with the lyrics, “Last night we let the 30mg instant release Oxycodone’s talk.” Either way, drugs and liquor are intertwined with mainstream music, and that is not going away.

It’s all even more fucked up especially considering I almost had the same fate as guys like Juice Wrld, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Lil Peep, DMX, or Pimp C. But it is my reality and I can’t deny it. Given where I am now I have a slightly different perspective on things. On one hand I love rap music and always will (btw rap is 10000x more than just drugs and guns, but that’s for another post), and on the other it’s irresponsible to rap about doing basically fentanyl to impressionable kids. I mean for god’s sake Travis Scott did a fucking Fortnite concert so now half this nigga’s fanbase consists of shrieking 9 year olds. At what point do we draw the line? This isn’t a criticism necessarily. Rather just me being curious about how something I love almost…enabled my drug use in a way I never thought possible. My friend and I joke that we would never have popped Percs if Future didn’t exist. Obviously this is not true, but addiction isn’t simply a matter of decision-making. Cultural implications mean something, and in this case rap and pill-popping have a direct connection. But when does it stop being just music, and more so a fantasized way of living? I probably will never know. But it is something I will continue to monitor, especially being in early sobriety. I will end by reiterating that I am not blaming my addiction on rap music, and anybody who justifies their addiction as such is simply misguided or in denial. All I am saying is loving Hip-Hop certainly did not help my drug addiction.

Yes I am a drug addict. I had almost 4 years clean but relapsed and wound up in the hospital after an overdose. I am currently in treatment trying to trace back when and how my addiction started, and my love for rap keeps coming up. Let me be very clear: in no way, shape, or form am I blaming rap for my addiction. That would be completely ridiculous. A lot of the choices I have made I am responsible for and will be the first to admit that. However it is no secret that the current state of mainstream Hip-Hop is littered with references to drugs, specifically lean, Xanax, and Percocet. I mean for fuck’s sake one of Future’s most popular song literally just repeats “Percocet…Molly Percocet.” I always say a rapper has “made it” when he has suburban white girls screaming his lyrics at a house party. So now you have guys like Future, Lil Uzi, 42 Dugg, or Lil Baby blasting at every party basically glamorizing the use of opiates and benzos. Even fucking Drake is doing it (love the guy but he does not hesitate to jump on anything trendy). Does this mean that every experimenting teenager who listens to rap is bound to do hard drugs? Fuck no. What it does mean, however, is there is an additional way to justify drug use. It’s almost an incentive to get high. Of course this falls way outside normal teenage peer-pressure and impulsive behavior. But it more so fortifies internal and external narratives leading to drug use. I can only speak from experience so here is mine:

I grew up idolizing rappers. When I was eight I remember watching the music video to 50 Cent’s “Many Men” over and over for reasons I cannot explain. I’ve listened to Rap my whole life and I will never stop. Something about the music and its associated aesthetic gives me a sense of power I cannot explain. Perhaps it came from desire to individuate myself as a black man from my white peers. I always thought rappers were “cool” and in high school I began to obsess over their music. I loved it all. The music, the fashion, the accessories, and of course its mostly positive association of drug use. The realest thing Offset ever said was: “Pop a Perc, kinda nauseous.” That’s what it’s actually like a lot of the time. But something about smoking a blunt in a Rolls Royce appealed so much to me and I am not sure why. It just looked sick. So yeah I smoked weed everyday for like 5 years, and given that I was known for smoking a ton I figured leaning into this aesthetic was the best way to establish a unique identity. So I bought some cool clothes, some of which I still fuck with today, and made it clear I wanted to have the aesthetic of a rapper (I was really into Lil Yachty junior year idk why but s/o Boat). Throughout all this I start experimenting with other stuff, mostly Xanax and Oxycodone, and a strange thing started to happen. I was popping pills as Quavo so elegantly rapped “Pop a perc just to start up.” “Holy fuck” I thought, “I’m doing it! I’m a rapper!” Yes it sounds ridiculous but filming myself with pills in my mouth listening to rap felt so powerful. Another way to think about this is how drinking is so normalized in the majority of mainstream music; it’s literally everywhere. “Pour up, drank” “Brush my teeth with a bottle of a jack” and my favorite, “She made us drinks to drink, we drunk ’em, got drunk.” It’s hard to listen to music without hearing something about how drinking may serve a specific purpose, both good and bad. But it’s mostly accepted. Why is that? I have no clue. Drugs are obviously a different story. At the end of the day I do not anticipate a Morgan Wallen remix with the lyrics, “Last night we let the 30mg instant release Oxycodone’s talk.” Either way, drugs and liquor are intertwined with mainstream music, and that is not going away.

It’s all even more fucked up especially considering I almost had the same fate as guys like Juice Wrld, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Lil Peep, DMX, or Pimp C. But it is my reality and I can’t deny it. Given where I am now I have a slightly different perspective on things. On one hand I love rap music and always will (btw rap is 10000x more than just drugs and guns, but that’s for another post), and on the other it’s irresponsible to rap about doing basically fentanyl to impressionable kids. I mean for god’s sake Travis Scott did a fucking Fortnite concert so now half this nigga’s fanbase consists of shrieking 9 year olds. At what point do we draw the line? This isn’t a criticism necessarily. Rather just me being curious about how something I love almost…enabled my drug use in a way I never thought possible. My friend and I joke that we would never have popped Percs if Future didn’t exist. Obviously this is not true, but addiction isn’t simply a matter of decision-making. Cultural implications mean something, and in this case rap and pill-popping have a direct connection. But when does it stop being just music, and more so a fantasized way of living? I probably will never know. But it is something I will continue to monitor, especially being in early sobriety. I will end by reiterating that I am not blaming my addiction on rap music, and anybody who justifies their addiction as such is simply misguided or in denial. All I am saying is loving Hip-Hop certainly did not help my drug addiction.