Trapstars, Rapstars, and Fiends: How the Crack Epidemic reshaped Hip-Hop subject matter

I have no shame in saying that I only consistently listen to two genres of music. Rap, R&B and the occasional Jazz album on late nights while studying. Maybe I’m not cultured enough to come to this conclusion, but based on my observations of hip-hop, culture and genre that I can safely say I’m well versed in; there is no other genre of music where a substance has had a larger impact on it than crack-cocaine for hip-hop. While writing this, I second-guessed my conclusion after thinking about the heroin addictions of black soul and jazz musicians of the 1950s and 60s like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Ray Charles. I then began to think about the experimental psychedelic drug usage of artists like The Beatles, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s and 70s. That led me to think about how influential cocaine was to artists of the 70s and 80s like Marvin Gaye, Rick James, and Chaka Khan, just to name few.

Regardless of how you feel about drugs, they’re synonymous with music. I think that the difference between the relationship with crack and hip-hop and older genres is that in hip-hop, the drug is spoken about from multiple perspectives. This includes the dealer, user, and how the drug affects the community. In Nas’ “New York State of Mind” from his debut album Illmatic, Nas makes references of the drug from the perspective of the user and drug dealer within the same line “I know this crackhead who said she likes to smoke nice rock/ And if it’s good she’ll bring you customer’s and measuring pots.” Throughout Illmatic, Nas speaks about the effect of crack on his Queensbridge Houses community in New York’s borough of Queens during the 80s and 90s. If drugs were mentioned in music prior to the 90s, specifically prior to hip-hop existing on a commercial level, they were celebrated and spoken about from this experimental, almost out-of-body experience perspective. The Beatles 1967 song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and Marvin Gaye’s “Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky)” released in 1971 were coded admirations for their specific drugs of choice. The Beatles used “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as an interpretation of the drug and acronym ‘LSD’ while Gaye’s Flyin’ High (In the Friendly Sky) described the euphoria one feels when high.

To understand the impact of a crack in hip-hop would be to understand the socio-economic circumstances that helped create hip-hop as well as the prominence of the drug. The eldest of Keith and Nettie’s six children, Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell emigrated from Kingston, Jamaica to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, N.Y., in November 1967 when he was 12 years old. In Jamaica, Herc would see groups of disk jockey’s or deejays called ‘sound systems’ at local Kingston parties called ‘dance halls.’ At these dancehalls, deejays (DJs) would say impromptu rhymes and phrases over the music to further excite the crowd called toasting. This practice was derived from the griots of West Africa, who operated as historians, storytellers, praise singers, and poets; a tradition passed down through generations in Jamaica ever since slavery.

Herc had always been fascinated with music since the days of watching sound systems control parties in his native Kingston, JA. Jamaican sound system DJs were almost like Dr. Frankenstein’s of audio engineering. They pieced together what they had access to fit the best for their systems and Herc carried that tradition to the Bronx. He built his first sound system consisting of two turntables connected to two amplifiers and a Shure “Vocal Master” PA system with two vocal columns. During the 70s, poor black people of the Bronx had a difficult time getting into predominantly white downtown Manhattan clubs where disco was often played. Gang violence in the Bronx made partying dangerous and soul and funk records that were popular amongst black people weren’t played on the radio. The only option left was house parties like the ones thrown in the basement recreation room of Herc’s building. Here, poor black people could enjoy themselves without being racially and socially discriminated against at more upscale establishments, and they could dance to music they actually enjoyed listening to.

On the night of August 11, 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick, Herc’s sister Cindy would throw a “Back to School Jam” party to raise money for back to school clothes. She didn’t know that this party, in particular, would change the world. Herc realized that the dancers at the party’s favorite part of the songs were “the break,” the heavily percussive instrumental part of funk songs. Since Herc would already buy two of the same record for each turntable, he would isolate and extend each break, switching back and forth between both records before the breakbeat could end. Like his Jamaican deejay predecessors before him, Herc would say phrases, rhymes, and announcements to hype the crowd and dancers over these looping breaks that lasted up to five minutes called a “five-minute loop of fury.” The length of these breaks combined with Herc’s vocals became the foundation of what we know as a modern rap song.

Fast forward to the early 1980s, what Herc and his sister built in their apartment’s recreation room is now a cultural movement that includes an economically viable genre of music (rap), a style of dance (breaking or b-boying/b-girling), visual art (graffiti) and turntablism (Djing). These ‘four elements’ make up the culture term we know today as “hip-hop,” a term coined by the founder of The Universal Zulu Nation Afrika Bambaataa, Bronx native, and former warlord of the Black Spades, one of the largest gangs in New York City in the 70s. Rappers like LL Cool J, Curtis Blow, RUN DMC, and Kool Moe Dee were hip-hop’s first superstars, making the genre internationally renowned as well commercially successful. Hip-Hop developed out of the ingenuity of marginalized Blacks and Latino’s as a form of artistic expression but for the most part, the genre’s earliest rappers didn’t provide any social commentary about the poverty, crime and systematic oppression that people in their communities faced. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five were the exceptions.

Released in 1982, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s “The Message” off of the album of the same name, depicted urban decay caused by inner city neglect in the early 80s in a way that no act had ever done. The song touched on everything from poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, crime and punishment, prostitution, the failing education system, vermin infestation, hunger, and mental health. With “The Message” and their 1983 single, “White Lines (Don’t Do It),” a commercially palatable anti-cocaine PSA. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five and frontman Melle Mel were one of the first hip-hop artists to convey powerful messages through party anthems.

By the second half of the 80s, the white lines that Melle Mel advised us to not snort in “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” transformed into cheaper, smokable cocaine called “crack.” Closely related to the smokable freebase cocaine of the early and 80s and 70s, crack is a combination of cocaine cooked with baking soda which forms a rock-like substance, giving a user a 5–10-minute high. Due to the affordability of the drug compared to its more expensive powdered cocaine form, crack helped destroy the lives of people in the impoverished neighborhoods of New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore, Miami, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. The devastation that the crack epidemic caused, along with President Ronald Reagan’s “Trickle Down Economics” theory contributed to the high unemployment rates, murders and mass incarceration of the 80s. Towards the end of the 80s, these factors were so impactful that even the hip-hop’s subject matter started to reflect the realities that the crack epidemic created.

Braggadocio about how great of a rapper you were, how many material possessions you acquired, and how much women loved you was and will probably always be prevalent in hip-hop. But amid the chants of “THOW YA HANDS IN THE AIR, AND WAVE EM LIKE YA JUST DON’T CARE,” rappers like Public Enemy, KRS-One, Rakim, and Kool G Rap brought a high level of insight and social commentary to the genre that allowed Chuck D of Public Enemy to say that “Rap is Black America’s CNN.” Public Enemy’s 1988 “Night Of The Living Baseheads” critiqued black drug dealers who sold drugs to other black people after all the hardships that Black Americans have faced since chattel slavery. Crack had an enormous reach. While “Night of The Living Baseheads” video depicts crack addicts as zombie-like figures dancing behind Chuck D and resident jester Flavor Flav dancing alongside with them, little did the public know was that Flavor Flav was struggling with a crack addiction of his own. Flavor Flav’s purpose in the group was to be the comic relief, lightening Chuck D’s message. Nonetheless, there was an obvious irony that within the group with some of the most militant political stances of all time, that had an anti-crack song and video, they had their very own “basehead.”

With Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s popularity dwindling towards the approach of the 1990s, it was time for new rappers like Kool G. Rap to carry the tradition of telling the story of urban America while giving their unique perspective. Prior to rap, Kool G. Rap became involved in the drug trade as a youth. With the help of his DJ Polo, they formed the group Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo and released 1989’s “Road To The Riches.” A rag to riches, loosely based autobiographical, and cautionary tale giving the timeline of a young black man who uses the opportunities in front of him to make illegal while having aspirations of making a living as a rapper.

Kool G. Rap’s vivid storytelling documented the mentality and circumstances that led many black men from low-income backgrounds in neighborhoods like his native Corona, Queens down a path of crime and chaos. Kool G. Rap was still an anomaly of his time. He was one of the few rappers who wrote this dark street saga’s because he lived his rhymes. The influence of drug dealer culture began to infiltrate hip-hop to where the fashion sense of drug dealers became hip-hop fashion. It wasn’t uncommon to see rappers like Kool G. Rap, and even rappers who never lived a life of crime like Big Daddy Kane, and Slick Rick wear the gold rope chains, medallions, and rings adopted from the personal style of drug dealers, many of whom they grew up with.

While hip-hop continued to grow and evolve, the streets became more violent and mandatory minimum prison sentences were being handed down at an alarming rate. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 mandated that the penalties for smaller amounts of crack cocaine would be harsher than the penalties for larger amounts of cocaine disregarding the fact that both drugs were chemically identical. With crack now being synonymous with poor Black and Latino communities, this led to the increased targeting and over-policing of black communities leading to further mass incarceration. By the mid-90s, rappers like The Notorious B.I.G., and JAY-Z who were some of the teenage drug dealers that Kool G. Raps stories were about decided to pursue rap as careers. Seminal rap albums like The Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Dieand JAY-Z’s Reasonable Doubt were full of “Road To The Riches” stories. Kool G. Rap being a reality rapper in the late 80s gave rappers of the 90s the confidence to build on top of the foundation that he laid and speak about their personal experiences.

By the aughts, JAY-Z was an even bigger star, than he was in the 90s and spent the majority of his career documenting his illegal past, sometimes with glorification with songs like “1–900-Hustler” while also giving a harsher side of his past and community with songs like “Meet The Parents.” During this time was also the emergence of southern rappers specifically those from Atlanta making and leaving a mark on hip-hop. With the emergence of these acts, came similar stories of young, black, urban America but often times the message was delivered a simplified and elementary way to attract mainstream audiences. Songs like Jeezy’s 2005 single “Trap Star,” in collaboration with the trumpet-based instrumentation and video made selling drugs and being successful at it was almost the feat of an urban superhero of sorts. T.I.’s 2003 hit “Rubber Band Man” accompanied by the video in a way had elements of a nursery rhyme even though the title of the song symbolizes the amount of money T.I. and his friends earned from selling crack as teens.

In the chorus of The Migos 2012 breakthrough single “Bando” they trivialize the precautionary methods drug dealers take to protect themselves from the police and enemies by boarding up the windows of abandoned houses and apartments (Bandos) they would use to cook and sell drugs. They make this process seem almost like a fun task. Pusha T and Rick Ross in 2013’s “I Still Wanna” long for the days when sold cocaine, with the proclamation, “I STILL WANNA SERVE KILOS.” This may not be a conclusive answer, but the rappers born in the late 70s, 80s, 90s no longer have to deal with the mandatory minimum prison sentences amongst other consequences of those before them. This leads to making rap songs glamorizing selling crack over nursery rhyme sounding production. Nevertheless, what hip-hop has evolved to is remarkable. Whether the messages surrounding it were good or bad, hip-hop took something as detrimental as crack and the crack epidemic, something created to destroy us and used it to tell their own unique stories.