Crack Rap
(insidebayarea.com) COCAINE AND HIP-HOP share a long history but over the last few years, there’s been a surge in coke-themed songs and artists  aka crack rap.
The roots of this fad date back to 2002, with the critical and commercial success of both Scarface’s “The Fix” and especially the Clipse’s “Lord Willin’.” While Scarface spoke mostly on the necessary evils of drug dealing, the Clipse’s Pusha T and Malice gleefully glorified hustling as the way into wealth rather than path out of poverty. Their songs were cartoonishly outrageous, even by Tony Montana-standards, as they co-opted children’s rhymes into coke boasts and dropped punchlines about yayo-smuggling grandmothers.
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However, what’s being promoted isn’t nihilism, despite appearances otherwise: It’s crack as a metaphor for power. Drugs are deeply symbolic in our culture  not just hip-hop but American pop life  of escape, pleasure, obsession and despair. For a young cadre of rappers trying to one-up their peers, coke has resonated as their signifier for mastery and control. If hip-hop respects nothing else, it’s the idea that simple things can move minds and bodies, whether that power is found in a gun trigger, a raised fist, a mic grip or, now, trapped in a glass vial.
Topically, the trend has to exhaust itself eventually  in theory at least. When it does, what will future generations think of this crack rap era? Will they see it as a colorful fad, like polka dots and pastels from the late’80s? Or will they curiously wonder how it is that as fans and artists alike, we stared at the dystopia of cocaine culture and reacted, not with concern or horror, but with rapt fascination and celebration instead? (more…)
