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Stop Blaming Young Rappers for the Growing Drug Abuse Epidemic

Writer's picture: The Tribe's PathThe Tribe's Path

Updated: Mar 25, 2019

By Ashley Simmons


"Can't get a wink 'less I'm leaning off of syrup/Dreaming of my past like a nightmare so I wake up" –Danny Brown

Lil Uzi Vert


When Lil Uzi Vert intoned “I might blow my brain out / Xanny numb the pain yeah / Please, Xanny make it go away” I felt that. At first, “XO Tour Llif3” sounded like a catchy mumble rap song I can bop to, but after the third time I caught myself chanting “push me to the edge / All my friends are dead.” As if it wasn’t the most depressing thing to rap along to while partying, I had to take a moment. Lil Uzi Vert is one of a bunch of rappers in this new crop that are speaking gratuitously about their drug use but less in a way that connotes any happy, fun times. Imagine if a casual friend started posting photos on Instagram with cryptic captions like “All that pain now I can’t feel it, I swear that it's slowing me.” This would at least warrant a quick “u ok?” DM(Direct Message), making sure that, in the least, this person is still with us. So when I hear these artists rapping lyrics about dying or using copious amounts of hard drugs, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a cry for help being packaged and sold.

Some of our rap uncles feel differently, apparently.

“Take all my problems and drink out the bottle/And f*** on a model, yeah” –Future

Future


A clip surfaced recently of a DMX interview on the “Big Boy’s Neighborhood” radio show. In it, DMX (a childhood FAVE and, if I may gently remind everyone, a drug abuser himself) made the assertion that young rappers are glorifying and promoting drug use to impressionable youths:

“They’re all promoting drug use. If that’s what you wanna do, that’s your business, but you ain’t gotta promote it like it’s cool and make it cool, know what I’m saying? Kids walk around like, ‘I’m popping molly, I’m popping Percs.’”

I wanted to brush this off as an old man’s “kids these days” hot take but, thinking about it, the analysis of the prevalence of drug use in rap is something that should be parsed out a bit more. Young rappers should be blamed for a lot of things: dusty rainbow dreads, ugly face tattoos, and general ashiness. But blaming them for the prevalence of drug abuse is a red herring. Millennials and Generation Z kids are in a unique time in the history of this country: we are growing older with none of the securities older generations were afforded. Little to no job security, lack of affordable health care, increased depression, and higher stress-related illness rates, have created the perfect storm of helplessness. At this point, we’re all just trying to find ways to cope with this mess. And we’re doing so with disheartening consequences.



DMX

“You can't question God, yeah, yeah, and then there's challenges/Sipping on this Actavis, I swear I gotta manage it” –Young Thug

In 2017, Donald Trump (#NotMyPresident) declared a National Public Health Emergency due to the alarming rate of opioid use (and then proceeded to do little about it, but that’s not what this article is about). According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse(NIDA), more than 130 people die of opioid overdose in the United States, EVERY SINGLE DAY.

That's more than 5 people overdosing every hour on opioids such as OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax, heroin and synthetic opioids such as Fentanyl. Drug overdose deaths have tripled since 1999, in fact, more than 72,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States in 2017 alone, 49068 of them were opioids-related. Teens and young adults are using drugs as a coping mechanism: the stressors of life in the 21st century are so unbearable for some that they see drug use as the only means of escape.

Personally, I think DMX got it wrong because the problem isn’t so much that young rappers are passing off a drug-laden lifestyle as cool to their impressionable fans, the problem is that their music has become the soundtrack for a generation using hard drugs to escape a depressing reality.

“Now I know that I'm gettin olda/ And it seems the world is so much colda/ And success puts stress on my shouldas/ So now I'm pourin' less in my soda” –Big Moe

I’m not sure how our fave angry rapper, Uncle DMX could listen to these songs and think that the use of hard drugs is merely some ploy to be the next cool thing. They are, actually, representations of a larger issue. Drugs aren’t going anywhere. The legalization of marijuana in many states, and potentially on a federal level, is just the beginning of a more lenient approach to recreational drug use. Frankly, I welcome it because it will highlight the real issues of incarceration rates for non-violent offenders (a different discussion for another time). However, what needs to change are the life circumstances that compel people to abuse substances in an attempt to cope and escape the vicissitudes that life imposes upon them. Alas, that process of analysis is a complicated and uncomfortable one. The amount of change needed to address the overarching problems that lend themselves to the increased drug use epidemic in America would turn our cultural landscape upside down. Are we all prepared for a cultural revolution that would shift the blame of our issues to the actual source (capitalism, greed, abuse of power, etc.)? Are we really ready to stop using personal responsibility as a catchall instead of analyzing all the factors that contribute to a citizen resorting to drug abuse? I don’t think we are.

So in the meantime, let’s just keep blaming rappers, I guess.

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