I’ve been curious about this for a while.
Why is marijuana so prominent in the lyrics of rap music? Even in ‘gangsta’ rap. It’s not like using MJ is any huge crime that will make your gangsta homies envy you and your enemies fear you - high school kids do it fer chrissakes! I don’t get it - there doesn’t seem to be any “street cred” to be had by extolling one’s marijuana usage. It’d be like rapping about, "I do 60 in a 55mph limit…I’m crazy…I don’t go to bed till 11pm! I sometimes sneak into movies! " Hmm, maybe a whole new genre of rap - “failed gangsta” rap.
The same reason they always talk about alcohol and clubbing and the overnight scenario. It’s what they know. (Disclaimer: I’m only talking about rappers who actually talk about this kind of stuff.)
I don’t think its just bud, lately rappers seem to be discovering E. Cf. Eminem and D12’s “purple pills” and P. Diddy has releasing a house record, etc.
But i agree, most rappers who talk about drugs in their lyrics talk about grass. I guess I can sort of see it, hip hop in general lopes along at around 90 bpm, and often has that head-nodding effect that works so well with a J.
What spins me out is that drum and bass producers all tend to be tokers as well. I can’t see that going well with marijuana.
They smoke weed, they rap about weed. No-one’s trying to build themself up by rapping about drugs.
There was a Rolling Stone interview with Outkast where they were discussing the impact drugs have on hip-hop music; back in the early 90s it was all about weed, hence the laid-back, loping G-funk beats, whereas these days, more people are using X - hence the Outkast track B.O.B which is fast and drumnbass influenced.
That makes sense - hadn’t thought of it as a sort of stoned/rhythm connection. I always thought rappers were doing it to sound “bad” which seemed rather comical to me.
I believe “blow” generally refers to cocaine, not marijuana.
Since jazz musicians started smoking marijuana ~70 years ago, pot has been a driving force behind music (in some genres more than others, unless all those country singers are just really low key). Some artists prefer to keep their use in the background while others like to sing about it.
Rock artists that smoke pot sometimes make sly allusions to weed or write songs that seem to declare their potheadedness, but are ambiguously worded for blame deflection, or maybe just as a creative device.
Rap, OTOH, tends to be quite frank in its descriptions of sex, drugs, and violence. When “Sweet Leaf” turns into “fat, juicy blunt fulla gangsta-nip chronic fire,” you tend to notice the pot references more.
The way I heard it, weed was ghetto Prozac in the '90s because things were so tense. People had to take the edge off with a hit or two, otherwise they would snap and go off on just anyone.