After completing my digital scrap book I realized that I hadn’t incorporated Drug addiction, so I decided with my last blog to discuss how drug addiction is being glorified in rap music, reasons why and if it has an effect or not. There is a common perception that drugs and rap music are inextricably linked, but that wasn't always the case. The fact that rap music didn't always have drug references is compelling because it shows that this type of music didn't always depend on that as an art form. In the becoming of rap music artist like Sugar Hill Gang's, and LL Cool J were more concerned with rhyming over a fresh beat about normal everyday things creating a dance element for listeners The direction of the music seemed to change with the music's growing commercial success and illegal drug use became increasingly linked during this time period to wealth, glamour and social standing, marking a significant change from how it was before. On MedicalNet.com there was an article of Rap Music glorifying Drug Use. In this article it explained a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who found a ‘six fold increase in drug references in songs over the past two decades’.

Denise Herd, associate dean of students at the School of Public Health and colleagues analyzed 341 lyrics from the most popular rap songs between 1979 and 1997. Over that time they saw that a more positive attitude about drugs had increased and the consequences about drug use decreased. They found that of the 38 most popular rap songs between 1979 and 1984, only four (11 percent) contained drug references. By the late 1980s, that increased to 19 percent and by 1993, to 69 percent. The up and coming rappers of that time were groups like N.W.A (nigga’s with attitude), Snoop Dogg and Tupac. Interesting that Tupac would be one of the rappers included in rapping about drugs, being that he came from a drug addict mother. We briefly studied a piece on Afeni Shakur and the effects her drug addiction had on tupac and her family. Not trying to create excuses for why rap music has decided to glorify drug abuse but for most of these rappers drug addicts and drug abuse was something these rappers experienced everyday as did Tupac. Being that his own mother was a drug addict it really hit close to home for him and when able to express himself creatively he just expressed what he had witnessed in his home and life. Afeni explains how mothers are somewhat the blame for mishappenings in the black culture in Dyson’s article when saying “if the mother is central in black life, she is also made a scapegoat for the social disintegration of black culture. Single black mothers who are poor have been maligned in the media for cruelly misshaping their offspring, with some critic’s claming they are at least partly responsible for absent fathers (p 22-23)”.

Over the years the types of drugs that were being mentioned in songs have changed also. In the 80’s it was crack, in the 90’s it was marijuana and now it’s everything from cough syrup to pills. In one of Tupac’s classic songs ‘Sr8t Ballin’ some of the lyrics read:

I'm up before the sunrise, first to hit the block.Little bad mothafucka with a pocket full of rocks.And I'm totin' these thangs, get my skinny little ass kicked.And niggas laugh, til' tha first mothafucka got blasted.I put the nigga in his casket,Now they coverin' the bastard in plastic.I smoke blunts on a regular buck when it counts. I'm tryin' to make a million dollars outta quarter ounce.

Not only does this promote the usage and selling of drugs but also an element of violence is present. These positive images are hard to fully conclude why rappers rap about these things. Mother blame can play a role (as we see with Afeni), the environment rappers grow up in, if they lack father figures or not, because this is what has been done before them, or simply because it sells. Whatever the reason be we know that these images drawn by rap music can possibly have a negative affect on the black community and society as a whole as well.