Cocaine: A Helluva Drug

As a part of my ongoing list of personal hypocrisies, I have a deep and slightly obsessive infatuation with crack rap despite the fact I’ve actually never seen crack in person (that’s not on my bucket list), particularly when it’s done right. Clipse can do it effortlessly it seems. My favorite Scarface album, The Fix, could have doubled as the soundtrack to Rocky Lockridge’s episode on Intervention. Young Jeezy is the public’s choice for crack rap consumption.

Thing is, my fascination with all things basehead-related starts at Traffic and ends at hip hop’s musical interpretations, and I’ve never been interested in actually using or being around the stuff. I’m quite content with alcohol, nignorant music and violent video games as my vices; I don’t need to add coke-eye-eena to the mix. If there was one thing we can all take from our younger years, it’s that crack was one of the worst drugs you could do. I may not remember much from my childhood (including how to swim and eat a meal without thrusting the plate into my face), but staying away from cocaine – thanks in part to Nancy Reagan’s hypocritical stance on the drug – forever stuck in my mind.

Apparently, however, that seems to be the drug du jour for today’s rapsters nowadays. Kanye’s “Power” line raised a few eyebrows, while his protégé KiD CuDi was arrested and charged with, alongside felony criminal mischief, possession of a “controlled substance” (one could only wonder what that really is, because if he got caught with weed the news would say he did), and Wayne has rapped about nose-fucking a couple lines since he realized that that “wobbledy-wobbledy” crap wasn’t cutting it anymore. And that’s just a small, surface sample; who knows exactly how many rappers are actually doing coke.

I mean, if they’re doing something that destructive, I at least hope they do it Neil Patrick Harris-style and snort it off of a stripper’s body. You know, something respectably debauched. But I digress.

Rappers doing crack was one thing, because cocaine is considered a “designer” drug, and diluting it with that box of Arm & Hammer originally meant to keep your refrigerated foods fresh also diluted its “value.” But once successful rappers aren’t trapped by the same financial restrictions average Joes such as myself and the ones reading this post right now, I suppose they’re not limited by, well, drugs used by the lower rungs of society as well. While I enjoy Pusha T rap about crack as much as anyone else, the thought or sight of him actually smoking crack – especially when he can afford cocaine – would just break my damn heart.

I guess in a weird, quasi-detrimental to society kind of way, I supposed being able to afford cocaine (especially when cancer sticks sell for over $10 in New York these days) is kind of an accomplishment given the sad state of economic affairs. Let me find out rappers are doing heroin, though; I’d give up on rap and retreat to my Jefferson Airplane collection forever.