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FloridasYNW Mellyawaits trial on two counts of first-degree murder.
South Florida rhymerKodak Blackis serving almost four years on gun charges.
Youngboy beat a murder charge in 2017 and has struggled to keep the terms of his probation.
That feels like a crisis.
The substances of choice may have changed, but the animus for using hasnt.
Its still hard to get by in disadvantaged communities.
That pushes people to greater lengths to make a living.
Greater lengths lead to deeper lows.
Deeper lows push people to seek greater highs.
Future rarely revels in the codeine, the perkys, and the xannies.
He uses them to cope, and it sounds like he hates it.)
You cant talk about drugs in rap without discussing drugs in America at large.
Theresan opioid crisis, and coke, lean, and meth are around every corner.
That isnt the fault of any rapper.
This generation didnt invent pills, powder, or lean.
They arent the first to introduce them to hip-hop.
The Texas rap veterans were far from the first to dally with codeine.
In the 60s, the jazz community lost greats like Charlie Parker, Lee Morgan, and Dinah Washington.
Rock and roll lost Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin.
Punk rock lost countless heroes.
Nineties stars Kurt Cobain and Bradley Nowell both fought uphill battles with addiction.
How could this happen?
is not a fruitful question.
How we stop it from continuing to happen is.
The urge to quickly identify and chastise a scapegoat looms large.
But nothing is solved by flattening multifaceted problems into one-dimensional vectors of causality.
People are going to jail because they lack opportunities and guidance.
Treating the symptoms of disorder as the root causes is like prescribing cough medicine for a lung infection.
The blame game wont fix that.
Neither will tough love.
You cant just guilt-trip people off drugs or argue someone out of a life of crime.
We watched Slick Rick, Lil Kim, C-Murder, Beanie Sigel, DMX, and Shyne do time.
We supported them, and we supported each other through it.
We should pay that energy forward as history repeats, while promoting practices that lighten everyones load.
(This also goes for fans.
If raps your business, then rappers are your responsibility.
I wish I pieced that together whenI wrote about how this era spooked me back in 2017.
