A HAZY SHADE OF SLUMBER: ACT II: RAP ROCKS TO A DIFFERENT KIND OF BASS (BASE)
Percolating beneath Black music's underbelly, rap's party-rocking rhymes set out on a singular road that went on until the break of dawn. In time, rap embarked on a divergent path lyrically exploring utopian themes ("Planet Rock"), urban working-class woes ("The Breaks" and "Hard Times"), and current events.
The peak moment of this seminal shift was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five featuring Melle Mel and Duke Bootee's "The Message" (1982). Spawning no less than a half-dozen hard-knock life narratives ("What People Do For Money" "It's Like That" "You're Blind"), "The Message" also planted future inspirational seeds: regional rap markets found their own voices apart from New York hip hop stylings exploring similar subject matter.
On the heels of a few Message-tinged follow-ups, Melle Mel, now cemented as hip hop's resident soothsayer----returned with 1983's "White Lines (Don't Do It)." Conceived as a tongue-in-cheek nod to hip hop's drug-consumption culture, the record's giddy excess ("fun baby") balanced tempered caution ("don't do it"), with Mel's vivid lyrics providing verbal vignettes that recalled Super Fly's coked-out film montages.
Backing Mel's booming baritone were smoked-out, hazy harmonies ("pipeline/connected to my mind") and coke chants ("freeze! "rock!" ) peppering "White Lines" backing track (lifted from Cavern's post-punk "Liquid Liquid") like buckshot.
The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats finds a post-Message Grandmaster Flash----now at odds with his crew and record label Sugar Hill--- becomes so triggered by "White Lines" he flees to his dealer to score blow, shattering his shaky attempt at sobriety.
"I hear the chorus. I'd recognize those voices anywhere. Sugar Hill house band backing vocalists. Singin' about...White lines running through my mind...
Then I hear Mel's voice. He's rapping about cocaine. Rapping about snorting it, shooting it, smoking it....how its sweet and sugar and bitter as salt.
Rapping about don't do it! Shhhhiiiit. Don't do it." Everybody's doing it! Everybody's off in their little world, doing white lines. Sniffing all their money up their nose. Killin their brains. Now the guys are saying no to drugs on this new record, but I bet they're out looking for the dope man just like me.
The song's one big hypocritical joke. But the more they talk about white lines the more my mouth starts to water....White lines....then I get the shakes....then my skin starts to itch. I forget about everything I got in my life that's good. I don't walk, I run down those stairs...
From back rooms of legendary hip hop club the Disco Fever to future barnstorming rap tours and beyond, rampant drug use was common: A 2018 SNL skit ("Rap History") satirized the era, depicting an old school rap crew reflecting on the joys of smoking cocaine-laced cigarettes: "to beat ya'll/you don't stop/ I like my reefer/with crack rock."
Back Rooms and Barnstorming: Rap Fills The Void
Public fixation with real-life and onscreen crime figures seeped into inner cities like presidential trickle-down policies. From Oakland and LA to NYC and DC, drug-dealing wild cowboys occupied an urban frontier: destined to be worshipped and idolized, they would be forever immortalized for eternal perpetuity.
In his book I Make My Own Rules, LL Cool J relived his days hanging with drug dealers and being mesmerized by their lavish lifestyle--a kind of elusive upward mobility before big rap money rolled in. Not yet the superstar he'd become and impatient with his career's slow crawl, the impressionable seventeen-year-old considered flipping cocaine:
"When I was out there on the edge, I had to get out of my family situation, and I needed the fastest escape route possible. I wanted cash. That cash represented power."
Just as the jazz-era recreational hierarchy was split between alcohol devotees ("bottle drinkers") and marijuana and heroin users, modern-day music industry bonding followed suit. Record executives, artists, and musicians across music genres often shared similar vices.
Rap king DMC recalls one of his early shows with first-generation rap acts and being shocked at the blatant coke usage that he'd eventually be drawn into:
"I mean just about every one was doing cocaine; the girls; the radio people and the promoters. Everybody knew where to get it."
Artist Danny Simmons (and older brother of Russell Simmons) described the atmosphere in an interview for Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith and the Song That Changed American Music Forever:
"You can't be sober in a room full of people getting high. It wasn't an aberration like oh, that guys over there getting high. You would be an aberration if you weren't high."
"Run, and Jay smoked more weed than a Rastafarian god could grow. For most of my early life, I snorted, guzzled, and smoked my way through almost everyday"
When reflecting on this period of decadence, DMC offered a varied perspective of this contradictory reality on 1986's "It's Tricky:"
"We are not thugs/we don't do drugs, but you assume on your own/they offer coke and lots of dope/but we just leave it alone."
Thirty years later, DMC's offered a more transparent rationalization:
"You know Run-DMC, we lived the sex, drug and rock and roll, but we never put those images, ideas and concepts in any of our music. Because we knew there were other people looking at us. You never heard me rap about the drugs I smoked, the coke I sniffed, the women I had sex with."
In public, Run also promoted his group as positive role models. During a TV he pledged to build a string of drug rehabilitation centers for crack addicts in his Hollis, Queens neighborhood ("it makes me want to cry because they want to get off it").
Behind the scenes, Run lived a life of excess, famously recounted in his future redemptive sermons ("consuming the best if everything: presidential suites, women and drugs; the ho's knocking at the door...Rolling Stone's behind the ho...I'm fuckin' outta control").
"Every tour we did during those early days---the Fresh Fest, Raising Hell tours; even with the Beastie Boys; people were getting high all around me" I mean not a partying type high. High as a way if life. A 24-7 way of life. I think that's why I abused drugs. I had money. I had more money than most everybody around."
Rap trio Whodini — purveyors of many of hip-hop's firsts: platinum sales, stagecraft, musical diversity, and female sex appeal—literally lived the high life. While other rappers swigged Old English forty-ounce bottles, Brooklyn's Finest sipped Heineken and swilled Hennessy. Magnums of Moët & Chandon champagne were required for the group's tour riders.
Cocaine was both a pleasure and a detriment. In an interview, member Grandmaster Dee conceded to the excesses of his self-proclaimed "party group" ("we had a lot of fun back then, sometimes too much").
Boasting six-figure earning power (Dee: "this was '86 money!"), hovering just under the equivalent of a half-million today, Dee experienced the price for his heavy spending, including a failed bank wire request from his accountant ("send me 10 thousand now....what do you mean it's not there?").
As the first rap act on Jive legitimizing the label's hip hop presence (Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Too Short, Steady B and KRS-One) and paving the way for Jive's pop and R&B success( R. Kelly, Britney Spears and NSync), the label's rise from indie imprint to corporate giant was not lost on group leader Jalil who regretted not purchasing stock in the label early on.
Whodini publicist Bill Adler recalled his frustration with the group's lack of focus, which led them to miss crucial media opportunities.
"They would blow off professional commitments. They would disappear into a hotel room and get stupid high, and you couldn't reach them. When someone blows off big interviews, it hurts. And it hurt my reputation as well."
Long frustrated with Rush Management's nepotistic focus on Run-DMC ("I don't have an uncle in the rug business"), Jalil pushed back against what he considered a long-running smear campaign against his group during a 2007 interview with the Broward Palm Beach Times ("Freaks Come Out At Night"):
"Back in that era, the whole management company was doing drugs. All of 'em. And half of the artists. We all had bad habits. But it's hard to keep a career going and have all of your business handled properly even when your management's on drugs."
Jalil's partner Ecstacy reflected on his participation in hip hop's communal party life ("we were just kids") which ultimately gave him the cold shoulder:
"Whodini has been misunderstood in the industry. We look at ourselves as trailblazers; we did not have a lot of examples to look back to. We would promote family in the hip hop industry and we would always help new artists; we have some of the biggest hearts in the business. But all that went unnoticed. We had a reputation of being difficult to work with when all we wanted was to secure our future."
A '96 Rap Pages article ("Whodini Escapes") detailing the group's comeback revealed how they sustained themselves during their extended hiatus from music. One Whodini member was remarkably transparent:
"Flippin' a key a week. I ain't wanna stop you know. I'd do it again. I got tired of watchin' my back. Me and my main boy, we were up to a key every two weeks in New York City. We were doing alright."
Admittedly passing through the substance abuse turnstile for years, Russell Simmons' heavy drug use coincided with rap's early quantum leap. In '84, while testing out a pressing of "Jam Master Jay" at the Disco Fever, the song's booming drums caused partying Fever believers to spill their dollar bills of coke.
A year later, a dusted Simmons lobbed a song idea to Run-DMC that paved the way to a million-dollar endorsement deal ("My Adidas"). As industry excess fell out of favor, Simmons got clean and embraced a more holistic lifestyle. As his entrepreneurial star rose, the health and fortunes of his 70s and 80s rap circle would fall over the years.
In 1996 Melle Mel described the decline, missed opportunities, and ignored phone calls when "his life fell apart":
"I fell into drugs, hard. I thought drugs came with the territory. It's like you test your greatness against the odds, to see which man falls and rises to the end. Everybody I knew, all the stars were getting high on coke and crack. It was easy. I went to prison. I did hard time. I smoked crack. "
One casualty was Russell Simmons' former partner, Larry Smith.
During Smith's reign as rap's first super-producer, his fingerprints were on every major rap release from '79 to '87. His services were in such high demand that he installed several telephone lines in his home to field industry work requests. Smith's reach was far: he worked with R&B band Con Funk Shun ("Electric Lady") while moving between Run-DMC and the Fat Boys and crossing the Atlantic to produce Whodini in London.
Already well known in rap's cottage-industry circles, Smith never sought the spotlight, rarely appearing in national media interviews about rap music. Instead, he preferred partying at Bronx club, the Disco Fever, when he wasn't in the studio. During those heady days, Coke was Smith's drug of choice, and he even had his own personal supplier. Intent on never missing a night at his nighttime homebase---Smith headed straight to the Fever from the road.
Racing from Virginia en route to New York, he took a detour in Delaware in hopes of boarding a northbound ferry to New Jersey. As the ferry was departing, Smith navigated his air-bound vehicle (ala Denzel Washington in Flight) like a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier — ensuring a perfect landing and a timely arrival to the Fever.
As Smith reveled in the background, Russell Simmons traded in their partnership to link up with Rick Rubin to form Def Jam Records. Publicly framing the Simmons-Rubin union as a natural transition, privately, Smith was hurt. When his production style was overtaken by new sounds, the phones stopped ringing. Smith developed a crack addiction and lapsed into homelessness.
In the late Eighties, Smith's friend and rap compatriot Spyder D---no stranger to substance abuse---appealed to Danny Simmons, who was now a drug counselor, to help Smith, now prone to retreating to bathrooms to smoke crack.
Smith would be criminally reduced to a historical rap footnote and a tragic casualty of hip hop's changing musical taste. Danny Simmons summed up the shift to an industry anti-drug climate:
"What happened is that it started interfering with how people lived and they would say, this is not working, this ain't going to work with what's happening in my life."
Rap Rocks To A Different Kind Of Bass (Base)
In 1985, Bad Boys featuring K Love's "Bad Boys" celebratory drug rhymes ("if every once in a while/ you take a sniff of the blow") gave way to hip hop songs exploring 360 degrees of the emerging crack condition.
1985's "Batter Ram's" storyline depicted a California crack house overrun by law enforcement. In '86, R&B/rap hybrid General Kaine's "Crack Killed Apple Jack" was Motown's first venture into hip-hop.
Before Nas' metaphoric masterpiece "I Gave You Power," his Queensbridge forefather MC Shan released "Cocaine:"
"Stay away from this girl, take my advice, she's pure as snow and her heartis is cold as ice, I was under her spell, she had my brain...don't you know by now her name is cocaine...."
Rap label Cold Chillin' emerged as a worthy challenger to the mighty Def Jam empire. Despite a roster of ground-breaking acts, drug use trickled down from the labels' executives to their acts like Kool G Rap; who nearly succumbed to a brain aneurysm ("I was young getting high and shit like that. Sniffing coke. Me doing that wasn't the cause but it made situation I develop worse")and Shan, who nursed a coke habit while recording "Cocaine" ("I was the biggest hypocrite in the world").
In a 2017 interview, Shan likened his era's drug use to a sport ("either you played or you didn't. If you did, you played hard").
Women were central characters in crack-era anthems like Boogie Down Productions' "The P is Free" ("the girlies are free/cuz the crack cost money"), NWA's graphic "Dope Man" ("strawberry is a h---/selling p----y for crack") and MC Shan's "Jane (Stop This Crazy Thing)":
"Then a flick of the flash, the torch was lit, she put it to her mouth and took a hit /smoke rushed from lungs up to her brain/ this was the end of Jane."
Rap duo Nice and Smooth spun a tale of ill-fated intervention on "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow":
"I don't deal coke and furthermore you're making me broke/ I'll put you in a rehab and won't tell your folks/in eighteen months/I let her back in/and now she's sniffin' again"
Brand Nubian's "Slow Down"("you was fly once/now you losin' all your fronts") dismissed female crack addicts for "giving up the crotch for a fresh gold watch" despite group member Lord Jamar's revelations on Vlad TV of smoking woolers---cigarettes laced with crack or coke and weed during his teens; a past time also shared by Gang Starr's DJ Premier who sidestepped the possibility of addiction ("thank God we came outta that").
Boogie Down Productions released the cautionary "Love's Gonna Get'Cha" and "Drug Dealer," where BDP rapper KRS-One explored historic double standards between black and brown dealers and their white ethnic counterparts. One of hip hop's greatest drug parables ever was King Sun's "Big Shots," that spun a cinematic tale of a drug dealer's rise ("makin' twenty gees a week/and that's a million a year") set to Bob James' "Nautilus" and The Chicago Gangsters' "Gangster Boogie":
"Out on the street, slingin' big rocks of concrete those who tried to play him, they cold got beat, I mean cold he dissed them and you just got smoked, he took your spot and leave ya family broke."
A year after '87's "Megablast ("I got a homeboy who was out on the block/he sales more rock /than fish on the dock"), Public Enemy returned with "Night Of The Living Base Heads"---a play on the title of an old horror flick ("Night of the Living Dead").
Instead of hazy heroin -induced sonics of Marvin Gaye'"Flyin' High's (On The Friendly Sky" "Night of The Living Basehead's manic track grooves and moved at a crackhead's frantic pace as Chuck D shamed brothers "who be dealing on the block where my 98 be wheeling," Chuck bemoaned transitional substance abuse tendencies ("standing on line/checking the time/homeboy playin' the curb/the same ones who used to do herb") and fallen emcees-turned crack addicts ("the culprit used to jam/and rock the mic/yo he stripped the Jeep to fill his pipe").
Years removed from his own angel dust days, Slick Rick's "A Love That's True" parlayed the era into a hilarious fictional story between Rick and his "mad coke fiend" ex:
Draya: "Oh you trynna diss, Mr. Bourgeois Nigga, yet back in the days you used to smoke coke cigarettes too.....that type shit you ain't admittin''"
Rick: "Because homegirl, I grew out of it: you didn't!"
The reclusive God Emcee Rakim was saddled with rumors that he was sent to Rikers Island for selling crack. He would respond with a thrilling video for the single "Let The Rhythm Hit 'Em." The video's storyline cast Rakim and DJ Eric B as urban super heroes rescuing a female drug overdose victim from a crack house and flying through city enroute to the nearest hospital with cops in pursuit a high speed chase.
On "Set 'Em Straight" Rakim shut down the blasphemous rumors:
"They even said that I was locked in jail/so now I guess I'm out on bail the only album I was on was the strong one, and if I did a bid, it'd be a long one if I sold weight I'd be upstate in the penal waitin' for a break/cuz selling drugs is for handicaps I got to many skills beside bustin' rough raps/If I go to jail it wont be for sellin' keys; it would be for murderin' emcees....."
Four years after penning "Dope Man," Ice Cube returned with 1992's "A Bird In The Hand." Cast as a young father whose dreams are killed due to limited career options, he's rebuffed by AT&T, and holds down a fast food gig ("gotta serve food that might give you cancer/cause my son don't take no for answer").
Drowning in low-wage purgatory ("now I pay taxes that you never gimme a back/what about diapers,/bottles, and similac"), Cube pondered his options he wavers between hitting the block ("do I have to sell a whole lotta crack/for decent shelter or clothes on my back") or waiting on the system or social intervention ("or should I wait on Bush or Jesse Jackson and Operation Push?").
"Bird in the Hand' explores addiction's mighty reach, stretching from the hood to Hollywood, impacting beloved figures like Michael Landon and fallen child stars ("crack will sell in the neighborhood/to the corner house b---s/Mrs. Parker, Little Joe and Todd Bridges").
Surveying the landscape littered with political figures taking drugs and superficial pep talks meant to salvage America's genocidal crack epidemic targeting urban areas ("your plan against the ghetto backfired"), Ice Cube chooses the latter: securing a "bird" (a drug kilo) and offers a middle finger cliffhanger to the current sitting presidential administration:
"We don't wanna drug push/but a bird in the hand...is worth than a Bush!
As the 90s progressed, the hip-hop aesthetic balance would shift. Light hearted themes, lyrical and conceptual genius or social uplift akin to "Planet Rock's "utopianism ("we know a place where nature's children dance") would be supplanted and never return to its past prominence.
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