Study Finds Drug Culture Has Grown in Rap

Although many modern listeners may not realize it, rap has not always promoted drug use as much as it currently does, according to a new campus study.

The study, led by Denise Herd, associate dean for student affairs at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, found that drug references in rap music have multiplied six-fold and have increasingly glamorized drug culture since 1979, when Herd said rap music first gained popularity.

To see how the content of rap has changed over time, Herd and her team looked at 341 lyrics from the most popular rap hits from 1979 to 1997, as measured by Billboard and Gavin Charts.

During the period from 1979 to 1984, only 11 percent of songs were found to reference drug use. By the 1994 to 1997 period, more than two-thirds of rap songs contained drug use references, and the attitude toward drugs had become markedly more positive, Herd said.

While early rap did reference illegal drug use, its tone was usually one of caution and condemnation, Herd said.

"Songs of the earlier period were much more likely to warn against the dangers of drugs," she said.

She gave as an example the 1983 song "White Lines (Don't Do it)" by Melle Mel & the Furious Five, which warns against the dangers of cocaine through lyrics like, "Either up your nose or through your vein / With nothing to gain except killin' your brain ... If you get hooked baby, it's nobody else's fault / So don't do it!"

As rap evolved during the 1980s and 1990s, it began to take on a more celebratory view of drug use. Later songs connected drugs more with pleasure, recreation, sexuality and other socially desired situations, Herd said.

According to Herd, illegal substance use was brought into prominence in the 1990s by the War on Drugs and what she called its uneven targeting of blacks. Many rap artists were also involved in the drug scene as users and dealers.

"Artists in the early '90s (who referenced drug use) experienced a lot of commercial success," Herd added. "Their sales went up dramatically, and it started a trend."

While cocaine references were common in the later period, the dominant substance portrayed in rap has been marijuana, the study showed. Herd added that rap music has popularized the idea of "blunts"-cigarettes filled with marjiuana.

"Smoking blunts is really strongly associated to rap music," Herd said.

In the Three 6 Mafia song "Sippin' on Some Syrup," which Herd said exemplified rap's new attitude toward drug use, DJ Paul raps, "Sexy thang on my arm, cup of drank in my palm ... Sippin' on some siz-erp." The song glamorizes cough syrup abuse as well as cocaine and marijuana, she said.

Herd said her study demonstrates how the genre of rap could take on a more positive role.

"What's interesting is that rap songs didn't always center around drugs," Herd said. "If it once had different messages, I think there's a potential for having more constructive messages coming out of that kind of music."

Tags: DRUGS, MUSIC, RAP