Benz and a Backpack

Weed has penetrated hip hop culture harder than Ray-J hitting Kim from behind (you saw the video). Pothead rappers, weed anthems, purple haze-this, chronic-that; we already broke down why weed was the number one drug in hip hop. Rappers are even smoking weed in the middle of interviews nowadays. Tisk, tisk. But for now, I wanna step away from the rappers and the music a bit and talk about the average working man and politics. In other words, hustlers and the battle to legalize it.

I’m sure if you asked any heavyweight or fan of hip-hop if they would like to see weed legalized, at least 75% of the respondents would say yes (if anyone has any real stats, hit me up). Everyone has heard the same arguments over and over; it will decrease violence due to drug trafficking, lower the prison population, we can tax it, regulate it, blah blah blah. Today I stumbled across a fresh, more human observation of the legalization of weed by L.A. resident Joel Stein of Time Magazine. After reading the article I started thinking about how legalizing weed, and all drugs for that matter, would affect hip-hop. But my main concern really comes from something I’m not too familiar with: the hustle. I qoute:

“When Attorney General Eric Holder declared that the Federal Government would quit busting dispensaries, removing even the hint of consequences for medical-marijuana use, my heart ached for small-time American pot dealers. They can’t compete on price, selection, customer service, quality control or not-getting-arrestedness, and they have no skills that translate into another industry. They’re almost as bad off as journalists.

Damn. So much for my dreams of becoming a pot-selling journalist. According to Joel, “There are more medical-marijuana dispensaries in L.A. than Starbucks.” How are these guys gonna compete? I’ll let Joel continue:

“Of all the potheads I know — did I mention I live in Los Angeles? — only one still uses a dealer…”The dispensaries have really made my drug dealer step up,” my friend told me. Not only is the dealer now charging $100 for a quarter ounce, compared with the $120 he’d charged for decades, but he has also started offering home delivery instead of shady parking-lot meetings. “He got more reliable. He used to be, ‘Yeah, I can’t do it today. Maybe tomorrow.’ Sometimes you’d page him, and he’d never call you back. Now I’m like, ‘I’m going to be at my house at 4 p.m.,’ and he’s like, ‘I’ll be there.’”…Competition, it turns out, improves capitalism, even among the members of society least capable of doing math.”

Obviously, the lack of prohibition is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Making drug dealing less profitable and forcing lazy drug dealers to really step up their game to remain competitive.

So lets play a pretend game of crack-head Candyland and picture a world where all drugs are legal. For the purposes of this exercise, we are going to include all drugs. You can roll the dice and hop block to block copping weed, coke, E, pills, whatever, all without worrying about harrasment from the law as long as you consume safely in regard to yourself and others. In this highly theoretical world, it is safe to say drug dealers would have no clientele. All the big narco-traffickers of Latin America are notorious for wanting to keep drugs illegal for this very reason.

This whole schematic made me think of hip-hop is because of how intertwined a lot of rappers are with the drug game. Not only have they used selling drugs to make money, but they have used their stories to establish street savvy and credibility to advance their carreers. The notion of hustling drugs is something present in all forms of rap, from the bottomest underground to the most mainstream. It’s a reality many people take on as an attempt to escape their situation.

In her book Hip-Hop Wars, famed author Tricia Rose brings up and breaks down the holy trinity of hip-hop; the pimp, hoe, and gangsta. Given that “gangstaism” and the problems that it creates essentially starts from organizing a group of individuals to maximize profits from illicit products, it is interesting to imagine what would happen if gangstas were taken out of the picture. Imagine hip-hop in a day and age where no rapper could come up claiming he was a hustler back in the day. What would happen? What could ever fill that vacuum?

Damn if I know. Maybe there will be more rappers talking about working dead end jobs (like Blu or Consequence), going to school (like Mr. Lif or Kanye), pretty girls (like Drake or Common), politics (like Immortal Technique), or kung-fu movies (like RZA). All I’m saying is that something, or everything, has to fill a very vacant hole left by the Jim Jone’s, 50 Cent’s, and Jay-Z’s of the world.

I know this whole legal drugs thing can be a little fantastic, but it’s interesting to think about how this element of hip-hop culture would be changed by the legalization of drugs, especially with legal marijuana on the horizon. It kind of makes you question how much street cred and selling drugs actually has to to with how respectable your music is. For me, hustling is something bigger. As Nas said, “making something out of nothing, it’s God’s work.” As long as you do that, you’re hustler in my book.

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