I remember my first time ever seeing crack cocaine. Surprisingly enough it wasn’t in the neighborhood I grew up in which could easily be identified as Any Ghetto, USA. It was once I had left that place for college in Atlanta, Georgia. I’ll never forget it. I was leaving a long day of work at my job in a bookstore and waiting for my train home. I was still new to train riding and liked to watch the people move around and carry on in the stations. A few feet from me was a kid who couldn’t have been more than 14 years old. Maybe he was younger. The boy, who I remember looking like a smaller T.I. with reddish hair and features, had on a dingy and stretched wife-beater on top of baggy Girbaud jeans. I started to feel bad for the kid until a few moments later, when a thin and rough looking man walked up to him and gave him money in exchange for what looked to be broken-off pieces of soap. He was selling crack right there in the train station.
_-_00_-_Front.JPG)
Master P's single cover for "Mr. Ice Cream Man."
I had gone my entire life without ever seeing crack cocaine when this 14-year-old kid was selling it at night. I had certainly heard about drugs in the music that I listened to everyday. I could rattle off the lyrics to songs like Ten Crack Commandments and Mr. Ice Cream Man. Hell, if I added up all of the media that I’d seen since my childhood, I could probably put together a pretty solid plan on how to secure, cook, and sell crack cocaine. But the truth is that there was never really a time where crack cocaine didn’t seem completely and utterly wack to me. And I’d venture to say there are plenty of people in my generation who feel the same way.
Despite growing up inundated with what leading thinkers thought were glamorous depictions of drug culture that would be too alluring for our little minds, we the generation of “crack babies” seem to be doing just fine. My run in with the 14-year-old dope boy on the MARTA does prove that “trappin’ ain’t dead” but fails to reflect the decline in drug use and explain the declining popularity of media depicting drug culture.
Economist Steven Levitt published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, his theory explaining the decrease in crime during the 1990′s. According to his compiled research, “homicide rates nationally plunged 43 percent from the peak in 1991 to 2001.” According to the FBI, “violent and property crime indexes fell 34 and 29 percent, respectively, over that same period.” Levitt attributes the decline in crime to a four things, one of which is “the ebbing of the crack epidemic” in the United States. By comparing rates of incarceration and drug-related homicides and hospital visits, Levitt is able to make apparent the dramatic decrease of crack use and distribution, primarily in Black communities and the real effect it has had in people’s lives.
Politician and activist C. Delores Tucker protesting "gangsta rap."
C. Delores Tucker and Tipper Gore made headlines (and I would suppose lots of money) from prophesying that kids like me would be lured into the culture of gangs, guns, and drugs by the images glamorized by popular Black media of the 1980’s and 90’s and were dead wrong. The very year that I was born, N.W.A. released “Dopeman” off of their debut album. The song was popular – probably one of my favorites by the group – but over 20 years later, those forces of governmental protection may have to concede the point that the rappers were right. The music being produced by the likes of NWA was an expression of their environment and once the environment changed so went the music.
Chris Rock as the crack-addicted "Pookie" in New Jack City.
Last year, GQ magazine heralded Wale, Kid Cudi, and Drake as “Gangsta Killers.” Their music, in short, is supposed to have fought back the years of dope, hoes, and gang violence present in rap music, What GQ didn’t consider is that the men who are 25, 26, and 23 years old respectively missed the era where crack might have been cool. We are the “Just Say No” generation. Those unfortunate enough to have family members who were swept up in the epidemic of the 80′s and 90′ can scarcely remember a time when those people weren’t addicts or in jail. We missed that brief period of time where crack was called freebase and seemed like it would do anything for you besides making you a crackhead like Pookie in New Jack City.
GQ Magazine's "Gangsta Killers," Wale, Kid Cudi, and Drake
Article by Donovan X Ramsey
Donovan X. Ramsey is an Associate Researcher at the Identity Orchestration Research Lab at Morehouse College where he is currently engaged in research regarding the expression of Black male identity in contemporary politics. He has served as a writer for elected officials throughout Georgia and is contributor to several publications. For more of his work, please visit www.dynamicstasis.com or his personal blog The Perfect Square.
Donovan X has written 37 article(s) for us.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice article.
I used to be the first to complain about the content of music and how it affects us but with age I have learned that people use music for different things. Rap is not always to be taken so literally; sometimes people identify with the super egotistical nature of the lyrics despite the content specifically mentioning gang references or drug kingpinism (e.g. the use of Damn it feels good to be a gangsta in Office Space) and that's fine. Just protect the kids from the radio, seriously, because they don't need to be relating to Tricki Minaj until they're positively of age.
We must remember that music (well some of it anyway) is an artistic expression and we would all hate if the only musical options were monotonus, positive, law-abiding, happy etc. Or perhaps not…
it's funny i use to tell the young cats around my way that if you aren't making at the very minimum 2,000 a week you aren't a drug dealer. You are a hobbyist who needs to find a new way to fund your strip club tricking, white tee, and cheap rim habit.
Good post and follow up comments.
Whats also left out is the affect crack had on families as whole. Face it half of our generation grew up with parents or family members who were strung out and had to raise ourselves. Out of that I would say about half made it out and the other half got caught up. Which leads us to some of what we face in this generation today. Babies raising babies. There are alot of reformed addicts out there, tell your story, and reach back into the community and help!!!
Thank You.
I am a 70′s baby and the 80s was the worst decade in my life. It totally sucked. Crack changed everything, unlike dope you saw it, lived it breath it even if you werent in it. The vials of the rainbow coalition. The stench of burnt rubber. And of course the culture within it. And if you are under 25 please shut up cause you have no clue. It was wild, in the 80′s freebase, the raw form of coke, the glue that holds it together, but cutting it is a bitch so many producers used ether…that aint gonna work on a mass production level.
Someone (IDK the Mob, Colombians, CIA) came up with the idea that why not cut it using water and baking soda and the result was this hard rock like coke product. When smoked it cracked and boom our generation changed. Prior to crack drug dealers were for better or worst older men that hustled coke and dope like well the Number Man did numbers, real discreet (America Gangster..Frank Lucas. But with the advent of crack, teenagers, got in and modest and humility went the way of the 8 track and bell bottoms (Alpo and Rich “Paid in Full”).
In the early 80′s a key could have been as much as 20 to 30 a gram after crack it went to as low as 17 or even 10. Add this was now a conservative era where they (republicans) cut EVERYTHING from school programs to job training. So in big cities like NYC, Chicago, LA if you wanted a summer job good luck, heck any job.
In NYC with a school population of over 1 million and out of that over half are of working age most summers there were a puny amount of jobs, say 90,000 tops. And they all paid minimum wage. Now what do you think a kid would do? He could buy the lowest amount of crack he could get, say an ounce then flip it in a market in which all you had to do was be there like MJ. Crackheads were ubiquitous and unlike dope fiends they could go all night and some did. “Spots” cropped up all over the projects (like you here Jigga man say about Marcy, mine was Linden Houses).
But something else happened and it was way worst than we thought.
Much is made over female crackheads but I never knew one personally rather it was the girls/young women that dated/sexed crack dealers and crack dealers were as omnipresent as the addicts. In fact Jiggas line about “I forgive you hustlin just aint you” was to all the guys that only sold crack to get girls so when the subpoenas and bullets started flying these guys started testifying. What really changed it all was a black and white sneaker ad with a Beatles tune. Once we saw that “air bubble” on a sneaker the game had changed. Then came another b&w spot but it was with this skinny black film director and this up and coming ball player who could dunk like James Brown could play funk.
I know Jordan and Spike were getting there black marketing on but they contributed somewhat unwittingly to the Material Decade were your character was spoken for by your clothes now if these were Tom Ford suits fine but no they were overpriced sneakers and then soon outfits. Common clothes, they were over hyped (“its gotta be the Shoes”) and boom and avaricious cut throat-all label all the time fashion switch in black America. We started to dress like young men barely in their adult hood with way too much money to spend. So for kids like me who never hustled we had to try to holla at the 16 yr “good girl” who unknown to her parents was taking a drug dealers money and having a great time. Girls would amass thousand of dollars in outfits stash them at friends house-leave early for school go to the friends house and change. I went to Canarsie High with girls who were rocking in one week $1000 worth of gear, who cares about the high school quarterback is doing his ass is broke!!!!
I know this is a looooong reply but I am 34 and cracks influence isnt just in the “trap or die” rhetoric its seen in how EVERYONE today rocks this bootleg discount luxury from Coach and Gucci kicks to Coach bags yet in the bodega with EBT buying junk food. Its in how college grads my age no less want to come out and “flip” their degree into a lucrative job, right now!!! And if not they are steaming mad. Yet thats the mindset of someone who grew up in cracks era of “why wait”. The “flip” is something the non drug dealers took from the crack era and applied it to their lives. And its really seen in the music industry.
We also adopted cracks rules and regulations. Even today a guy is “broke” if doesnt have the fly car and pad and gear. Women are tested as to how much they werent going to dance with the devil by the pale of the moonlight (throw money and affluence and see how fast she drops the draws). The remnants of the era are everywhere, the prisons filled with good girls who “took a package”(Jigga again on “Song Cry”) and made a mockery of their college life (why go to college to do dirt?). Crack brought the ghettos version of cheap luxury that still runs the hood today. People on welfare in perpetuity run out to rent-a-center and buy 40 in LCD’s. Even working legit men frame their jobs and what they do with the money in drug dealers terms. Its sad at times, Jigga really applied the lessons but I laugh at the regular working guy and women attempting to use their legit lives and come off as hustlers or “ex hustler”.
I think….YOU should blog!! LOL you have so much to say and paint vivid pictures in your responses (that could also be b/c i'm in NY and have seen the places you speak of…and experienced some of the same things where I'm from)… but I digress…
Excellent response!!!! I couldn't have said it better.
My mom was a crack head along with a couple other relatives…seriously (no surprise there right haha). I know first hand what crack does and it's not pretty. I know of friends who's moms were functioning crackheads, meaning they went to work every day but smoked on the weekends. They maintained their households. Not everyone was a pookie or a Halle berry in Losing Isaiah.
I don't think rap music "glorified" selling crack…they just rapped about what they knew and what was real about it. The "glory" was actually the reality of how much money they were making…that was fact, not "hype". And it was glamourous at the time. To get a taste of the "good life"…who would want to deny that.
I totally agree that some of you youngins don't really having a clue what the crack era was about. Especially those of you who grew up "priviledged". And by that I mean away from the hood and crack and drugs and violence (I grew up in the middle of it). It makes it easier for you to judge so called "gangsta rap"..I dont even like to call it gangsta rap..because it was more like "reality rap" for most
Great blog Donovan.
I didn’t realize they (Wale ‘nem) were all so young but yes…they did miss that era when everybody had a family member (or 3) strung out on crack doing strange things for some change. Where radios were stolen out of cars and sold (now they break in for loose change and whatnot b/c you know nobody buys stolen car radios without the brackets etc) and so on and so on.
It does bother men when these rappers still talk about trappin like that’s the thing to do…and b/c parents are younger (and somewhat irresponsible) they have their kids listening to what they’re listening to…a nd 5 year olds are singing Jeezy, Wayne, TI and who knows who else, curse words and all… Ya’ll saw that lil kid talking like those children on the Boondocks – extra crass and cursing. Sigh … We have to do better.
Viva la resistance (i mean the end of the crack era)!!
The crack epidemic was so incredibly influential in the Black community. I was just considering how much of our favorite rap music was made possible by the crack epidemic of the 1980's and 90's. Death Row, Roc-A-Fella, No Limit, Cash Money, and probably Bad Boy were all funded with drug money. It if wasn't for crack, we'd probably never have heard from Snoop, Pac, Wanye, or Jay-Z.
Jay-Z is an inspiration to many young men for his talent and entrepreneurial savvy but he was, before anything, a drug dealer. I can't help but wonder how many Jay-Z's there were that never fully realized because they got caught up.
I don’t know how post-crack the Black community is. There are still young children who are negatively impacted by crack cocaine. There are a LOT of people in our generation, that though they aren’t crack addicts, they are still thoroughly entrenched in the drug life/lifestyle. Also, there are people in our generation who DID/DO/WILL sell dope, at the drop of a dime (and I know plenty of them … some of my family too)
Look at T.I. – he’s a prime example of how crack STILL has had a life for people in our generation (T.I. was born in 1980 FYI). It probably just isn’t in the mainstream rap as much as it was back in 2000-01 but it’s still an issue.
I lived in 7 states and unfortunately crack is still the drug of choice for many.