While music has taken many different forms and changes over the years, a few things remain constant topics: love, parties, and drugs. The latter more than anything else has boomed in popularity among musicians, especially rappers. Almost every rap song that comes out nowadays includes references to marijuana, cocaine, etc. A perfect example of a project that represents this drug culture, Future’s 2015 album DS2 actually stands for Dirty Sprite 2, with ‘dirty sprite’ referring to lean, a mixture of codein-based cough syrup, soda, and usually alcohol or other drugs. This mixture alone demonstrates the glorification of reckless drug usage in pop culture, and the consequences have already been felt across the industry.
On November 15, 2017, popular rapper Lil Peep, who became famous from the music-streaming platform Soundcloud, died from an overdose of Xanax laced with Fentanyl. Only 21 years old, his death shocked many and scared even more about the fatal effects these demanded prescription drugs like Xanax could have. Fentanyl, an extremely addictive and very strong opioid, has blown up recently as a laced component in other drugs, as it is much cheaper in comparison. Lil Peep was one of the first demonstrations of fentanyl’s deadliness in the music scene. While many of his contemporaries gave their condolences through social media and mourned his death, nothing was done to stop the actual drug craze.
Similarly on September 7, 2018, rapper Mac Miller was found dead in his house due to an apparent drug overdose, just a month after the release of his latest project Swimming. Aged only 26 years old, he adds to the list of famous rappers to die young due to opioids. Much like with Lil Peep, many people were morose with his death, but still nothing has changed about the praising of drugs in music; earlier this summer, Lil Pump released a song titled “Drug Addicts” that did just this, and it became one of the most popular tracks of the month 92,000,000 views on YouTube alone to date.
While drugs have been popular with musicians for decades now, the strength, accessibility, and dangerous mixtures of them has risen exponentially. Juice WRLD sings on his song “Legends“, a tribute to the recent deaths of many artists, “What’s the 27 Club? We ain’t makin’ it past 21”. Drugs have become so much more available and deadly among younger generations of people that the future for many musicians and their fans is only becoming gloomier. We can only hope that something will come soon to change the culture against hard drug use; I only pray that it isn’t another death of a young, talented artist.
I appreciate your homage to Mac Miller, as he has been making headlines and posthumously raising awareness about the dangers of drugs since his death earlier this year. I think the overglorification of drugs is something that definitely needs to be addressed in the modern culture because children and teens who listen to rap and may even look up to these rappers as role models could easily be persuaded to begin (over-)doing drugs from a young age.