From “Cheeba Cheeba” to “Kush,” rap’s always had love for the leaf
With the roots of hip-hop set firmly into the bedrock of the blues, it’s no surprise we find odes to cannabis in the Muddy Waters song “Champagne and Reefer” from his 1981 King Bee album. He wasn’t the first African American musician to sing deeply about the plant (Cab Calloway sang “Reefer Man” to adoring white audiences way back in 1932). And he certainly wasn’t the last.
When hip-hop exploded onto the mainstream during the ’80s, artists like Tone L?c certainly had weed lyrics, but they disguised their influence by using slang terms. His 1989 song “Cheeba Cheeba” was controversial for its time for being about smoking cannabis, but Tone L?c gets props for headlining a movement.
Dr. Dre’s magnum opus, The Chronic (a title that will enjoin the producer’s name with hip-hop and cannabis forever), was a term almost too opaque for mainstream audiences to understand. That’s OK, “Stoned is the Way of the Walk” was Cypress Hill’s poetry in 1991, but if the message was somehow unclear, “I Want to Get High” in 1993 got the point across. The Pharcyde’s 1992 song “Pack the Pipe” was probably not talking about tobacco.
Back to Dre, his epic hit “Let Me Ride” featured lyrics about a man and his car driving slowly through L.A. as he languorously enjoyed his medicine. “Gin and Juice” by Snoop Dogg (with Dre at the producer’s helm) delivered the message of having some “bubonic chronic” that made Calvin Broadus choke. Tupac sang about cannabis with songs like “Weed Got Me Crazy” and “Smoke Weed All Day.” We will, Tupac, we will.
In 2001, Afroman gave us a one-hit wonder (probably because he inhaled from a one-hit wonder) with the confessional “Because I Got High.”
By 2004, all subtlety was lost. “Weed Song” by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony pretty much told you what was going on in the song with the title . . . but coming back full circle, Dr. Dre recently released “Kush,” a track featuring Snoop and Akon that praises the virtue of—well, if you don’t know, it’s time you told your dispensary to mix up its selection of strains. (Jasen T. Davis)
