Religious Medicine

Unity Lewis breaks down marijuana’s significance

If you enjoy authentic underground Cali hip-hop with a sociopolitical edge, the music of Unity Lewis is what you’re looking for. Also known as Young Precise for the surgically precise lyrical delivery, the man is an MC with a message that informs and inspires.

As a community organizer, he connects with troubled urban youth, motivated by his own harsh experiences growing up with gangs in L.A. and and elsewhere. His reggae- and funk-inspired compositions detailing America’s real inner-city life has earned him a fan base across the Golden State.

CULTURE spoke to the talented artist and producer about the foundation of hip-hop, his recently released (free!) EP, and how cannabis can help and heal us all.

What have you been working on?

In November, [I dropped] another free EP. I’m giving people a taste of an album I did called Pray. It just got released on iTunes after for its 10-year anniversary. This is the first time the album is going to be available on its own. It’s the first album I produced by myself.

The following week [I dropped] an EP with Tai Chi, a.k.a. Don Juan Immaculate. He’s an in-house producer for the Napalm Clique, my old group, and we’ve done a lot of songs together over the last couple of years since then . . . I have Audio Veve Part 1 coming out, too.

You combine reggae and hip-hop with tremendous effect.  The two music genres always work well together. Why is that?

Actually, reggae came first. Hip-hop was imported. Reggae was invented in Jamaica, where rockers, who were into ska music and dub, would play against each other in a sound clash. This was where they’d set up a van with huge speakers, and one sound system would battle another. The original MC would put up a dub on the mic and do toasting, one of the first forms of rap. MCing comes from toasting.

There’s a big connection between Rastafarian culture and cannabis. But going beyond stereotypes, can you tell me what it’s really about?

When it comes to cannabis, that’s the holy sacrament; you burn it to get back to nature. The plant is a connection to Jah [Rastafarian term for God] and meditation. The state that it puts you in is meditation. In this day, people just burn to deal with stress. Not all Rastas smoke, and not all Rastas smoke all the time. They know it’s sacred. If you do it all the time, it stops being sacred.

Do you see cannabis as being a medical and religious issue?

It’s a money issue with those fools. They want money. If they can get money, they are happy, but if there isn’t money they feel threatened. The forefathers of America grew [marijuana]. It’s only been not cool in America for 100 years, but previous civilizations have used it forever. The government is afraid they won’t be able to control it. They don’t care about the medical issues.

Divine Inspiration

The term Rastafari comes from Ras Tafari, the name of Haile Selassie I before he became emperor of Ethiopia. Ras means head and denotes a title equivalent to a duke. Tafari was Haile Selassie’s birth name. Some Rastas consider Haile Selassie to be an incarnation of Jah (God), a messianic figure or simply a divine king on Earth.