Cocaine Rap by Damien McDuffie
Hip-hop has long had an infatuation with drug-related gang culture, especially cocaine. Many artists reference the drug on a regular basis: Jay Z (‘coke is still my sponsor’), Young Jeezy (‘dope boys go crazy’) and Juelz Santana (‘fiends go to work for the work Im chefin’). But none of them are as notorious for their coke references as Lil Wayne. Two thousand and eight finally saw the self proclaimed Hip-hop messiah Lil Wayne deliver the “third coming” of his Carter series, Tha Carter III. This was definitely the most anticipated album in recent Hip-hop history, validated by its recent Grammy win for best rap album. The albums most controversial track was Wayne’s ten minute monologue, “Misunderstood,” where he stops rhyming 3-minutes into the track only to go on a philosophical rant about incarceration, education, drug sentencing, and politics. It is interesting seeing Wayne attempting to throw some social consciousness into his work on “Misunderstood.” Save for the Robin Thicke-laced track, “Tie My Hands,” – about the failures of the Katrina relief effort – Tha Carter III, though great, is starved for thoughtful commentary on social issues. Wayne decides to say something meaningful about cocaine’s impact on communities. He says, “the money we spend on sendin’ a muthatfucka to jail…[it] would be less to send his or her young ass to college.” The cost of incarcerating one prisoner is indeed more than the cost of annual tuition at most public colleges. The average prisoner in California alone costs about $35,000 per year and can be almost twice that number for tenured prisoners. This is just one of the many problems that faces our nations flawed prison system.
Although crack and cocaine have the same physical reaction from users, the law has historically assigned far harsher penalties to crimes involving crack, a drug primarily associated with poor people and people of color. In the late-80s, Congress passed a law that created a 100:1 quantity ratio between the amount of crack and powder cocaine needed to receive the same sentencing. These laws made it so that an individual could posses 400 grams of powder cocaine and receive a lighter sentence (1 year) than a crack user that has 5 grams (5 years). Even though the majority of crack users are white, most people imprisoned because of crack offenses are black. Roughly two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Latino, but more than 80% of defendants convicted of crack possession in 1994 were black for example.
Wayne goes on to say that prisons are overpopulated because of how unfair drug laws negatively affect neighborhood ghettos versus the suburbs. Stereotypes regarding those who use crack cocaine and who those who use powder cocaine make the drug laws racist. Not only are crack and powder cocaine simply different forms of the same drug, but crack is primarily thought of as a drug used in blacks in urban areas. Wayne draws attention to the cyclical nature of what has become the American prison industrial complex adding, “we probably only selling crack cocaine/because we in the hood…its not like the suburb/we don’t have what you have.” What those in the ‘hood “don’t have” are human resources. These corrupt laws have left poor communities with even less; less workers, less people teaching, less tax revenue, etc. The only thing that sells in these communities is crack.
The drug disparities are only a symptom of the greater prison industrial complex in America. Like every other industry in a capitalist system, the prison industrial complex relies on raw materials – in this case people – to sustain itself, regardless of actual crime rates. Because of this, the prison industrial complex has very real consequences on the ground because the laws fractures black voting power. While registering voters in Virginia for the Obama Campaign, I ran across many young black male that could not vote because they had a drug related felony charge. “I can’t vote,” is a phrase I often heard coupled with a look that suggested that their political reality was especially trying. States like Va restricts former felons right to vote, run, or hold public office forever and as one out of four blacks were disenfranchised by these laws in VA itself! Wayne’s critique of the of the nations drug laws and the structural inequalities are only the beginning of the socio-economic problems facing the nation. Thank God for Hip-hop.
[Damien McDuffie is a Bay Area native and a graduate of Loyola Marymount University. He majored in Political Science, with an emphasis on the prison industrial complex and its effect on AIDS in the Black community. He is the founder of hip-hop based company, ReVibe, whose central goal is to "challenge the Hip-hop community to become more politically engaged by highlighting social issues associated with the Hip-hop generation." Stay tuned.]
dame diddy doin it big
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