A short dive into the smoky lyrics of hip-hop made in the USA and made in France, to the glory of marijuana… But not only. Puff Puff Pass!
We’ve known it for as long as rap music has existed: weed is an important part of this culture, whether it’s consumed or evoked by artists (often both, in fact). This is not the place to reference all the texts on the subject, but rather to highlight the funniest, best-written or most thought-provoking ones on this age-old subject (because, as we all know, people were already getting high in ancient times).
In the U.S., while the earliest texts tended to be educational and moral when it came to drugs (Grandmaster Melle Mel’s famous “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” comes to mind), by the 1980s, the apology of marijuana was making its appearance. Old timers will remember the duo EPMD (the acronym for Erick & Parrish Making Dollars) who, on their 1988 debut album, Strictly Business, evoked “Jane”, a woman who turns heads.
OG of ganja rap
In case there was any doubt, the track “samples” Rick James’ famous “Mary Jane”. It’s the start of a saga for E Double and PMD will release a ” Jane “They’ve been doing this for twenty years, on every one of their albums containing the word “Business” (Unfinished Business, Business As Usual, Business Never Personal, Back In Business, Out Of Business and We Mean Business), proving that they’ve got their act together.
We won’t go back over NWA’s famous track, “Express Yourself”, in which Dr. G. B. is the star of the “Express Yourself” series. Dre boasted that he didn’t smoke weed, only to return to solo work a few years later, in 1992, with the album The Chronic, an ode to Weed, followed in 1999 by the album 2001, whose only illustration is a leaf of grass. It’s always been said that only fools change their minds.
Eazy-E, a founding member of NWA, has always followed the same line, signing in 1993 ” Down 2 Tha Last Roach “And don’t forget, we’re still getting’ higher than a motherfucker! “, extolling the hydroponic power of “Skunky funky dookie doobie”.
Snoop Dogg, from his first album produced by Dr. Dre, still in 1993, mixed the products with ” Gin and Juice”: “Rollin’ down thе street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice”. He followed this up by briefly becoming Snoop Lion in 2012, during a rasta conversion as short as a cigarette butt; the occasion for a 2013 album, co-produced by Major Lazer: Reincarnated.
Cypress Hill, the group featuring B-Real, Sen Dog and Mixmaster Muggs, has built its career on its appreciation of weed, appearing on the cover of the famous US High Times magazine (a first for rappers), and the Blunt Brothers Method Man & Redman made it onto the big screen with ” How High “Kid Cudi, with ” Marijuana “He has chosen to extol the virtues of the weed that makes him happy, the “pretty green buds” that he appreciates so much and that have helped him give up alcohol (although he admits he “can’t forget Grey Goose”).
Afroman, with his 2000 hit “Because I Got High”, on the other hand, developed a critical point of view: “I fucked up my life because I got high / I lost my kids and my wife because I got high.” A far cry from the holy trinity glorified by Lil Wayne in one of his classics: “Pussy, Money, Weed”.
French rap declares its love for weed
And in France? From NTM and their famous “Pass pass le oinj” (“Y’a du monde sur la corde à linge”) to Raggasonic, their brothers in arms and bongs who advocated legalization on several tracks, not to mention many others.
We even remember a forgotten group, signed to the indie label Big Cheese, called Schkoonk Heepooz. And who has forgotten Doc Gynéco’s retirement plan, invited as a feat by Ärsenik on “Affaires de famille” in 1998? “A coffee shop, a junkyard for my cop, Madame / I’m contributing to my retirement in Amsterdam.” The simple ambitions of a Weed smoker, in short.
But if the North has passed on the Weed message, Marseille hasn’t been left in the lurch: on Ombre est lumière (1993), IAM extolled the praises of the “Shit Squad”… without Akhenaton and Shurik’n being consumers. AKH/Oncle Shu: “Come on, taste this my son / Two bars and I bet you think you’re Amenophis / Mmh, no thanks. How about you, Jo? No, likewise / That doesn’t mean we don’t approve / They’re our friends, though I warn you / Get out your badge and the Shit Squad’s in!” The moral of the story? “Many don’t see that legality hides similar products: alcohol and tobacco are drugs.”
The sequel (because there is one) can be found in the first volume of the famous Chroniques De Mars (1998): a trilogy of compilations showcasing talent from the streets of Marseilles. No one has forgotten the legendary “Le retour du Shit Squad”, rapped by a powerful collective (Fonky Family, Faf Larage, 3e Œil, Freeman, K-Rhyme Le Roi and Sentenza aka AKH).
Don Choa says: “This is Marseille, my brother / Straight out of the container / The stuff that turns you inside out / You smell the joints better than the flying customs dogs / Smoking hot pellet mixtures. “Sentenza replies, “If there’s ganja at your place, gringo / It’ll jump in the name of father, son and Sentenza, amen / I’ll be dry if you’re not hot, prepare a good space gazpacho. ”
That was 1998. Fourteen years later, the redoubtable lyricist Hugo TSR delivers “Coma Artificiel” and evokes addictions with more darkness: “We’ve got the blues, our lungs are charred / Ask Nounours, it’s not always food on the stove / When the ashtars pile up, the liver is full of gashes / Me and my ‘teille it’s true love, and every night it’s Saint-Ballantines.”
Soft drugs and hard lyrics
In 2006, Sinik wrote ” Mon pire ennemi” (My Worst Enemy), a text in which he transforms the product into an evil companion: “All I want is for it to leave me, for us to stop working together / When I run away from it, it follows me, when I smoke it, it leaves me. “Pot in prison? Un traître, une salope, en promenade les bagarres sont de sa faute.”
This moral point of view was also developed by Kery James in the Ideal J song “Un nuage de fumée”: “Dans un simple joint ma rage je contiens […] / Un nuage de fumée infâme enfume ton âme / En vain tu essa de semer les drames qui consument ton âme.” No one is more uncompromising than a repentant smoker: “Why do I only think about getting high? Why does it hurt to say it? ” asks Vald, in 2018, in “Rechute”; a piece of introspection, self-criticism and self-loathing far less light-hearted than it first appears.
Nekfeu, who deserted the biz a few years ago, rapped casually in ” Gasket “, included in 2014 on his Black Album withdrawn from sale (but audible on YouTube – the Internet never forgets); rhymes mixing sex and spliff: “Yo, you’re dazzling, roll a spliff before the revelry / I know you desire this little pleasure before the real enjoyment […] / You’re always speed, you taste my shit / Take a piece, roll and if it’s cool, we sleep then. “The good old days? Not sure.
Mad in France
The man who has never had any qualms about crossing all the boundaries of good taste, including on the subject that interests us here, is of course Alkpote, who, in ” Amsterdam City Gang”, raps some smokin’ lines: “I smoke blue cheese, too good amne / I’m back from ‘Dam and I brought too many drugs […] / You like low-cost gear / I’m all about the hits. ”
Caballero & JeanJass, meanwhile, have launched the High & Fines Herbes (2020) concept: a series of tasting videos on YouTube and an obsession with this duo from the flat country of Belgium. In “Meilleure vie”, JeanJass raps: “Ma meuf est bonne mon teuteu est crémeux / No need to write, but when I have some, I write better. “The High & Fines Herbes formula can also be found on the menu of a significant number of the duo’s tracks. : ” Ordinary life “, ” 24 hours “, ” In the mirror “These include “Fuel pump” and “Plant type”.
PNL is one of those groups that assumes a past in illicit and documented it from their first project, the mixtape QLF (Que la famille), released in 2014. In the now-infamous “Je vis, je visser”, Ademo raps, “On te fait le taga, on te fait la beuh / Tu viens du 16, on te fait la cess.” Yes, the “ienclis” of Paris’s 16th arrondissement seem more interested in white powder than green plants. Having reached the pinnacle of their fame (and the Eiffel Tower for the video), Ademo and N.O.S. release “Au DD”, and it’s drooling one more time: “Sur ton cœur j’fais trou de boulette […] / Au DD, je la passe, la détaille, la pé-cou, la vi-sser, des regretts devant ton bébé.” For those unfamiliar with this fraternal duo, PNL refuses to glorify the illicit, and their lyrics are somewhere between regret and repentance, all the while assuming their path.
Koba LaD, for his part, has asked himself fewer questions. Able to tell his dealer’s tricks in his first interviews, he is the archetypal rapper perpetually high, joint in hand and smile on his face. In 2020, for example, in “Bedodo” (on the album Détail, 2020), he says: “Pour dodo, je fume quatre bedodos” (“de beuh”, he adds).
Hardly less clumsy are certain passages in “No Pasarán”, the anti-RN collective track produced by Kore, which raise the subject of THC. While Kerchak speaks quickly on the subject (“I’m going to vote left, but it’s not just for the lega’ of canna'”), Zola puts his foot down: after proposing an octagon to Bardella, he launches into “Close the borders but the dope will come up from Marbella anyway.” He may have added: “So every day fuck the RN” to refocus on the subject, but the damage was done and the cannabic pro-trafficking rhyme was much talked about.
The last job
A little lightness to conclude, and finally a feminine presence with Theodora, singer and rapper who caused a sensation at the recent Hyper Weekend Festival with a magnificent acoustic version of “Ils me rient tous au nez” with Chilly Gonzales on piano. The woman who calls herself “Boss Lady” on TikTok, got the streams flowing with her bouyon-sounding track: “Kongolese sous BBL”. In between rhymes about her anatomy (“Even if sometimes I don’t see eye to eye / It’s because of my fiak, it keeps my knees too far apart / And my big boobs often hurt my neck.”), Boss Lady evokes her chlorophyll state: “J’suis pétée sous Cali, pollen jaune Maya l’abeille.” What could be more natural for an artist making the buzz?
