Sex, Drugs and Hip-Hop

Hedonism and success are best friends whose house ceaselessly accommodates new guests on the daily. It takes a single day for an anonymous voice or lyric to walk through a door of recognition in contemporary media (probably archaic media as well) and taste the fruits of their labor. Being raucous and irresponsible with newfound fame is ostensibly a result of a lack of experience managing a large amount of wealth and attention, both accumulated in a small amount of time.

Fame comes in many different shapes and colors, and the way to handle it, and the very aura around it, is criticized depending on who is experiencing it.

The expression coined to describe musicians in particular, navigating through the debaucherous scenes of fame is ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll.’ For the longest amount of time, being famous while on tour and performing music, has been correlated with bedding a significant number of people, experimenting with recreational and hard drugs alike, and doing long shows. As a matter of fact, many artists and rockstars embrace it, and accept the perception of others wholeheartedly. They go as far as mentioning it in their music (more on that later on).

The lifestyle and the lyrics have both played significant parts in defining rock culture, with the conception of a rather morbid collective known as ‘The 27 Club,’ the never-ending list of mostly rock musicians who died at 27 (oftentimes from drug use). This is now recognized by many music fans alike. The risk factor is there. The appeal is certainly there, as most people romanticize fame as this oasis for debauchery, and its participants are still certainly here. However, there is a discrepancy.

When I say I don’t go a day without someone articulating their antipathy for hip-hop music, I don’t exaggerate in the slightest. There’s no way to exaggerate it. Everywhere you go, rap is given a connotation very reminiscent, yet very anti, rock music. One conquers every Rolling Stone list and praised as rhapsodic odes of life in the 80s and 90s The other has a violent, criticism riddled air haloing it for a very long time. There’s one prominent difference.

Brooklyn artist PanamaDaPrince caught on to the veneer of a pedestal rock music gets placed on, and the unfairness of the comparison between rap culture and rock culture.

‘Just like singers can say “b**ch” in their music and it rarely gets bleeped, but rappers can’t say it at all. It’s mainly a race thing to be honest. I really caught on when I used to work in the city while doing retail. We were not allowed to play rap music at all, but the rock and pop songs that we played spoke on similar topics. Especially a song that we played constantly, “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon. The title alone is a dead give away. But the one lyric “I’m getting head while I’m driving” always stuck out to me. Especially because it was a family oriented store. Nonetheless, it was always okay to play s**t like that, but not even a radio version of a rap song. There’s a double standard to everything.’

Why is that the trend though? Hip-hop didn’t really rear its head until the late 70s/early 80s, so to say that it’s the precedent for all debauchery in fame is an erroneous thought. Furthermore, to say hip-hop glamorizes it more than other genres is a lie. Sex as a tool to sell is a pervasive trend, even outside of music. Advertisements and televisions shows use clever allusions and analogies to sex while remaining somewhat subliminal – yet it’s common practice amongst those who do it.

It’s very simple to ascribe characteristics to a group of people in order to simplify thinking; this is done all the time. Blacks, for the longest, have been depicted as being belligerent, and grabbing a hold of a very specific denomination of hip-hop and applying its characteristics to the whole of the black community is a very wrong, yet easy, thing to do. And so it’s performed. That’s why the mantra of ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll’ doesn’t translate over to hip-hop. Because of marginalization and false classification, sex, illicit drugs, and alcohol are taken off of their romanticized pedestals and simultaneously recognized as vices (and not culture) and villainized because of who’s doing it, and the ‘background’ of the people doing it.

And it’s wrong. These are stereotypes that have unfortunately been coupled with famous people, and does not ring true for every artist of any genre. To allow exceptions and/or normalize certain facets of fame for one genre and not the other is not okay.

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