On the hit single “Not Afraid,” Eminem raps, “It was my decision to get clean, I did it for me.” The hip hop icon celebrated his 15th year of sobriety earlier this year. He has since helped his fellow rappers with their addictions. Many rappers who grew up around drugs have positively portrayed substance use in their music. However, in recent years, some young rap artists have detailed the consequences of addiction and mental illness in an effort to spread awareness and eliminate stigma related to substance use disorders. Kid Cudi had a difficult upbringing that ultimately made him turn to drugs. He got increasingly into substance abuse the older he got, and it got worse the more prominent he became.
- Denny Kolsch, an Orlando-based mental health counselor who specializes in addiction and mood-related disorders, says that socioeconomic factors may be another reason African-American rappers allude to drug use in their music.
- After spending time in rehab, his third album, 2021’s The House is Burning, was recorded completely sober.
- Also, since a lot of rappers do drugs, it influences their audiences to do drugs too.
- If that influence is hard to pin down, it’s because Uzi has somehow made the existence of a quirky, emotional, rock-inspired rapper a common thing in 2023.
- Continue to visit GRAMMY.com for more exclusive 50 Years of Hip-Hop content throughout the year.
Expand music menu
You know who else beat addiction and got his own television show? Not that he’s totally out of the red zone (he recently had to close down a bunch of fast-food chicken restaurants), but at least he’s no longer battling an addiction to crack. In the early ’90s, Flav caught some flak from his fellow Public Enemy members for showing up late to shows, but they didn’t even know the real problem.
- With a strength tougher than Nigerian hair, his impression can be heard throughout every era of modern hip-hop, from his own musical family tree with Young Money (Drake, Nicki Minaj) traced through to next-gen superstars (Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole).
- It was Radio that turned the rap album into a work of art and kick-started the genre’s golden age.
- Plus, as Ann Carli, then a Jive Records exec, recalls during the «Parents…» video shoot, as quoted in Brian Coleman’s indispensable tome, Check the Technique, Vol.
- His expansion into other business and artistic pursuits, which include films, fast-food takeovers, and TV shows with lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, and impact on his community are among the main reasons he’s maintained cultural relevance across three decades.
- A month after his release from the hospital, Eminem relapsed.
Kendrick Lamar
- Prince Markie Dee (52) of the Fat Boys passed away from congestive heart failure.
- Therapy has been transformative in the way I think and therefore the way I think shapes the way I write, and the way I write shapes the album that I make.
- Lead single “Over When We’re Sober,” featuring Ashley Cooke, is among several collaborations on the LP.
- Later this year, prospective fans will get a deeper look into as1one’s formation, artistry, and message of unity through a four-episode docuseries on Paramount+.
- But, for those of us actually living through the scenes they illustrated, their art was a Rosetta Stone.
- Such is the case with Master P, the New Orleans native who founded No Limit Records and, along with Cash Money’s sibling duo of Bryan «Birdman» and Ronald «Slim» Williams, changed the paradigm of the rap mogul forever.
«Focus» really made me think you must be in your ‘I’m not your therapist» era. I think this is really the first time that I’m able to say that. Nearly four years after her last full-length, 2020’s holiday-themed Cider & Hennessy, Jordin Sparks returns with her new album, No Restrictions. A separate legal skirmish, in which the group was sued for copyright infringement over a parody they recorded of Roy Orbison’s «Oh, Pretty Woman,» made its way to the Supreme Court.
- On the other hand, Poet argues people rap about opioids because it’s fashionable and says the lifestyle is «financially beneficial for them».
- He tells in the above video about how his children were his inspiration to finally get clean.
- Write an article and join a growing community of more than 189,900 academics and researchers from 5,044 institutions.
- Brantley Gilbert inks another portrait of small-town country life on his seventh album, Tattoos.
- “High Powered,” “The $20 Sack Pyramid,” “The Roach,” “Let Me Ride” and other tracks from «The Chronic» exalt the benefits of smoking weed.
- Without therapy, I probably would still be writing very punitive schmaltzy Nicole songs.
The (un)exceptional spectacle of American gun violence
But the genre was still largely singles-driven, and the albums then were usually stuffed with the hits, some filler, and a few unique experiments. It was Radio that turned the rap album into a work of art and kick-started the genre’s golden age. The career of Eminem, born Marshall Bruce Mathers III, is unprecedented.
In February 2016, rapper Macklemore released “The Unruly Mess I’ve Made,” a record in which addiction is a recurring topic. A few months later, he met with President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss the realities https://ecosoberhouse.com/ of this disease. While by no means the only topic tackled in Bay Area rap at the time or today, Mac Dre did his part to keep it alive within the culture, for better or worse, for decades after his death.
Bay Area rap music that came in the immediate years before him was largely a lot slower and more serious — one subset is even called «mobb music,» suggesting sinister overtones. Christopher «Biggie Smalls» Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G., is a titan in hip-hop history, a wordsmith whose lyrical potency is intensified by the brevity of his career. With the guidance of Sean Combs — who then went by the moniker Puff Daddy – Wallace quickly went from «Unsigned Hype» in The Source sober rappers magazine to Bad Boy’s marquee artist, crashing onto the charts in 1994 with his debut album, Ready to Die, at just 21 years old. A London native transplanted to Long Island, New York, Dumile began his career as Zev Love X, forming the group KMD with his brother DJ Subroc. But after Subroc’s sudden death and their record label’s refusal to release their album, Zev Love X went on hiatus — and returned as MF DOOM, donning a mask to combat the music industry’s corruption.
Lil Uzi Vert
Royce Da 5’9”, Eminem’s fellow Bad Meets Evil partner and former Slaughterhouse signee, went through his own struggles with alcoholism. The Detroit lyricist has rapped about his addiction and recovery in his music. A shifting attitude toward addiction and mental illness has taken place among the rap community. From Macklemore speaking with Obama about opioid abuse to Logic releasing a song about suicide awareness, more rappers today are bringing these subjects to the forefront.
