So begins possibly the best gangsta rap album of all time. Those words are so comforting for me to hear, because when they grace my ears I anticipate all the sonic glory that they promise is coming.
When The Chronic dropped in '92, I didn't notice. The reason is simple: I was freakin 6. I was too busy chasing Josh on the wood-chip playground to tag away the utter disgrace of being 'it,' exerting imperial dominance over pog world, and showing the girl I loved Molly Birney that I was her obvious choice. I was obviously real occupied in life.
But when I came of age... I'd say circa '97, I fell in love with the funky-ass gangsta rhythms of Death Row (sorry Molly, I had to move on). I loved everything about it – the hyperbolic hoodness, the Snoop Dogg house-party vibes, and of course, that little detail that screams at you from every angle in his music and his cover art: that good ol’ fashioned dank green ganja weed.
I essentially loved weed before I ever smoked it, or smoked anything for that matter. I loved puffing blunts, getting cottonmouth, and getting lifted before I had ever seen marijuana, all because Dr. Dre told me it was cool.
I eventually got my hands on weed and, you know, I got down with it. But did I really like it? Did I like that half-paranoid, check-out-this-trippy-shit experience? Maybe. Did I really enjoy holding the smoke in my lungs as long as possible before I coughed it out until my eyes teared up? Possibly. Did something inside just tell me that getting high was the shit even if it didn’t feel like that the first few times? Definitely.
Basically, my love affair with weed started because of Dr. Dre’s and other rappers’ endorsement of it. Weed was/is marketed to me not by its dealers or growers, but by hip-hop artists. I just knew that shit was great, before I knew what it smelled or tasted like. It was like Eazy-E, Dre, and Wu-Tang were whispering into my ear in 6th grade saying “you gotta get high man, you gotta see how tight this shit is.”
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have found the beauty of the ganj had I never listened to The Chronic, but without a doubt hip-hop supports the weed industry and favors people who get down with it. To me, Mary Jane and hip-hop are almost inseparable.
And today, April 21 (that bitch motivation kinda got in the way of writing this yesterday), I feel like starting the day off with a bang. So lemme just put on “Let Me Ride” for a pep-talk and get to it.
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