Lil peep death images crack#

Thanks to a robust marketing campaign, sales of the opioid painkiller Ox圜ontin grew from $48m (£36.5m) in 1996 to $1.1bn in 2000 in 2012, 282m prescriptions were made for it – a bottle for every American. In their songs at least, there are no comedowns, only the dizzy, meaningless highs.īut at the same time, prescription drug addiction took hold of the US – last year, 91 people a day died of opioid overdoses. Kanye West sees “a whole party melting like Dali” after dropping molly, rap’s now-favoured name for ecstasy (also namechecked by the likes of Tyga, Rick Ross, Rihanna and, infamously, Miley Cyrus). Eminem recorded two songs from The Slim Shady LP while high on it, while mentor Dr Dre suggested on Bad Intentions, “take an X pill, how the sex feel?” A little-noted detail is that the civic euphoria of Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind is powered by the drug: “MDMA got you feeling like a champion / The city never sleeps, better slip you an Ambien”. By shamelessly leveraging the glamour of criminality, these rappers appeal to prurient middle-class audiences (including a sizeable white demographic) and by pointing a route out of poverty, they appeal to working-class ones too.Īround the turn of the century, rappers increasingly started dabbling in designer drugs, too, particularly ecstasy. The song’s pop beauty conjures a couple revelling not in the drug’s high, but the emancipation it gives them as a result of cash from its sale.

Lil peep death images crack#

On the 2014 mega-hit Trap Queen, Fetty Wap introduces his girl to his stove – he’s not showing off his new Aga, but rather where they will cook crack together. On Clipse’s Grindin’, Pusha T says that “four and half will get you in the game” and that he is known in the neighbourhood as Mr Sniffles, but his laser-precise flow suggests sobriety and business nous. Blended with a gin and juice, Snoop Dogg hymned the relaxing properties of marijuana (“laaaaaid back.”) while Cypress Hill synthesised its paranoia with the creepy malevolence of B-Real’s voice.Ĭrack cocaine was a different prospect: the rappers never got high on their own supply.

The former is often used merely as a straightforward wealth signifier: Hennessy and Courvoisier cognac, Cristal champagne, Patrón tequila and Grey Goose vodka. Three drugs are most commonly associated with hip-hop: alcohol, weed and crack. His vision of drug-taking was not without pleasure, but certainly a means of escape as well as straightforward hedonism – a marked change in rap culture. Lil Peep also rapped about drug-taking: “I hear voices in my head, they tellin’ me to call it quits / I found some Xanax in my bed, I took that shit, went back to sleep” “Sniffin’ cocaine ’cause I didn’t have no Actavis / Smokin’ propane with my clique and the bad bitches” “Gettin’ high ’cause my life don’t mean shit to me”.