In the famous song “Dopeman,” spit by Ice Cube over 20 years ago, one line stood out for being the most memorable: “Don’t get high off your own supply.” We all remember that lyric, because getting high was the job of the crack head, and the man in charge made sure he was always in control. Even club owners aren’t the ones partying and getting drunk. Instead, they sit in the back room and count their paper, while encouraging everybody else to go out and have a good time.
Since the time of Ice Cube and NWA, some things have changed. We have reports of Soulja Boy getting busted with blow and the ridiculous video of Gunplay from Rick Ross’ group The Triple C’s getting high on camera. For some reason, some people now think it’s cool to dig into the white powder that creates crack babies, bloody gang warfare, mass incarceration and the destruction of our families.
The only thing worse than being the dealer is to be the fiend who depends on the dealer. The life of a dope fiend is never good: You lose all of your money, your teeth fall out, and the people who once loved you are quick to abandon you. You become the funky, dirty, sneaky, skinny, nasty ass negro that nobody wants anything to do with. Who wants to sign up for that?
Maybe it’s time for all of us to take a stand and call bulls**t out when we see it. The rappers who brag about blow need to be given the Vanilla Ice treatment and sent back to the crack house where they came from. We’ve got enough problems in urban communities without stupid people encouraging kids to get high.
Maybe it’s also time for the real hustlers to stand up for what black men truly represent. Respect can be given to brothers who do the ordinary thing, but I’d like to see some credit given to brothers doing the extraordinary thing. For every dollar a rapper makes for busting a rhyme, the record label exec who went to business school is making $100 bucks. Every time an NBA player gets paid for dunking a basketball, the owner of the team is making 100 times more. There are a thousand ways to hustle, and the best hustle of all is education, which only comes down to putting in the time. All those hours we spend working on our jump shot or hustling on the corner can be put into a book, where the payoff is much higher than the other stuff we do.
But the bottom line on getting ahead in life is that you don’t get there by getting high. That’ll only give you a free ticket to the morgue.
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