Drugs and hip hop

The Kentucky Kernel is reporting that hip hop has a pretty serious drug problem.  Now, I’m not entirely sure  how they verify this, but here’s how they start their argument:

“You may not know it, but some hip-hop artists are suffering from serious drug addictions that are killing many pioneers of the game.”

Some of their points are definitely valid.  Losing ODB to cocaine, Pimp C of UGK to codeine are two of the biggest examples.  But I don’t know if its fair to say that hip hop itself is saddled with this problem.  I’m positive that with as all-encompassing a genre as hip hop is, there will be problems.  We hear a lot on the news about gunbattles between posses, beefs between artists, and silly little spats that get blown out of proportion.

In my view, it’s this “I’m tougher than thou” attitude that’s posing the biggest danger to hip hop.  Anyone remember when Proof got shot in Detroit? How about when Biggie and Pac died?

Landon Antonetti, the author of the Kentucky Kernel article, goes on to discuss just how serious a problem “syrup” is.  Syrup being the mix of codeine with anything else.  As serious as it may be, I’m just not buying it as that big a threat to hip hop.  Not more so than alcoholism from too much Cristal or courvoisier.  Just because rappers rap about something doesn’t mean people buy into it.