i think theres something to be said about the possibility of clipse writing cocaine rap cause it makes for the best punchlines--end of story.
Yes yes. Clipse definitely paint a picture of a cocaine utopia in their lyrics. But they're portraying the coke trade in a way that is consciously hyperreal. "Pusha T" and "Malice" are characters the Thornton brothers use to do this: of course they are not literally drug lords on the level they are fronting. But in hip-hop, hyperbole is the name of the game. Certain tropes are used as a formal backbone that the MC fleshes out with metaphors then uses as a means of flaunting his/her lyrical prowess. Especially when it comes to tropes like the "I'm a badass drug dealer"
boast and the "yo mamma" type of
diss: sure, these are cliches, but some of the best hip-hop lyrics I've heard are technically built on these cliched forms. They astound you with their inventive language, with the way that they can make something as cliched as a boast or a diss sound virtuosic or poetic.
The reality of cocaine dealing, in the end, is
utterly banal and not the least bit glamorous for the average middleman. That doesn't mean that Clipse's coke utopia is based on an empty fantasy, though--higher up on the supply chain, there are people who lead lavish lifestyles built on money squeezed out of coca plants. If you're going to talk about drug dealing only as a trope that you use to shore up cred, to establish your lyrical potency and your preeminence, you're not going to tell the truth about how you've flipped some 20-bags of coke to 20-year-old girls on the Lower East Side, or even that you've moved some weight after you worked your way up for 5 years making deliveries for a supplier. You're going to front like you get razorblade suitcases straight from Bolivia, sit in the VIP section with Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss at Bungalow 8, and have 5 mansions and as many boats in tropical island port cities.
Clipse are amazing because they use these tired hip-hop tropes to hold a mirror up to our society and its real ideals, they refuse to play to expectations or live up to the mammy myth where black men are supposed to be inherently wise and ennobled thanks to their suffering. Clipse paint a picture of a coke utopia that is significant in how current/relevant it is, even in the way its imagery and sonics perfectly mirror the psychopharmacology of the cocaine experience--cocaine being a drug that has dramatically surged in popularity in the past 5-10 years. The cocaine trade, on
Hell Hath, is a metaphor for rampant conspicuous consumption. The psychoactive effects of cocaine are a perfect analog to late capitalism's frenzied and mindless consumer mode of being. The cocaine high is all about instant gratification. The more you do, the more you realize you are chasing the high; like the consumer under capitalism, all you feel is the the need for more. Bling culture is pictured as the aesthetic symptom of the late capitalist's cocaine-like high on consumption. Clipse don't think bling properly signifies being "hood" anymore, they declare bling dead, drained of any subversive power it may have had (that is for another post, though I always think of bling in its heyday as semiotic terrorism--luxury brands like Burberry are MORTIFIED that they are seen as primarily black or "ghetto" brands now). They're pointing out that the middle class is vanishing, black people are slowly losing any chance they may have had to join it--but people are willing to take Louis Vuitton sunglasses as a consolation prize, even if they have to sell coke to get them. They do all of this while admitting that they are part of the problem (as we all are). That is a level of honesty--and actual humility--that I respect.
Clipse are showing us that cocaine utopia, a filmic trope from way back (Scarface anyone) before hip-hop starting using it, still resonates, resonates more than ever, because it is the American dream fully realized. And they do it in some of the most evocative, gorgeous language you'd never expect to hear applied to such well-worn territory, that (imo) completely reinvigorates it. We
do live in Clipse's coke utopia.