I’m Talking About Bass: Rap music’s perspective on the crack epidemic and the federal’s War on Drugs (1985-1992)

Abstract

During the 1980’s and early 1990’s the United States endured an epidemic of crack cocaine. As a response, the federal government recommenced its War on Drugs, primarily investing billions of dollars in law enforcement, prisons and interdiction. Since crack cocaine was mostly found in the poor inner-city ghetto’s the ones affected most by the War on Drugs were predominantly Afro-American. However, amid the crack epidemic, rap music found its way in the United States and served as a way for young Afro-Americans to narrate, critique, challenge and deconstruct the realities of post-industrial life in the 1980’s. In this thesis, I investigate how young Afro-American rappers voiced their critique on the federal government’s approach to the crack epidemic, constructing a discourse on the crack epidemic from the perspective of rap music. For my research, I analysed lyrics by East Coast and West Coast rappers between 1992. Although the rap scenes of the East and West Coast adopted different ways of getting their message across, the focus of rap music generally moved from educating and warning the people for the dangers of crack to a more fixated resentment against the federal government’s approach of dealing with the crack problem. For my thesis, I have adopted the historical revisionist view that history can be reinterpreted or re-written when viewed from a different perspective or with a different approach or preconception. By exposing the perspective of the African-American youth through the music that gave them their voice, I complement to a historiography in which everyone is represented surrounding the crack epidemic and the federal’s War on Drugs.