The Other Side of the Game
Oh Whitney. Why you gotta go and do that, love…huh?
This article isn’t really about Whitney.
Some people think an addict gets what she deserves - that is, if you are stupid/weak enough to get hooked on shit, you deserve what you get. The addict is a mess, one that can’t figure himself out, can’t break the chain. He’s the person so imagined by the public but known by few – cuz it’s the side you DON’T want to be on. S/he’s the person that we imagine being talked about when our favourite artist romances his real/side/back in the day hustle.
This is a gigantic elephant in the middle of the Hip Hop room that too few will ever acknowledge, because it ruins their fantasy urban legend superhero. To be alive and well and (supposedly) living off the weaknesses of other people fuels half of the lyrical content of the rhymes we hear - myself included. But it’s getting more personal as I see more people who just can’t leave whatever alone (using and selling). And I think because it’s personal to so many who don’t want to offend their loved ones and family members who sell (or lose legitimacy with folks in the streets), it doesn’t get called out much - at least like it used to when it was a movement in the late 80’s.
This is the other side of the game – the junky, custy, crack ho, whatever – whose desires to flee their present insanity feed a nation of desperate people who are just hungry to leave their bad situation.
Famed ex-dealers (or claimed ex-dealers maybe?) riddle our top 10 lists. We hear endless tales of crack slung to wicked, deserving fiends we see in our imagination. They are heralded by funny images on the Chappell show and In Living Color and as the face for the “indomitable human will” in every movie where a dope fiend finds salvation and turns their life around. That side is entertaining and has an easy outcome – just say no and turn your life around! Easy story, all of them, because that story is not the one that digs up hundreds of years of oppression, familial abuse, or multi-generational post-traumatic stress.
The other side hurts. You’ve been had - by dealers or pimps, society, your weaknesses. Everything has triumphed over you in every hit you ever had or cut a corner for. Or lost a job and a family for…or your life.
Whitney was on that side.
Gil Scott Heron, who single-handedly revolutionized a Hip Hop generation before it was even born, was on that side. He was a rare bird indeed, because he unabashedly put his weaknesses out for all to see, and told the world that he had a crutch, needed help, but couldn’t shake his dependency.
If he and Whitney are on that side of the hand, who does the hand belong to? Kool G Rap? Jay Z? Biggie? M1 or Stic Man from Dead Prez who used to hustle? The CIA?
I’m not demonizing anyone, I’m just looking at the cause and effect. Parents who are addicted to crack have children who watch them die, and some parents outlive children who are unable to cope. And somehow I feel that most people who sell are in the same position as the ones they sell to, sadly, even if the closest they get to the stuff is bagging it.
Bess
