What does the singer who romanticizes drugs reveal about himself? I’m reminded of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” in which Gray laments the intellectual beauties inaccessible to the lower class: “But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page / Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll; / Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage, / And froze the genial current of the soul.” These illiterati must thus find escape beyond the page; so too the composer of a Rebetika song that glorifies hashish—a composer either unable to read or simply unable to gain entry into the world of art—must find escape in the smoke-saturated atmosphere of the tekedes.
Reading Beaton’s account of Rebetika and its infatuation with hashish brings to mind not Jazz and the Blues, but the modern rap song. Listen to Young Thug’s track “Stoner” and hear him repeat “I feel like Fabo” over and over—as his voice signifies both more pain and braggadocio with each successive mention of the five syllables. (Fabo is a rapper renowned for his excessive drug use, even among rappers.) Danny Brown echoes this sentiment in his song “Kush Coma,” rapping “Got my mind drippin’ / Gotta get away from all this bullshit in my way / Knowing goddamn well when the high go away / Same shit gon’ be still in my way.” Note that the rest of the song reads like a celebration of weed and its euphoric effects, and it is, in a certain sense; however, the ecstasy achieved through the smoking does not exist in a vacuum, but is partly derived from its erasure—for just a few hours—of the pain felt while sober.
Hip Hop and the Oral Tradition 
According to the title, which is a title of a CD, the word “underground” suggests clandestinity and secrecy. Rembetika can be classified roughly into two categories: The main one which was played in public as a form of entertainment by highly skilled musicians and the second one was played in enclosed such as “Tekedhes” (hash-dens) and prisons. (Varius-Rembetika).
Let this video speak for itself:
Snoob Dogg, an artist of rap music and as Jesse stated, modern rap music can be closely associated with smoking and more specifically smoking weed.
“Underground” can also be read as “literally underground.” As seen in the 8 mile movie, the artists would perform their music under the ground, in isolated places. A lot of people would gather up to watch the show and many of them smoked weed just below the stage. In other scenes, Eminem and his friends smoked weed in the car or Eminem smoked weed by himself while writing lyrics. This is a movie but the bottom line is that it is a reflection of a rap artists and his everyday life and drugs are highly used on daily basis.
“The Eminem show,” the album’s last truck starts with a someone grinding two lines of cocaine on a table and snorts it further underlying the use of drugs.
Eminem’s album “Encore,” is an album where it represents an Eminem show and on the last truck he thanks the people for coming to his show and says “peace.” Then he continues by taking a gun out of his pocket saying “I almost forgot, you are coming with me,” and kills everybody in the place. This is again a music album which does not happen in real life but still reflects reality. Eminem always used to carry a gun on him. He has no record of murder but this underground life of his was probably filled with criminality.
Works cited:
LikeLike