Commentary

Everything I Really Needed to Know I Learned from Rap Music

Okay, so all I really learned about was drugs. But at the University of Oregon, is there really any more you need to know?

By Pete Hunt

Nobody bothered to tell me the real facts of life when I was growing up. My parents were too embarrassed to tell me about their "wet-and-wild" youth. They thought the less I knew of their infamous past, the better. Well Dad, your story of getting hassled by the federalees in Tijuana could of come in handy when the EPD found me hotboxing in the bathroom at a busted keg party. My high school health teacher loved to talk about the dangers of STDs, but the school refused to hand out condoms. I learned about gonerrhea from listening to a guy named Ol' Dirty Bastard. Where was the guidance counselor on that one? We live in a society of hypocrites who more or less insist that our youth learn about the dangers of society on their own.

Well, what our public learning institutions wouldn't tell me about drugs, Snoop Doggy Dogg did. And when people told me "nobody" really knows to please a women, I knew they meant nobody but Too Short. Where our "politically correct" driven culture has failed, our "id" driven hip-hop heroes have succeeded. Like Ken Kesey said in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, it's all about transcending the bullshit.

What follows is a collection of wisdom that has been passed on to me from hours of bumping "Doggystyle" in my Jeep Cherokee. These quotes deal with everything from sex to drugs to the law. Rap music may not be the deepest form of poetry out there; but in keeping it simple, it keeps it real. So read on, young men and women; be entertained, but more importantly, be educated.

"Yo, I don't smoke weed or cess/ Cuz it's been known to give a brother brain damage."
-Dr. Dre
Back in high school I was about as hip as Encyclopedia Brown. I never went to a single unchaperoned party, and I never touched a drop of alcohol. I certainly never smoked "la-la." Although a vibrant personality and a good sense of humor may have won me friends, it never afforded me the opportunity to bang the head cheerleader in the back of my car after prom. Take it from me, chicks don't dig chess trophies. Still, I got good grades and a few scholarships, and that got me into the "higher" education system. I have Dre to thank for keeping me on the straight and narrow.

"Smoked weed with a lot of college students/ most of em wasn't graduating and they knew it."
-Redman
This would aptly describe my sophomore year of college, when I really started puffing on the endo.

Sure, my GPA went from 3.86 to 2.5, but I was having a hell of a time. What did I care, I was going to community college. Smoking opened up a whole new world to me. Cultural differences all but disappear when somebody whips out a bubbler. I would smoke with the campus stoners one-day, and with the captain of the basketball team the next.

My love of Indo continues to this day, but I've learned a thing or two since my early days as a toker. First, you've got to realize that the old cliche that smokers are lazy do-nothings is entirely true. Of all the people I smoked with back-in-the-day, only a few are still in school. Most of them flip the whoppers that I eat for lunch, or worse still, run green chain at the mill. Yet they still show up unannounced at my house to toke. We reminisce about the good old days, but that's about all we have in common. I can't relate to stories about getting high in the bathroom at work anymore. In conclusion: If you can smoke and still handle going to school, then more power to you. But getting an education is far more important than getting high. End of sermon.

"If Kurupt gave a fuck about a bitch/ I'd always be broke/ and I'd never have no motherfucking endo to smoke."
-Kurupt
You can divide the friends you know into two categories. Those who are whipped, and those who party hardy. I put myself into the latter category. Hey, I might not be getting laid every night, but I don't have to check in with anybody when I want to go to Highlands for a drink either. I know some guys who have tried to do both - be the loyal boyfriend and the boozin' buddy - but it never works. When they're with the guys, they're always too worried that their girlfriend is going to find out they're taking bong rips. When they're with the girlfriend watching a Meg Ryan flick, they always wish they were with the guys. You can't have it both ways man.

And speaking of getting laid, here is my take on the whole thing. Waking up next to a beautiful young sorority girl with a body as toned as a 64' Chevy is a great thing when your 20, but it's going to be even cooler when your 40. Older guys always get the best chicks; look at Michael Douglas. So party while you can, you're going to be dealing with the opposite sex for all of your life, but it's only socially acceptable to pass out drunk on a pool table when you're in your early twenties.

"Just took some ecstasy, ain't no telling what the side effects could be."
-Dr. Dre
If President Bush hadn't blown most of his braincells out on coke, he'd appoint Dr. Dre as our nations drug czar. If you've seen "Traffic" then you know that our war on drugs is a joke. In primary and secondary school they show you films like "Reefer Madness" that desensitize you to the seriousness of drug addiction. Nobody really believes that smoking one joint is going to put you in the loony bin.

Dr. Dre, on the other hand, has been preaching the drug gospel for years now, and he never gets any thanks. Sure, he might puff a little weed now and then, but he also tells the kids some straight hard facts about drugs that they aren't getting from Barry R. McCaffrey. Young, uninformed adolescents may think that MDMA is completely harmless. How dangerous can something be if Morley Safer - the epitome of uncool - did a 60 Minutes piece on it? People know more about the dangers of Ecstasy from one Dr. Dre song than they do from countless MTV after-school specials.

"I don't really care if the po-po stop and stare/ I'm way out my body/ way out/ my body."
-E-40

Oregon Revised Statue number 430.325 states that it is illegal to be under the influence of a controlled substance on public property. But you're free to be as trashed as you want to be on your own property. That means that if you're sitting on the front porch drunk as a skunk - and more than a little stoned - there is absolutely nothing Johnny Law can do about it. If there is one thing rappers know, it's the law.

"Pass the Blunt/ My nigga don't front/ you've had it for a minute/ but it seems like a month."
-Method Man
One night about a year back I was sitting around my old apartment with a bunch of friends smoking weed. We had a major case of the munchies, so I headed to the freezer and pulled out a massive frozen DiGornos pizza. I could hardly wait to bite into that delicious rising crust. Well, I should have waited, because five minutes later when I pulled it out of the oven, I ended up with a mouth full of dough. Time seems to go by slowly when you're stoned. That's why I thought the pizza was done, when in fact it had barely defrosted.

The nineties were a rough time to grow up. Pops was doing 12-15 on an intent to distribute charge. Mom was barely holding down two jobs. Big brother left the family to go slang rocks on the corner of Crenshaw and Slausun. People getting shot up on the streets. It was all a brother could do to make it to school every day.

Okay, this doesn't really describe my teenage years, but it may as well, because it does describe the life of your typical rapper. Many young people live vicariously through the lives of rappers. They think it's all about "switches and bitches" and "shorties and forties." Well, in some ways it is, but there's really a lot more to it than that. I challenge you, the next time you're bumping your old Ice Cube CD, listen a little more carefully to what the guy has to say. Learn from it, take it with you in life. "Check yourself before you wreck yourself."

Pete Hunt, a junior majoring in Journalism, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator