Hip-Hop is catching a break when it comes to negative criticism.
According to a recent study from Addictions.com, despite decades of unfair accusations, Hip-Hop contains the least amount of drug references in its music in comparison to other genres.
The comprehensive study compared Hip-Hop to other genres including rock, pop, jazz, folk, electronic and country, combing through a staggering 1.41 million songs seeking more 68 drug terms consisting of the following words:
Acid, Adderall, addyAtivanan, bars, blotter, blow, blues, blunt, bud, buddha, chronic, cid, cocaine, coke, crack, crank, dank, dope, dose, doses, dro, ecstasy, gak, h, heroin, hydro, ice, joint, key, lean, lortab, LSD, lucy, Marijuana, MDMA, meth, methamphetamine, microdot, molly, morphine, oxy, oxycontin, perc, Percocet, Percocets, piff, pill, pot, powder, purp, Promethazine, Roxy, speed, sizzurp, spliff, syrup, tab, tabs, tar, tweak, upper, Valium, Vicodin, weed, white, x, and Xanax.
Upon completion, the study revealed that out of all of the genres compared, Country music contained the most drug references with Jazz coming in second. Hip-Hop contained the least amount of references but, interestingly enough, marijuana or “weed” was the most popular one in the genre.
Breaking down stats even further, Addiction.com also gave a list of rappers who referenced marijuana the most. The study showed that the rapper with the highest (no pun intended) number of mentions was Kottonmouth Kings with 344 references, The Game came in second with 125, narrowly beating out Cypress Hill at 124, Bone Thugs & Harmony at 113, and marijuana connoisseur Redman with the least mentions at 109 .
Surprisingly, the seeming poster children for weed in Hip-Hop Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa are nowhere to be found.
Other notable references in Hip-Hop include Too $hort with the highest amount of cocaine references at 85 (Jay-Z is at 75), Tyga with 72 references to ecstasy, Eminem with 70 references to pills, and Method Man with 47 references to meth (although the context of Meth’s references could be misconstrued).
In totality, Kottonmouth Kings, Eminem, The Game, Lil Wayne, and Jay-Z are the top five artists who refer to drugs the most, with the rap/rock group being a distant first at 440 references compared to Eminem at 305.
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