Our story of ecstasy (MDMA), hip hop, and Oakland begins in 1996, an important year for three reasons:
- The City has recently begun authorizing late-night gatherings at several warehouse venues, including the massive building behind the Home Base store on Hegenberger Rd. These venues would become ground zero for Northern California's techno and ecstasy scene for the rest of the 1990s. In 1999, DanceSafe is founded in Oakland and pioneers on-site ecstasy adulterant testing in America at Home Base parties. At the end of the year, however, the City Council decides that its warehouses don't meet the building safety codes required to hold dance events, so all the venues are shut down. Rave scenes across America are peaking and falling the same way during this time, although Oakland's underground venues will continue to be used and the Bay Area will have San Francisco to fall back on for commercial locations. More history of Oakland's rave scene here.
- Rapper 2Pac - who started his career with Digital Underground in Oakland - is murdered in Las Vegas after having been with L.A.-based Death Row Records for only about a year. For a long era, Los Angeles and its surrounding hoods had dominated hip hop as the birthplace of gangsta rap, overshadowing even neighbors such as the Bay Area. The Death Row label and the West Coast scene in general would suffer a steep fall after 2Pac's death. Here is a timeline of the artists, record companies, and cities that came up in the following years.
| Year |
Artist |
Representing |
| 1997 |
Less than a year after 2Pac's murder, Notorious B.I.G. is also murdered. Ironically, it is during this year that the success of B.I.G.'s producer - Sean Combs - and their Bad Boy label accelerates. |
New York City |
| 1998 |
Master P - owner of No Limit Records - breaks records as one of the richest rappers of all time. |
New Orleans |
| 1999 |
Eminem hits the mainstream, eventually outselling every other rapper past and present. |
Detroit |
| 2000 |
Nelly puts the Midwest on the map with tracks such as Country Grammar. |
St. Louis |
| 2001 |
Producer Lil Jon's crunk movement officially takes flight with his album with the East Side Boyz. |
Atlanta |
California's industry played a huge part in some of the above artists' success. For example, No Limit is actually a Bay Area label as Master P was living here at the time he founded the business. And of course, it was Compton's very own Dr. Dre who signed and produced Eminem. However, each artist who comes up most likely uses his stardom to promote the commercial viability of underdogs from his own hood. Thus, over the years, executives increasingly looked away from the West Coast for new talent. With the lack of support from major companies and radio stations, the Bay's regional artists had to turn to independent means to get their music out to the masses, which brings us to the third and most relevant incident of 1996.
- Oakland-born rapper Mac Dre is released from prison and immediately continues recording songs. With a prolific pace of production - an average release of about three albums a year - and a unique attitude and charisma, he would help create the Bay Area hip hop scene that we have today.
In 2001, Mac Dre moved to Sacramento and founded Thizz Entertainment. By this time, rap lyrics everywhere had content about ecstasy, explicitly expressing the role of this drug in hip hop culture. For example, members of Cleveland's Bone Thugs-n-Harmony had no idea of the pleasure they would get caught up in when first introduced to the substance, as conveyed in Ecstasy, a song from their 2000 album Resurrection. The following transcript is from the song's opening skit:
Krayzie Bone: What's happenin' nigga?
Dealer: Hell yeah, what's up my nigga?
Krayzie Bone: Ain't nothin' just out here grindin', my nigga you know what it is.
Dealer: What's up nigga, what you need?
Krayzie Bone: I need some weed.
Dealer: Aw, man I don't even fuck wit da weed no mo'.
Krayzie Bone: What?
Dealer: Aw, hell naw, man I got this new shit. Man this shit called ecstasy man.
Krayzie Bone: Ecstasy, what?
Dealer: Nigga this tha shit, man. Nigga this shit will have you on the level wit ya female and everythang, nigga. Look I'ma give you one of these muthafucka's, let you try this muthafucka out, man. And I bet you be callin' me tomorrow talkin 'bout you want some mo' of this shit. Man I'm tellin you; shit have you on the level. Man you need to put the weed down fuck wit this shit. Boy, I'm tellin you boy.
Krayzie Bone: This nigga trippin'.
Dealer: This shit will have you on the level.
Krayzie Bone: Straight fuck it. Gimme one of them muthafuckas there man.
Dealer: Here, take that one and call me in the morning nigga.
Furthermore, one of the differences in how the experience of MDMA is articulated in hip hop versus in raves - the culture that this drug has traditionally been associated with - stems from the role that sex plays in each culture. In the electronic dance scene, the spectrum of ecstasy and sex contains one end claiming the drug is an orgy-inducing aphrodisiac and date-rape pill and the other end insisting that the drug boosts sensual (not sexual) connection and actually makes erections or orgasms very difficult to achieve for many users. In the hip hop scene, however, the question is not so complex or polarized, at least not if you turned to rappers for the answer. Does ecstasy make you want to fuck? Does it make fucking feel even better? Fuck yeah is probably what Dr. Dre would say, according to his 2001 song Let's Get High:
Yeah -- I just took some Ecstasy
Ain't no tellin what the side effects could be
All these fine bitches equal sex to me
Plus I got this bad bitch layin next to me
With the emergence of ecstasy in hip hop, we should recognize that it isn't always a drug's effects that influence cultural behavior, but rather that it happens the other way around just as often. Therefore, in identifying a substance's role around sex or music or fashion or anything, the cultural context within which the drug is being taken is just as important as the drug itself. With that in mind, what was happening in Oakland that made ecstasy and hip hop stand out from the rest of the country? Well, the Bay Area scene has developed a variety of characteristics that distinguishes it from others, two of which include 1) an ever-growing vocabulary of slang and 2) sideshow gatherings. Taking them in order, y'all know what it's time to do...
Boys and girls, let's learn some words, yadadamean!!!
* Bay Area Slang-uage *
Thizz Entertainment, The Nation of Thizzlam, Thizz Nation, whatever Mac Dre wanted to call his movement had the word thizz in it. The authentic meaning of it has been the topic of debate in every story on contemporary Bay Area rap music. The term clearly has applications in the experience of MDMA users. However, others insist that this culture doesn't necessarily have any association with drugs at all. In any case, the terminology grew far beyond thizz and Mac Dre as other rappers made up or promoted new slang-uage in their own songs and album covers.
thizz or thizzing (v): to be under the influence of ecstasy; to feel good or have fun; I'm thizzing off a pill!
thizz (n): an ecstasy tablet.
thizzface (n): a facial expression in which one squints and has sour lips; can mean that one is under the influence of ecstasy; resembles the look of having smelt some doo-doo.
getting hyphy (v): being silly; having a fun time; dancing hard; showing a lot of energy; also known as going dumb, stupid, retarded or riding the yellow bus. Rapper Keak da Sneak is credited with coining hyphy. Mistah FAB raps about riding the yellow bus more than anyone else - I'm the first Mexican to ride the yellow bus. Word on the street is he owns an actual yellow mini-bus with chrome rims. I think I drove past it once. It was parked across the street from the police station of all places!
yadadamean (phrase): you know what I mean?
purple grapes (n): marijuana nuggets, usually medical grade; I got grapes!
stunna shades (n): large - sometimes ridiculously ginormous - sunglasses; the kind you would wear if you just got socked in the eye; Put yo' stunna shades on!
scraper (n): a Buick with rims so big that they cause a scraping sound against the bumper or frame; also known as a bucket meaning it is a beat-up ride that is worth less than its own rims.
ghost ride the whip (v): to set your car to neutral, opening the door(s), blasting the music, and letting the car roll; can also constitute the driver and passengers hanging out of the vehicle or exiting it altogether to dance on the hood or alongside the vehicle.
gas brake dip (v): to accelerate and then brake your car abruptly and repeatedly to create a bouncing motion.
Ironically, what has made the Bay's hip hop scene so unique - the rich and ever-growing style of speech and rap - is also what might be keeping it isolated from the national industry. Sure, other scenes have their own slang too. For example, any hip hop fan in the U.S. knows what "crunk" (coined by Atlanta producer Lil Jon) means. And "bling" (coined by members of the Hot Boys from New Orleans) became so popular that it turned into an entry in several standard English dictionaries. But even the vocabulary of the South can't compare to the words that rappers like E-40 come up with on almost every new song. Could this possibly alienate record label executives, radio producers, and fans who have a hard time picking up and understanding the style and attitude emanating from Bay Area rap music?
Moving onto the second characteristic of Bay Area hip hop: sideshows are gatherings where the central spectacle is a driver doing donuts with his or her car, often surrounded by fellow drivers in their cars and standing pedestrians. This is the most basic definition that can be provided, and this topic is relevant to our discussion for a few reasons:
- Sideshows occur in very few parts of the country outside of the Bay Area, and it is more popular in Oakland than anywhere else. In fact, the popularity has caught the attention of artists outside the Bay, such as Houston's Chamillionaire who raps often about the sideshow scene.
- Ecstasy use has become common at these events, and anti-drug advocates claim that this has contributed to violent incidents there.
- The history of how sideshows have been criminalized largely resembles the criminalization of raves with some of the same consequences. Many sideshows take place in the Oakland neighborhoods where rave warehouses are located.
Like raves, sideshows grew in popularity, size, and frequency to a point where authorities, local politicians, and community members developed the belief that they were too dangerous and out of control to take place legally. So begins the timeline of criminalization of two seemingly different youth cultures:
|
Sideshows |
Raves |
| The Early Days |
During the 1990s, they were small gatherings that occured from time to time on parking lots. Aside from noise and loud music, skid marks left behind by tires, and on-site alcohol and marijuana consumption, not much happened that created enough of a problem for the public to notice. |
In 1995, the City of Oakland began issuing permits to a few warehouse venues for late-night parties. The massive Home Base building on Hegenberger Rd is located across the street from a Pak-n-Save parking lot where many sideshows took place.
|
|
Identifying the Problems |
Many attendees say that one of the reasons they participate is to find a safe late-night alternative to the nightclubs where drunken fights, shootings, and other sorts of violence are common. Police and church leaders, however, assert that such violent behaviors - in addition to auto collisions - do occur at sideshows. One problem is that whether an incident is "sideshow-related" or not can be somewhat subjective, and some harms - especially those allegedly caused by ecstasy use - have not been specifically documented by police or medical reports.
|
During the year that the City Council closed its warehouses to late-night parties, national media attention began to be paid to the perceived dangers of raves. Coverage of the problems focused almost exclusively on the risks of the drug ecstasy, and "ecstasy overdose" became the default headline for most reports on medical emergencies or safety issues at raves. |
|
Sideshows |
Raves |
Regulation vs. Criminalization |
Individuals such as City Council member Desley Brooks advocated the development of a legalized and monitored venue for sideshows as opposed to spending more tax dollars every weekend on sending more cops to the streets. Then-mayor Jerry Brown and members of the police dept disagreed. They felt that cracking down on the gatherings would be the only sensible option because - in their view - these youths want to do something criminal. Since then, measures against sideshows have only increased.
|
Oakland has actually been on the friendly side of raves. Despite the warehouses being shut down forever, a number of permitted events took place over the years at other venues, and the underground scene continued without heavy disruption from police or local lawmakers. Hostile criminalization, however, was enforced in most other parts of the country. Such action made raves, techno music, or late-night dancing exclusively synonymous with ecstasy abuse. Examples include Chicago's ban on after-hours DJ parties and Florida's "Operation Heat Rave."
|
Unintended Consequences of Criminalization |
While the pros and cons of regulation have never been determined (because legal sideshows have not been attempted in Oakland), punitive action has in a few ways worsened whatever problems these gatherings introduced. When sideshow participants were chased and locked out of parking lots in the 1990s, the scene moved onto the streets and intersections where they were even harder to control and closer to endangering property and pedestrians. In fact, most of the accidents - including at least one of which was fatal - occurred while sideshow drivers were fleeing a police crackdown.
|
After Oakland's warehouses closed, most legal raves moved to San Francisco where procedures to hold safe, monitored events have increased with the cooperation of promoters, the police, the fire dept, and the Board of Supervisors. During the beginning of this, however, nightclubs in SF were threatened with the potential loss of their permits if they couldn't prevent drug overdoses from occuring. This led some club managers and security to hesitate from calling 911 even when an emergency was happening at a party. Furthermore, patrons seldom sought the help of staff if and when they knew someone was in need of medical attention. Eventually, policies were changed so that 911 calls couldn't be used as evidence to deny an entertainment venue a permit to operate.
|
East Bay Express writer Rachel Swan covered the black community's concerns against drug use at hip hop gatherings, adding attention to the fact that there is almost zero certainty over what users are knowingly taking due to the high adulteration rate of tablets sold as ecstasy:
In a 2004 San Francisco Bay View article, "Ecstasy: Ruining the Future of Our Community," staff writer Jordan also compared the Ecstasy fad to the crack-cocaine epidemic that plagued her mother's neighborhood in the '80s: "Ecstasy has hit our communities just like crack hit back when my mother was a teenager," she wrote, adding later, "We need to realize that this drug is bad, and whoever brought this into our community had plans on ruining the future of the black youth who reside in these communities." Jordan even attributed the recent spate of violence in hip-hop clubs to the exhilarating effects of Ecstasy...
But since Ecstasy is still new to the hip-hop community, there's very little quality control around the drug. Many people aren't even sure what it's going to do to them, or how they're supposed to feel when they're on it. Even the mode of ingestion is different; whereas ravers tend to take E with other uppers like speed or cocaine, most people in the hip-hop community seem to mix it with alcohol and weed, which changes the effect.
Perhaps most importantly, much of what they're taking isn't really Ecstasy. A lot of dealers are getting away with just selling whatever. Earth Erowid, who works at the pill-testing laboratory EcstasyData.org, explains the incentive for dealers to adulterate their product: It's cheaper. By cutting the drug with caffeine or speed, they're able to spread a little bit of Ecstasy a long way, thereby reducing production costs...
Duterte of the Institute for Scientific Analysis guesses that Ecstasy passes through three or four hands before it gets to the consumer. In other words, most users don't really know what they're taking, and most dealers don't even know what they're selling.
If you're not sure what you're taking, then you definitely can't foresee how you'll react to it. Bay View writer Jordan ended her anti-Ecstasy screed with an anecdote about a friend whose family called the police when they saw him hallucinating on "bad" Ecstasy: "He was talking to himself, answering questions that no one had asked him, and he even got naked and tried to put himself into a small paper bag. When he was finally released from jail he had an assault on an officer charge along with resisting arrest."
While some observers are obviously tempted to suggest that Ecstasy was planted in the black community specifically to make people revert to violence, more likely the reason people are freaking out is that they're taking whatever-the-fuck and thinking it's Ecstasy.
<< Rachel purchased a Christmas Tree tablet from a dealer she knew who sold at hip hop clubs in Oakland. We had the pill sent to EcstasyData.org to be tested. In the article, Rachel wrote that the results of the test showed "one part Ecstasy, one part diphenhydramine (best known as the antihistamine Benadryl), and one part phentermine (a speedy diet pill)." Full article here.
A discussion on the impact of MDMA on Oakland's hip hop community cannot continue until the lack of purity in tablets is acknowledged and hopefully addressed in practical terms. Originally founded in Oakland, DanceSafe's presence and our advocacy of pill testing services have reached the hip hop scene in a few limited ways:
- Tabling and conducting presentations at campuses, conferences, and adolescent centers, which comprise of general youth populations.
- A 2002 radio appearance on KMEL Street Soldiers in which we were confronted with concerns from the host and the callers (including one cop) on ecstasy's contribution to drug abuse problems among young African-Americans. A former user called in and respectfully stated that the issue would be better dealt with had we been representative of the community. This was one statement that I agreed with during the show.
- Appearing in and helping research Rachel's article, which was one of the first to raise the local issue of ecstasy and hip hop.
- Appearing on Talk Back, a cable show shot and produced at Oakland's Laney College. Contrary to the KMEL segment, this forum was supportive of DanceSafe's philosophy and did not focus only on pushing abstinence. In fact, the episode was specifically about harm reduction approaches to drug use. Oddly enough, the hyphy movement was the subject of Talk Back the week before.
Raising awareness on issues such as MDMA adulteration and the differences between ecstasy's role in hip hop versus raves is more important than ever because attention on the hyphy scene is no longer coming just from local media such as Talk Back and the East Bay Express. MTV2 and Vibe Magazine have both covered the West Coast movement this year. And there seems to be evidence of mainstream success in the near future. E-40 - who is currently the head honcho of hyphy - had his last album My Ghetto Report Card produced by Lil Jon, probably an appropriate collaboration since hyphy has been labeled as the Bay Area version of crunk for quite a while now. During Talk Back's hyphy episode, one of the hosts raised the question of whether or not now is finally the time that the rest of the country will start acknowledging and promoting Bay Area hip hop. Rapper San Quinn responded by saying that even if everyone else doesn't feel what we're doing, we're going to "be feeling ourselves." By that, he meant that we won't be discouraged and we're going to continue having fun while being proud of what we're creating.
His choice of words comes straight from Mac Dre's song Feelin' Myself. Ironically, Mac Dre was murdered in 2004 during a tour that gave weight to his music as a growing movement. While leaving a show in Kansas City, MO, he was shot by a gunman in a nearby vehicle. To my knowledge (but not to my surprise considering the history of how hip hop murders have been handled), the case has not yet been solved. In closing this presentation, I propose a question: when Mac Dre rapped about feeling himself, did he mean what San Quinn said, or was he referring to the euphoric sensation of being on ecstasy, or both? Go ask any two people from the hyphy scene, and each of them might tell you something different.
