Sober Gang

With the rising support of drug legalization and normalized substance use in popular media, sobriety appears to become the new deviance. But it’s nothing we haven’t seen before

- Lex Celera

When you’re young, there’s a need to discover yourself and own an identity. Vices provide convenient archetypes: the stoner chick, the guy who always smokes, the avid beer drinker. Tobacco. Weed. Lean. Xans. Molly. LSD. The list of possible vices goes on, and so does the list of their mentions and references in pop culture: film, television, and more prominently, music, being the medium that’s the most accessible among the three.

While country is listed as the genre with the most drug references (shoutout to Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson), hip-hop appears to be the most prevalent when it comes to bringing the names of drugs and alcohol into our daily vocabulary. Alcohol, weed, and lean (codeine cough syrup mixed with a soft drink) are just some of the many drugs that you not only hear mentioned in their music but also see in the music videos. Kid Cudi raps in Travis Scott’s “through the late night”: “N, N-Dimethyltryptamine and Lysergic acid diethylamide/The vibes are effervescent, delicious, just how they should be.” When someone spells out the full name of DMT and LSD, you know that they know what they’re talking about.

And why should they not rap about what they do in life? Image is a big deal for many rap stars. As rapper Vince Staples describes in an interview with