Opinion: The Drug Epidemic in the Music Industry
Within the music industry, a drug epidemic is responsible for robbing the lives of far too many talented musicians. Across Prince to Juice WRLD, substance abuse has cut many successful careers far too short. Drugs have also crept into a primary subject matter across hip-hop, almost glorifying its use and worsening the situation further. To discuss the issue of drug use in the music industry, it is first necessary for us to analyze why drugs are so prominent in the first place. Unsurprisingly, a primary origin of the drug issue lies in the effect fame has on many artists.
Is it widely accepted that fame takes quite a toll on musicians, however, one cause of that effect goes rather underappreciated–musicians’ inherent personalities. Now, that sounds rather blunt, so I’d like to stress that I am heavily generalizing to make this argument. Obviously, most successful musicians spend a large portion of their time working on music–if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be musically competent and likely wouldn’t be successful. However, despite the introversion of musicians, many are almost forced to act the opposite under the spotlight. In many cases, musicians spend their whole lives making music purely for themselves. Compare this to their situation once these same musicians become successful. Suddenly, instead of making music for themselves, they are performing in front of thousands of people–touring almost every night. Many aren’t ready to perform in front of 90,000 people in Wembley stadium because for all their lives, they’ve been performing for maybe a few dozen people in a bar.
This leads musicians to the false impression that drug use will help them become less shy, therefore, better performers and more successful. This is why the most successful musicians are the ones who tend to suffer the most substance abuse. The ones who suffer the starkest change in their situation are the ones who are the least able to adjust to their new situation and the ones who turn to drugs to cope with the change the most. One example of this is Michael Jackson. I’m not somebody who has ever met Jackson (I was barely 3 years old when he passed away), but he is known to have been a rather shy person. This ties into what we discussed as what could be a potential cause–possibly among others–for his use of drugs later in his career.
In addition to Jackson, drugs have stripped a horrifying amount of young musicians of their careers. After recently watching the documentary Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss, I was saddened but not shocked to see that in most scenes of the film, Higgins was on some form of alcohol or drugs. This is not shocking because Higgins, like other rappers, often discusses drugs in his music. His songs “Lean Wit Me”, “Ring Ring”, and “Black and White” are just a few examples. However, what I believe separates Higgins’ situation from others is that he knew the drugs’ implications and often discussed what he was getting himself into. In his song “Ring Ring”, he says “Something ain’t right ‘bout the pills but I bought em.” In “Rich and Blind”--a tribute to XXXTentacion and Lil Peep, another young rapper who died of overdose– he says, “I know they lace pills, I bought them on purpose” and “We ain’t making it past 21.” This provides contrast from what one could call his previous state of denial, visible in his song “Hurt Me” where he says “Sticks and stones may break my bones / but the drugs won’t hurt me.” Shortly before his passing, Higgins was actually scheduled to participate in rehabilitation for his addiction. This was touched on in his unreleased song “Purple Moncler'' where he says, “My family scared of me overdosing, I know that…give[s] 'em shivers.”
What makes this situation even more disheartening is the source that inspired Juice WRLD to use drugs in the first place–lyrics of one of his favorite rappers. Rapper Future has actually expressed his guilt for unintentionally inspiring Higgins to experiment with lean by glorifying substance abuse in his music, like countless other rappers did and still do. The glorification of drugs in much of modern music may even be more destructive than the drugs themselves. It creates a destructive cycle of drug-inspired lyrics of artists across generations that makes death inevitable.
Substance abuse has existed for decades and its influence does not seem to be waning. However, as increasingly more musicians lose their lives to drugs at an increasingly young age, many hope that the newfound awareness of negative implications will deter potential victims from substance abuse. As seen through their glorification in song lyrics and responsibility for stripping countless artists of their lives, the music industry has a blatantly negative relationship with drugs–a destructive relationship that must be resolved.
