Rapper Nipsey Hussle, while being on his press run to promote his new album “Victory Lap” the rapper and entrepreneur declares that he would rather be sober and focused at this point in his life. He goes on to explain, how smoking weed, and drinking lean can be a liability when you’re a business owner. Also, he stated that he felt like he was giving others an edge on him in negotiations, due to his inability to be discipline.
The interesting thing is that, many of Hip Hop’s top earners are not known to be heavy weed smokers. For example, on Jay Z’s “In My Lifetime” he said, “...[Forget]That Weed It’ll Keep You Broke” [1] and appeared to maintain that tone throughout most of his career, with the exception of a few awkward weed smoking references to appease the listeners. Even Drake and his commercial success doesn’t appear to be a seasoned weed smoker, by all of the internet trolls “clowning” him on his smoking skills.
This is the aspect of the conversation that’s been missing in the marijuana usage debate. Many choose to focus on its ability to relieve chronic pain, and relieve tension in the mind and body, but conveniently ignore its side effects. All one has to do is to reflect on all of their friends and family members who have been chronic marijuana smokers for many years and see if you’ve seen any major improvements to their health or life performance.
In a popular Traditional Chinese Medical Journal, Acupuncture Today [2], they’ve classified marijuana as an herb that creates disharmony in the Liver/Gall Bladder Meridian in a way that fuels the imagination and robs one of their ability to carry it out. The imagination corresponds to the Yin aspect of this meridian (Liver), and if marijuana is used for a prolonged period of time, eventually it (the imagination) becomes depleted. Making it difficult for one to be visually creative. This occurrence could read “death” for any business in an ever changing and competitive economy.
So, for the sake of the future of the black community, hopefully this becomes a new trend amongst the youth. Especially with all the drug related deaths occurring in hip hop recently.
Sources
[1]
S. Carter, "Genius," Rocafella Records, [Online]. Available: https://genius.com/Jay-z-in-my-lifetime-lyrics. [Accessed 24 02 2018].
[2]
M. L. Joni Renee Zalk, "Recreational Cannabis Use and TCM," Acupuncture Today, vol. 16, no. 04, 2015.