"Drug Dealers Anonymous": Jay Z, Tomi Lehren, And the Storytelling of Drug Dealing Rap

By Zack Boehm on June 1, 2016

When, during an outraged (and now viral) diatribe about Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime show, the farcically brazen conservative pundit Tomi Lehren invoked Jay Z’s history of drug dealing, she must have known that she was only fanning the flames, right?

She must have realized that condemnation from perpetually enraged, culturally illiterate traditionalists like her is exactly the kind of thing that fuels the mystique of notoriousness that rappers like Jay Z are so adept at commodifying, right?

She had to have understood how important Jay Z’s diabolical drug dealing aura is to the artistically rendered persona he’s constructed throughout his career, and that by playing along with this narrative, she was effectively stuffing even more money into Jay’s already distended bank account, right? She must have known that, right?

And she must have, SHE MUST HAVE, recognized, as the words spilled contemptuously from her lips, how dope her comments might eventually sound over a brooding, bass heavy DJ Dahi beat. She had to have known that, right?

via huffingtonpost.com

Lehren’s remarks, which are indeed sampled on the swaggering new track “Drug Dealers Anonymous” from Pusha T and Jay Z, are charged with lethal voltages of racial resentment, an unapologetic ignorance of the root causes of black market drug trades, and a tinge of bourgeois class snobbery to boot. But beyond the predictable prejudices, Lehren’s comments betray a kind of obliviousness to the art of storytelling.

The storytelling beats in “drug dealer rap” are rich, gripping, and sometimes enlightening, but they aren’t particularly revolutionary. When he raps about his run ins with “the law” or his criminal machinations, Jay Z is drawing upon prefabricated narrative templates that have been recycled, reconstituted, and repurposed over centuries.

For as long as people have been living in civilized societies, people have been telling stories about antiheros who lurk in the seedy underbellies of those societies, shadowy figures who are unbound by norms or ethics, free to violate, subvert and disturb. A visceral fascination with these figures is baked into our storytelling genetics.

via theboombox.com

One need only look at the history of American storytelling. Is there a more popular character in the history of the American story than the outlaw? From Huck Finn to John Wayne’s “Wyoming Outlaw” to Django, the lineage of American storytelling is a lineage of stories about rugged folk (usually men) who reject the repressive lawed society and instead decide to rough it alone in the proverbial, and often literal, wilderness. Before the Kardashians and the reality TV-industrial megaplex, outlaws like Billy the Kid and John Dillinger were our national reality stars, lionized for their infamy and very often popularly beloved. In many ways, prohibition and depression era gangsters like Dillinger were the progenitors of the drug dealing rappers that are so ubiquitous today.

So why has drug dealing rap enjoyed such enduring popularity? Is it a unique moral depravity that has only emerged in recent generations? Is it the degradation of traditional social structures? Is it the Illuminati?

Nah, it’s the fact that we as a species of storytellers have always romanticized the outlaw archetype. We’ve always been titillated by the notion of the dangerous rogue who exists on the fringes of both society and morality. We love living vicariously through their transgressions, imagining what it would be like if we too could be unprincipled reprobates who say “to hell with the rule of law”. When an angry pundit pillories Jay Z for his drug dealing past, he doesn’t deny it or distance himself from an unsavory personal history. He samples the comments and slaps them right between two incendiary drug dealing rap verses. He understands that there is a deep, indelible cultural desire for those sorts of characters.

via upscalehype.com

When Lehren dismisses Jay-Z, a remarkably successful businessman and entrepreneur, as a mere drug dealer, she thinks she’s disqualifying his achievements and besmirching his character. But what she’s really doing is validating his narrative and reinforcing the authenticity of the drug dealing rap identity that he;s crafted so meticulously. In truth, Jay almost certainly hasn’t sold a brick in nearly two decades. He’s not rapping about his life as he lives it today, he’s telling a story. The same story we’ve been desperate to hear for millennia.

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