5 Grams: Crack Cocaine, Rap Music, and the War on Drugs

In all of rap’s gangster mythology there is perhaps no more overused imagery than Brian De Palma’s 1983 movie,Scarface, especially its last scene. In it, Al Pacino, in a paranoid frenzy after snorting scoops of cocaine arranged like mountains on his desk, charges onto his balcony with a military issue M-16 rifle—complete with grenade launcher—to face a small army of rival drug dealers. Before he finally falls face first into the fountain below, his body is literally perforated by bullets and sent through the railing by a shotgun blast to his back.

By the time Tony Montana,...

InKimbrough v. United States, one in a string of recent landmark decisions that, in effect, have made the United States Sentencing Commission’s guidelines nonbinding, the Supreme Court upheld a trial court judge’s decision to address the former 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder by reducing Derrick Kimbrough’s crack-related sentence by over four years.¹ Kimbrough—an Operation Desert Storm veteran with no prior felonies—had pleaded guilty to a number of drugs and weapons charges and was sentenced to fifteen years instead of the 19-to-22.5-year range that strict adherence to the sentencing guidelines would have required. Had Kimbrough...

In addition to repealing the mandatory minimum for the simple possession of crack cocaine, the bill signed into law by President Obama in August 2010 also reduced the sentencing disparity between crack trafficking and powder trafficking from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. By any measure, such a reduction constitutes a significant improvement, requiring five hundred grams of powder or twenty-eight grams of crack to trigger a fiveyear mandatory sentence instead of the 500-to-5-gram ratio created in 1986. The final bill, however, was only one in a long line of similar bills proposed over the years.

In 2007, for example, Democratic representative Sheila...

I want to begin this chapter with a description of two images. The first is a poster for rap star 50 Cent’s semiautobiographical movieGet Rich or Die Trying, which shows him from the back, with arms spread out in a Christlike pose, one hand holding a semiautomatic pistol, and the other a microphone. The other is a Reebok sneaker ad, which features Jay-Z, whose life similarly reflects 50’s rise from crack dealer to rap star to corporate executive. The ad is split into two panels. In the left panel, he is shown sitting in a chair wearing a pinstriped...

In recent years, a number of local governments across the United States have tried to outlaw what many have taken to be signs of moral decay in the nation’s young: baggy pants. The theory is that the style began in prisons—where, as a suicide-prevention measure, inmates are often not allowed to have belts—and then spread to the mainstream through the oversized clothing styles made famous by numerous rap stars. While some of the penalties in these new laws include fines, others include jail time. The reasoning behind these attempts—some of which have passed, while others have failed...

In all of 1990s New York rap, there is perhaps no better example of its emphasis on lyricism than Nas’s song, “One Love,”¹ which came out the same year as “Things Done Changed.” Written as a letter to a friend in jail, the song describes changes in the neighborhood since his friend’s incarceration, and recounts, for example, who had been shot, who was now selling drugs, and who had been arrested. In the last verse, though, Nas turns to the listener, and details coming back home to the neighborhood after taking a short trip to get away from the pressures...

On September 6, 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot four times as he sat in the passenger side of a car while Suge Knight—the head of Tupac’s label, Death Row Records—was driving both of them to a club in Las Vegas after attending a Mike Tyson fight. Tupac died six days later. His passing was deeply felt by fans, fellow rap artists, and the entertainment community. On March 9, 1997, Biggie was also shot four times in the passenger side of a car after leaving a party in Los Angeles. He died that night. His passing was similarly mourned...

On February 23, 2008, an article in theNew York Timesalerted audiences to a new drug “scourge” in Argentina that has an eerie resemblance to the history of crack cocaine in the United States.¹ The article charts the “irrepressible spread of paco, a highly addictive, smokable cocaine residue that has destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and caused a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before.” In the early 2000s, the article reports, “crude yellowish crystals” began to show up in impoverished neighborhoods across the country. The narcotics officers who are quoted throughout the article claim that much...