Musicfinatics

As a college student, living in the dorms and surrounded by various people bopping to various music at various levels, I have acquired a taste and recognition of new and different artists. Though, one of my suite mates could be hearing playing David Bowie followed by Mindless Self Indulgence to Andre Nickatina. Jamie Williams answered a few questions about how the artist’s music has affected her and the people who listen as well.

Q. What influence do you think Andre Nickatina has on the audience who listens to his music?
His musical catalogue flows like a story, but only one you would hear if you listened to it through and through. That’s why kids keep listening. They want to hear what he has to say. I don’t think his music necessarily influences kids to make the decisions he may have made, it just tells them about what he’s been through. His albums are his autobiography.
Q. What do you think his music emphasizes upon?
Andre Nickatina’s audience is surprisingly white, for a hip-hop artist (forgive the generalization). I think kids, specifically from the bay area (Nikatina’s hometown), relate to his music because they feel like he is real and goes through the same things that they do. And he has an amazing flow. He’s an experienced enough artist to capitalize on his audience and so he sings the things he knows they want to hear.
Q. What song makes you think most of drugs upon listening to it?
“Chocolate Thai.” It’s also my favorite. Maybe “Ayo for Yayo,” too.
Q. If you could label one drug on Andre Nickatina, what would it be? Why?
Cocaine. Because he self admittedly “smokes chewy like a mother fucking nut.”

Young teenagers mimic Nickatina.

For dealers and consumers to get what they want and need, they are conspicuous in naming the specific drug to be supplied.

Some of the common names for popular drugs used by musicians are listed below.

Cocaine:

blow, c, marching powder, nose candy

Heroin:

Big H, China White, Mexican Brown, Smack

Hallucinogens:

LSD, Acid, mellow yellow, Cactus, Mexican mushrooms

Marijuana:

blunt, bud, j, Sinsemilla

All drugs stay in the body for a period of time and can be found by testing for them.

Drugs can be detected in urine between 1 to 5 days. Hair grows about half an inch each month, so an inch and a half of hair would give tests a three month drug history. Drug usage can also be detected in saliva for 10 to 24 hours. A sweat patch can retain evidence for seven days and can detect low levels two to five hours after last use.

It was a time of angst, loud noises and drugs. Have you found god in Kurt Cobain? Many did in the 1990s when grunge sold and listeners of Nirvana inhaled everything that this band stood for.

My neighbor epitomized the flannel wearing, cigarette smoking in the shadows and sullen teen who worshiped this band. I remember the faces that covered the walls: Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden and of course Nirvana. The day it was announced Cobain had met his demise, my neighbor’s mother cut the Cobain’s face out of every picture on his wall. The reason being that her mother did not want her daughter to follow in Cobain’s foot steps.

Though it was too late, the drugs were already taken. To be cool, to relate, to forget the suburban depression and find a place where they belong. Every kid was doing it because the music spoke to them and it was the only thing they could relate to.

Drug of choice: prescriptions.

It was even said by Courtney Love, Cobain’s wife, that her and Cobain connected with the assistance of pills.

One of his main songs is “Lithium.” According to drugs.com, lithium is “used to treat the manic episodes of manic depression. Manic symptoms include hyperactivity, rushed speech, poor judgment, reduced need for sleep, aggression, and anger. It also helps to prevent or lessen the intensity of manic episodes.”

The sound is troubled and downtrodden; lines repeated of how he is “not gonna crack.”

Listen, watch and see how the crowd is reacting.

By the 1960s and 70s, drugs had found a home in the music industry.  While many were disgusted by the immorality and illegality of substances, others embraced them.  California was giving birth to acts such as the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Hendrix, and others, who won people over with their aura of openness and evolution.  LSD, ecstasy, and other various drugs had become the tools and the fuel necessary to appreciate the sounds of the new generation.

While California was trippin’ in the sun, New York City was being exposed to a different musical revelation, a darker, more obscure sound.  The Velvet Underground was adopted into the music scene around 1965, and underground they were.  Lou Reed, the band’s lead singer and guitarist was perceived by the public much like that of a drug; the fascination listeners attained overpowered his ambiguous manner.  And Reed was nothing short of a junkie, as was portrayed in his 1967 piece, “Heroin”.

“Heroin, be the death of me

 Heroin, its my wife and its my life

 Because a mainer to my vein

 Leads to a center in my head

 And then I’m better off dead”

While many acts were glorifying the greatness of drugs, Reed exposed the transcending pain that was derived from them.  He went beyond describing the want for escape, and truly captured the dying need for relief that lives inside those experiencing this type of self-destruction.  Living the life of a rock star, and feeling the pain of addict, Reed inserted a true human touch into his art.