Baseball Has Steroids, Hip Hop Has Weed

So I was on this GZA/50 Cent beat hoping for a little old school battle to pop off, no such luck apparently. But I did find this blurb on GZA quitting weed and talking about its effect on him:

“I could have done so much more in the past,” he says. “I’d get up, roll a blunt at seven in the morning. If I played chess online, I wanted a blunt. If I read a book, I would smoke a blunt, and then I’m reading the same page like five times.”

While GZA smoking a lot doesn't come as any shock, it does take some luster off one of the legends of the game. GZA was always the hardcore street-intelligence emcee in the Wu, and while he's still a first-ballot hip hop Hall of Famer, somehow I think this news, and specifically his own sense of regret about it, cheapens the value of his catalog a little. It does feel a little like finding one of your fav players was on steroids, in an era when everyone was on steroids.

I also think there are seeds for a real story here. Consider this recent e-snippet I got from TAN3:

By the way, I gotta tell you about a concert I went to this past week - Nas at the Hammerstein. You know I love me some Nas - but this n*gga is ridiculous - he couldn't remember his own lyrics!!! I'll give the full recap later...

I see this as a tipping point for judgment on Nas, cause he's notorious for dropping lyrics -- even skipping lines on Made You Look on the grand public stage of the MTV awards a few years back -- and at this point it's obviously from weed abuse. For hip hop heads, Nas and GZA are in the same school, art via lyricism, and their inability to step their game up to a higher level (neither was able to make an album/big project that matched the genius displayed on an individual song level) might need further examination in light of this weed referendum of sorts.

You take GZA, Nas, and say, Redman. Maybe Meth also. And talk to them about the varying dynamics weed has on their life and art. Presuming their candor on the subject (and at this point their reps are entrenched, and they'd have little to lose), that's gonna be an interesting piece.

Maybe I'll look into it ....

In the meantime, this weed PSA is even funnier if you imagine the dog talking to GZA or Nas.