VH1'S 'PLANET ROCK' CONNECTS THE DOTS BETWEEN HIP-HOP & CRACK!

The fact that crack cocaine and hip hop became the two biggest elements of urban street culture in the 1980s, suggests a new VH1 documentary, was not entirely coincidence.

"Planet Rock" (Sunday night at 10) doesn't suggest hip hop caused the crack epidemic, or vice versa. It does argue that they fed off each other, particularly hip hop off the crack culture.

To make the case, the producers talk with major rap stars like Snoop Dogg, B-Real of Cypress Hill and RZA and Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan.

None of these artists have made any secret of their personal attraction to illegal substances, and while most of that conversation has centered on marijuana, they all talk here about the pervasiveness of crack on the streets in the '80s.

Specifically, "Planet Rock" finds several direct links between crack cocaine and hip hop.

A number of hip-hop artists, up to the level of today's megaentrepreneur Jay-Z, got their start selling crack on the streets.

Money from the crack industry helped underwrite the formation of several major rap labels.

The terminology of crack was lifted repeatedly in the rap game, from artist names like Kurtis Blow and T La Rock to lyrics about crack use and dealing.
The lyrics part may be the most obvious, "Planet Rock" suggests, because the lyrical foundation of rap was talking about what was happening in daily life. Nothing made a more exotic subject, in or out of urban areas, than drug dealing.

Exotic and forbidden doesn't always mean enticing, though, and "Planet Rock" doesn't argue that the blizzard of drug references in rap songs led any multitudes of otherwise clean-cut kids to throw their lives away.

It argues more strongly that hip hop was the messenger, letting the world know just how serious the crack problem had become.

"Planet Rock," wisely, spends a good deal of time reinforcing that message. It traces the history of crack, a potent distillation of powder cocaine, and talks with a couple of the major 1980s crack dealers about how big an industry it had become.

Azie Faison from Harlem and Freeway Ricky Ross in L.A. became the modern-day equivalent of 1930s gangsters, celebrated as outlaws and rebels while they got rich off human misery.

While several former addicts here recall the first crack high with nostalgic pleasure, nothing in "Planet Rock" glamorizes it. It touches on ruined lives while focusing more strongly on ruined communities in which children were dealing crack before they were teenagers and many were convinced it was their only realistic shot at getting out.

Crack eventually dropped below epidemic levels, "Planet Rock" suggests. It does not suggest it has gone away. That remains its most somber message.




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