To Tha X-Tremes: Concert Preview – Devin the Dude at Nectar Lounge

Weed is so hot right now. Mainstream acceptance of marijuana use and its users is at an all-time high (no pun intended) – Pineapple Express killed at the box office, Vinnie Chase and gang rip shitty plastic bongs in most episodes, and the last three presidents have all admitted to blazing in their wilder days of youth. Walk around LA and passersby are inundated by flyers and hawkers proclaiming the virtues of “getting legal” (for only $150 – free eighth included!) and one has to wonder if the same will happen in Seattle, with the passing of legislative change to state medical marijuana law and dispensaries popping up in Fremont and Capitol Hill.

Mainstream culture is catching up to a level of acceptance long held by hip-hop. Weed is an integral part of the music and culture. It has become, at the very least, a required trope much like gun metaphors and details of sexual exploits; marijuana demands mention in nearly every song as part of the lifestyle or a fact of the urban reality, and oftentimes requires its own special song on an album regardless of whether it truly fits with the mood and themes of the rest of the body of work (see: Freddie Gibbs’ “Personal OG”). But at its highest level (…sure pun why not) marijuana use defines a rapper, or at least his persona; a pothead who raps, not a rapper who is a pothead. Devin the Dude, who plays the Nectar Lounge in Fremont this Friday, is a hip-hop legend, widely hailed as “your rapper’s favorite rapper,” appearing on some of the genre’s seminal albums (“Fuck You” off 2001, “Hand of the Dead Body” off The Diary) while amassing an extensive, impressive, and much-loved solo catalogue. He has gained such status by being the first well-known “everyman” rapper; he has never rhymed about shooting anybody, selling crack, or being really ridiculously rich, but instead focuses on “weed, wine, and women,” with weed standing first and foremost in his favorite and oft-revisited topics. He is a chill stoner that chill stoners of all backgrounds can relate to (see video above), cleverly describing the everyday travails of showing up high at work, hooking up with fat chicks, and kicking it in the parking lot outside the club getting drunk instead of spitting game all over impeccably chosen beats with production by Dre and Premo and features by Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, and Andre 3000 among others.

And Devin was doing this before it was cool, at a time when the president had only admitted to inhaling, debates raged about medical marijuana, and Half-Baked had tanked at theaters, still waiting for DVD to be invented to become a cult classic. Though smoking was a topic in most raps and inspired one of the genre’s most celebrated albums, The Chronic, it still did not define a rapper, even for those it does today – Snoop was still more of a gangster with a troubled past than a cuddly OG smoker with his own reality show. Devin, along with a changing cultural climate, made that more acceptable, so that the latest breed of stoner rappers – Wiz Khalifa, Curren$y, Smoke DZA – can exist today. For these rappers, marijuana is an essential part of their personae, one they actively promote and for which they are loved. People eat this shit up – check out Khalifa or Spitta’s twitter feeds, which consist almost entirely of accounts of their smoking habits and DAILY feeds of “I waketh… I baketh…”  This shit isn’t very interesting, it’s not unique, it’s overly predictable, but Khalifa has almost 300,000 followers, an astronomical number for a rapper of his commercial status, which is limited to one bombed major label album. What he and his brethren have been successful in doing is making themselves the cool kids; if you are with Taylor Gang, you are with the in-crowd. When Khalifa’s latest mixtape Kush and Orange Juice dropped, it became a trending topic on Twitter, much to the confusion of many a Brazilian tweeter wondering what the fuck a kush and orange juice is. Wiz achieved this status not through the dude on the porch persona of Devin but one of sheer bombast, of living the “money, medical weed, and fashion” lifestyle he espouses on “Car Service.” Where Devin is initially hesitant at a dealer asking $450 for an ounce on “Getting High” (“giving up a whole month’s rent”), Khalifa takes it as a matter of pride that he spends “400 a zip” while mentioning “imperial rozay” in the same breath on “Pedal to the Medal.” Here, weed is placed alongside pricey champagne and other expenses/pleasures of leading the “jet life” such as taking models on fancy vacations so as to get high and hook up, and it’s never made clear whether being rich enables massive marijuana consumption or whether the consumption enables the accumulation of wealth. For Devin, pot can sometimes bring him down as it leads to workplace tension for an unnamed but explicitly unglamorous job on “I Can’t Quit,” but for the new breed it only takes them upwards along with their skyrocketing bank accounts. For every brief moment of Devin’s realist influence, such as Curren$y’s talk of playing NBA Live all day while implicitly high (which Tom Breihan covers in his Pitchfork review of Pilot Talk), the listener is regaled with several outsized tales of living lavishly large, owing a lot more to Jay-Z and the like.

Still, Devin’s influence is undeniable, especially in that he allowed his insatiable craving for getting stoned to define his personality and uses that to connect with his fans, a page Khalifa et al copied word for word and took to private rooftop parties in Saint Tropez and other exploits to which their fans gleefully follow. Me? I’d rather be posted up in the parking lot kicking it with hip-hop’s legendary trailblazer (pun intended). Not that I don’t enjoy Khalifa, Spitta, and DZA’s music, but for music about substances, Devin’s has more substance.

Go see Devin the Dude  at Nectar Lounge Friday, August 27. Openers include Neema, Props, Gnotes, and Mr. Dog. Doors at 9 pm. $20 advance. Tix and other info at www.nectarlounge.com.