So do you believe that taking drugs can enhance an artist's/musician's creative process?

I'm sure ya'll have heard this said before by a lot of artists. I know Santana is a staunch defender of just abt every drug being a benefit to an artist's creativity from psychadelic to the more addictive drugs such as heroin.

There were ppl who believed that heroin enabled many jazz artists to make great music...

How many HipHop artists has there been who said weed helped them to visualize and write their rhymes?

(on a side note, notice that every music genre has a specific drug associated with it and commonly used by the artists within that particular genre....Jazz=heroin....r&b/soul=coke(during the 70s&80s)....funk=psychadelic...hiphop=weed)

is there a correlation btw drugs and music/musicians? because they seem to be synonymous?

that it makes better music."


copyright Slug

Depending on the shit u take..It makes ur body feeL good & gives a whoLe vibe... it puts ur mind in a certain mindframe. &the musics gonna refLect that shit. From w3eed to piLLs to coke to X... aLL different effects & u do any one of them drugs & record shit & every one of them joints is gonna be different. That's a fact

>I know Santana is a staunch defender of just abt
>every drug being a benefit to an artist's creativity from
>psychadelic to the more addictive drugs such as heroin.
>

I read an interview where Carlos said his being on mescaline when he played at Woodstock made him not play well to the point he felt he let his band down.

I also read in bio of Hendrix "Electric Gypsy" that when Carlos saw Hendrix flip out while playing/recording in a studio to the point where the workers at the studio had to go and get Hendrix to calm him down, Carlos said to himself "do I have to go through that just to play my guitar, I'm just a kid?" Then, reflecting back on it, Carlos said (to the biographer or another interviewer) that Hendrix flipping out like that was how many musicians were in the 60's: too much drugs and women and no discipline.

So, after reading those two examples from Carlos.............

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"naive as the dry leaves on the ground looking past the trees to the blue sky asking 'why me?'" -Blu

:/

Hell, marijuana was probably more prevalent amongst jazz musicians than it is in hip-hop today- they just didn't brag about it in every song. Not every jazz genius messed with H, but it was sadly common enough.

I'm an artist- and when i write or create something....

well, I'll explain it the way I explained to an older white female painter in her late 80s when we had this discussion at a holiday dinner (she was an art teacher)-

If you're gifted, you're gifted. Whatever brilliance you can naturally put out there will come out anyways, sober or not. I tried to explain to her my connection with pot and art and why I sometimes used pot to gain easier access to the creative part of my mind. I told her that whatever i can write or compose intoxicated, I can just as easily sober. I explained that sometimes drugs (particularly psychedelic drugs- the only kind i fuck with) will allow faster and easier access to what I'm trying to convey creatively and artistically. I gave her an analogy that the difference between creating sober and creating stoned is like the difference between trying to enter a room with a lock on the door, you gotta fumble around and look for the keys for 10 minutes just to get inside the room... and being able to just turn the knob and walk right into the room without a lock. Marijuana is the door without the lock.

I'm perfectly capable of being just as creative as i am stoned, sober, but it takes me longer to express what I really want to express. Marijuana provided a shortcut.

It becomes an issue if it grows into a dependency.

These days I prefer to create sober anyways, but i come up with some wicked ideas when stoned- not gonna lie.

So yeah, drugs does enhance the creative process- but it's not like the artists couldn't be great without it.

I don't make music, but I do make visual art and Weed definitely helps me come up with stories and concepts in a major way

trips can give you a different perspective or outlook on life. If you're the type to parlay that experience/emotion into your music, it can make for interesting results.

But making music while on drugs is a distraction.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." © Jay Bilas

http://www.last.fm/user/NodimaChee
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Nodima/run_that_shit__nodimas_hip_hop_handbook

-------------------------
“The other dude after me didn’t help my case. It was just like…crazy nigga factory going on.”
Dre makes no apologies for his own eccentricities. “I was young, and searching, trying to find myself,” he says. “Never did.”-- Andre B

even thought technically drugs do the same thing to everybody, some people just handle it better than others. One guy feels open minded and relaxed off weed, another feels stupid and sluggish.

Kendrick Lamar say he don't smoke and he dope as hell.

but now insert any dope rapper right now who proudly smokes, depends on the person.

i consider myelf a creative cat when im sober as hell too, but smokin a single joint lets me "zone out" as it were on whatever creative endeavour im workn on. only problem is taking too much of whatever you're taking, and having it negatively impact ur 'process'. like i know i spent majority of 2011 getn high and forcing myself to make some new music, but it just wasnt there. or i would just get sleepy or horny n just go to bed lol. but on the whole ive accessed parts of me via weed that i woulda never have otherwise.

V.

had me REALLY interested in heroin.

hell, they still do.

But I know if I picked up smoking cigarettes just because I had to spend a year and a half not smoking weed, and over that 10 months I smoked cigarettes I became a pack-a-day smoker, I CAN NOT try heroin.

Not that I'd know where to get it but. If my experience with other drugs are any sort of indicator, I can see why artists would throw some kind of credit this or that way. I just don't think heroin is the one for me to experiment with. Gotta stick to mental addictions, not physical. Much easier to deal with.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." © Jay Bilas

http://www.last.fm/user/NodimaChee
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Nodima/run_that_shit__nodimas_hip_hop_handbook

ride wit him: http://www.tmz.com/2012/10/11/nelly-arrested-weed-gun-possession-texas-heroin/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/14/entertainment-us-jonbonjovi-daughter-idUSBRE8AD1NF20121114

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=5&topic_id=2729389&mesg_id=2729389&listing_type=search#2736440

As a writer, I find that alcohol or weed have the ability to shift my perspective and allows me to consider perspectives that I might not of considered sober. I think sober are minds are so trained by daily activity to think in a very routine manner and drugs helps break that routine and allows the mind to wander in directions it might not otherwise wonder.
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"naive as the dry leaves on the ground looking past the trees to the blue sky asking 'why me?'" -Blu

Now whether it's worth the physical issues that come with it is another issue entirely...

The Beatles after they were on those drugs heavy...man...not saying they didn't have good songs before but they came out with some hits.

I'm a big P-Funk fan as well. One of my favorite Funkadelic songs, Maggot Brain, George told guitarist Eddie Hazel (high on LSD) to play as if he had just found out his mother had just died, then he later found out she was still alive. Now, had he been sober, would he have been able to make that guitar cry like that? Maybe, maybe not...

...but they should never be relied on as a crutch

Or maybe I should say talking about doing drugs.

Thanks to the hit and run driver that pretty much hammered my hip and lower back in 2010, I've been doing Chiropractic, Active Release Technique, Rolfing, Physical Therapy and Massage Therapy on a weekly basis to help me manage my pain since. In October of 2011 I got my Washington State Medical Marijuana Card and been ingesting Cannabis ever since.

Not only has Cannabis has been very helpful in dealing with my pain, but the pleasant side effect has been my current ability to completely focus on my work in the studio and creating music has been a much more pleasurable experience because of it.

I'm in no way advocating the use of hard drugs like cocaine, heroine, molly or Meth like I know of some cats in hip hop are doing, but as for the herbs, I can honestly say that it has had a most profound effect on the output of my music.