If Kendrick Lamar had his druthers, rap’s current fascination with Molly would fall by the wayside. It’s a message he addressed in his latest video, flashing the words “Death to Molly” on the screen at the end of the clip.
Molly is the pure powder or crystallized form of MDMA, a drug commonly used in ecstasy pills. It is known to induce a state of euphoria and has found its way into the lyrics of rappers like Trinidad James, French Montana, Mac Miller, Kanye West and Rick Ross, who found himself in hot water after rapping about slipping the drug in an unsuspecting woman’s drink on Rocko’s “U.O.E.N.O.”
“Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool,” Kendrick explained to MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway when they sat down for a one-on-one after he came off stage at this weekend’s Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama. “You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after a while,” he continued without pointing the finger at any artist in particular.
As a high-school student in Compton, California, Lamar remembers being a switching from basketball jerseys to button-ups when Jay-Z pushed a hip-hop fashion shift with his 2003 single “Change Clothes.” Sometimes, Kendrick argues, there are trends that aren’t so cool, like the constant promotion of the popular party drug in their music.
“When everybody consciously now uses this term or this phrase and putting it in lyrics, it waters the culture down,” he added of the Molly trend. “So it’s really just time to move on.”
Kendrick’s individuality and tremendous sense of self are parts of the reason that he is a popular as he is today. His “Swimming Pools (Drank)” single warns of the dangers of alcoholism and on his critically acclaimed good kid, m.A.A.d. city, he raps about a bad experience with marijuana and explains why he doesn’t use the drug today.
“It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it,” K.Dot said.
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