Rappers on Ecstasy

From the LA Times music blog, a serious, detailed exploration of the rise of Ecstasy use in the hip hop community, as portrayed via the lyrics of its superstars:

But things began to change when Eminem burst on the scene.

In a 1999 Rolling Stone interview, the hard-rhyming pill-popper consumed no fewer than three Ecstasy tablets in the presence of an interviewer and then bragged, “I wrote two songs for my next album on Ecstasy.”

Within two years, more and more references to the drug had spread across the mainstream. On Missy Elliott’s 2001 hit album “Miss E … So Addictive” (um, get it?), the rapper devotes the slow-burn chill-out cut “X-tasy” to articulate certain conditions associated with consumption. Such as feeling “so energized” and describing the artificial love vibes that accompany the drug. “Ecstasy, I’m willing to do all the things I said I wouldn’t do /On Ecstasy, the feelin’ makes me feel like I’m in love with you,” Elliott raps.

That same year, on “X,” his collaboration with Elliott, rapper Ja Rule framed the drug’s merits in a different way: “How we relieve that stress? X / You know, pop them thangs, get extra horny, girl.”....

But when it comes to laying bare the swirl of physical side effects, social ramifications and potential health ills associated with the drug, Tech N9ne’s chopped and screwed ode to Ecstasy, “T9X,” comes as close to an exegesis on the subject as any rap song has to date.

“10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, feelin’ butterflies /My eyes dilate another size /Overwhelming sense of love got this nut so sprung / Walk up to a stranger, ‘Can I suck your tongue?' ” N9ne raps over an ominous beat.