Great Music While High: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony

This is kind of a throw-back, but I am writing about Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. In the 90’s, these guys garnered some mainstream support when they released “The Crossroads” in 1995.

The bulk of their collection are songs about living like a gangsta in Cleveland and smoking enough weed to make Snoop blush. Group member Stanley “Flesh-N-Bone” Howse recently announced plans to create a new medical cannabis strain for Michigan patients.

The album I am focusing on today is E. 1999 Eternal.

As a bonafide word nerd, I am constantly impressed by the verbiage Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is able to rhyme and, honestly, what really made them stand out initially was the sheer speed at which they can rap. To an untrained ear, it may sound like gibberish. But Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is kind of like Shakespeare in that way. At first, it’s kind of hard to hear the meaning behind the words. Eventually, however, you find yourself easily able to discern meaning. If you think Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is gibberish, I challenge you to put some headphones on and follow along with the lyrics. You will actually hear every syllable, just at breakneck speed.

Even their more gangsta-style raps are laden with cannabis references. One song even samples a bong noise and loops it as ambient background. Yet another opens with a vignette, wherein the members of the group are standing around smoking a joint only to have the scene end with “man, put that shit out. You can’t be smoking weed in court.”

As this is a cannabis culture website, I want to discuss what I refer to as “love songs about weed.”   Two such gems are found on E. 1999 Eternal:

This one is a nice little jam about spending time with some close friends and getting ripped.

A lyrical sample:

You got a bag of tweed well blaze it with me fool
And don’t be stingy and please no pinners make it swollen
Cuz if I had me some weed you know I’d smoke it with you
Come come get with a me, me and my ni@#%s blunts be rollin’

This song is more sung than rapped. It has a nice R & B feel to it.

Here is the chorus:

Hydro, me just can’t let a me high go
Me smokin’ upon that hydro
Me just can’t let a me high go

It is hard to transmit the quality of these songs, this album, and Bone Thugs N Harmony via a blog so I hope you’ll take the time to give them a listen.

Check out other posts from Weedist’s Great Music While High series!