This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive.

Crack Rock, Crack Rock: Hip-Hop Songs About The Horrors Of Freebase Cocaine

Hip-Hop On The Horrors Of Crack Cocaine
NEW YORK - 1989: Chuck D of the rap group 'Public Enemy' during filming of a video for their song 'Fight The Power' directed by Spike Lee in 1989 in New York, New York. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Getty Images
NEW YORK - 1989: Chuck D of the rap group 'Public Enemy' during filming of a video for their song 'Fight The Power' directed by Spike Lee in 1989 in New York, New York. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

UPDATE: The Toronto Police have just held a press conference confirming they have the infamous Rob Ford video and that it's "contents" are consistent with earlier media reports.

Crack has never gone away since the cocaine derivative's deadly arrival in the mid-'80s. But it's certainly being discussed more right now than anytime in recent memory thanks to the since-denied allegations, published in the Toronto Star and Gawker, that Toronto mayor Rob Ford was seen on a smartphone video smoking something from what was described as a glass "crack pipe."

Much of the subsequent reaction, from snarky tweets to Taiwan's CGI reenactment, have made fun of the situation. But if we need a reminder of how bad of a drug crack-cocaine is, you need to go no further than the hip-hop canon which since almost its earliest days as "the black CNN" has covered the crack epidemic as it left a swath of chaos and destruction across North America's inner cities and clearly continues to do harm to this very day.

Here are the 10 most powerful hip-hop songs about crack.

Close
This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive. If you have questions or concerns, please check our FAQ or contact support@huffpost.com.