Somewhat tellingly, the only place that Louisiana local Joe Cool appears on the whole Internetz is in the archives of blogs with the words hip hop somewhere in their title. On Current Hip Hop and Underground Hip Hop and Hip Hop Pulse, on That Hip Hop Blog and Real Hip Hop Head and The Hip Hop Update, Cool gets props and when he does, it’s mainly for ‘I Wanna Sell Drugs’. A common complaint of veterans in the game and out regarding the state of modern hip hop is the marked dearth of players even mildly examining struggle. Now that hip hop has shirked its reputation as a burgeoning underground lifestyle fad and established both commercially and critically its dominance as an art form, the success of the genre has transformed its concept of introspection. Where once tales of drug trafficking, gang violence and the assaults of everyday life preoccupied the dome piece of collective hip hop, the onset of multi-million dollar mansions, G4s, stretch-hummers and Aston Martins means that the everyday reflections of the hip hop artist have changed their shape.
What Joe Cool brings to ‘I Wanna Sell Drugs’ is the devastatingly raw emotion of an artist who, dogged by the financial costs of pursuing his dream of a career in music, seriously contemplates becoming a dealer to fund his passion. It might be the sort of sentiment that only fledgling young hip hop artists can legitimately indulge in. Hearing T.I., Wayne or Rick Ross talk on how they’d sell the shirts off their backs to fund a couple more demo tapes might not go down so well. But equally, merely living a troubled, turbulent life is not enough to automatically qualify for Legitimate Struggle Status. Instead, it’s Joe’s ability to convert what is every unsigned hip hop artist’s fervor and determination into a track with more universal implications that sets ‘I Wanna Sell Drugs’ apart. He doesn’t tell us ad nauseum how he’s going to be the best one day, doesn’t outline what he’s going to do with his newly minted millions but rather, makes you really understand just how highly he values the entire enterprise of making it in music.
Alluding to the monotony of the grind, a lounge-like beat, punctuated by a chorus largely made up – it would appear – of sighs reinforces the acutely searching character of the track. It is in ultimately producing a song that is devoid of the optimism that you don’t expect so much as demand of upcoming artists that Joe caught my attention. Toying with the prospect of jail time in order to kick start an as-yet non-existent career in music is a bold-faced move. And yet, it’s in the glimpses of defeatism that Joe offers before, slightly lackadaisically, encouraging us to ‘keep rollin’, that we recognise ourselves and the prospect of fallibility that must, naturally, creep in on our own lives. For a mainly depressing song, ‘I Wanna Sell Drugs’ appeals to me not only for its significantly relaxing quality but for its grounding in the sometimes harsh realities of life. It’s not always Cristal and 100 carat watches and Joe, organic, smooth and vitally human, reminds us of that.
