{"id":42259,"date":"2018-05-31T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T19:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/merryjane.com\/hitunes-a-history-of-musics-best-weed-slang-and-metaphors\/"},"modified":"2018-05-31T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T19:05:00","slug":"hitunes-a-history-of-musics-best-weed-slang-and-metaphors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merryjane.com\/culture\/hitunes-a-history-of-musics-best-weed-slang-and-metaphors\/","title":{"rendered":"HiTunes: A History of Music\u2019s Best Weed Slang and Metaphors"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our series, "HiTunes," we investigate various marijuana lore throughout music history, debunking myths and sifting through hazy rumors for the blunt truth. Why have multiple artists written songs warning others about smoking with Willie Nelson<\/a>? Why do so many songs about weed reference Humphrey Bogart<\/a>? What albums required the most weed to make<\/a>? We'll explore these urban legends and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Artists, am I right? They can never just say something in a straightforward fashion, they have <\/em>to couch it in flowery language or obscure it behind layers of poetic devices. While this most often applies to big, obvious, universal ideas like love and death, it also applies to cannabis.<\/p>\n

When songs about weed first started popping up, they were so niche that there was little chance of them receiving any sort of wide exposure such as radio play, so many of them dispensed with metaphor and explicitly referenced the ganj<\/a>. But once popular music got freakier and the authorities wisened up, lyrical dog whistles to in-the-know pot smokers became a necessity. Many radio stations would ban songs with drug references, so artists had to use code words and\/or metaphors to celebrate the plant via song.<\/p>\n

In more recent years, when bald-faced narcotic jams like "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" or "I Can't Feel My Face" easily climb the charts, left-of-center slang about the greener, less harmful substance still abounds. Most of the nicknames pot's racked up in the last 30 years come from hip-hop, where mary jane seems to have a new nom de plume every year. Even though Snoop and Wiz's marijuana-centric "Young, Wild & Free" is now able to break into Billboard's top ten while including lyrics as blatant as "So what, we smoke weed," younger generations of artists continue to develop pot patois (often requiring ganja geezers like us open up ye olde Urban Dictionary).<\/p>\n

Today on HiTunes, we're exploring some of the most creative weed jargon in contemporary music history. We'll break this encyclopedic endeavor into two sections, metaphors and slang, and offer a little context and\/or history for each entry.<\/p>\n

Metaphors<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n