394
If you’re a music fan and a weed fan, there’s absolutely no doubt that you’ve been keeping up with our series on the best weed songs in history (read Part One here, and Part Two here) and you’re on tenterhooks waiting for the next installment. Well guess what, Slugger: This week we’ve got a whole new list that spans two centuries and at least five musical genres. It includes songs from top 40 artists, long-dead greats from the Jazz Age, and of course, Cypress Hill.
Here they are: The next eight songs in our comprehensive, weeks-long list. Pop your earphones in, pour yourself a cold drink, light up, and open yourself up to some of the greatest weed songs in modern musical history.
- Dooo It by Miley Cyrus. It’s always nice to see weed culture break into the mainstream, and you don’t get more mainstream than Destiny Hope Cyrus, who has such mainstream cred that she hails from a bloodline of it (her dad was “Achy Breaky Heart” maestro Billy Ray Cyrus). “Dooo It” is a pretty fantastic song though, with a surprisingly strong hip-hop sensibility applied to an undeniable pop appeal. The lyrics replicate the hyperphilosophical mindset brought on by a powerful high (“How do birds fly/And why is there a moon”) and winds up just like a perfect high should end: “Feel like I am one with the universe and all I need is right here.”
- Dopesmoker by Sleep. This is a song. It’s also an album. It’s also a song that’s over an hour long. It’s also an album that’s only one song long. Sleep, a metal trio hailing from San Jose, has been called the “ultimate stoner rock band” and indeed, their work has all the hallmarks of the genre in spades. “Dopesmoker” isn’t a song that sings the praises of weed – it’s more of a song you listen to while you’re smoking weed.
- How High by Redman & Method Man. Look, like a lot of Method & Red songs, this feels a lot like a Wu-Tang song, and the lyrics are full of brags and callouts. But this song is connected to the 2001 stoner film of the same name, also starring Method & Red. Oh, and just like the movie, it has a sequel, which is kind of a little more weed-centric (part of the lyrics go “smoke cheeba cheeba smoke cheeba cheeba”).
- Hits From The Bong by Cypress Hill. Of course, there’s no reason any Cypress Hill song couldn’t be on this list; they’re all so fueled by weed that it’s essentially the cornerstone of their entire discography. “Hits From The Bong” is so hilariously pro-pot that it endorses double-fisting your weed, suggesting you “put the blunt down just for a second” to sample from the bong. And it really is a celebration of bong use specifically, rather than just a standard-issue weed song that happens to mention a bong in the title. No, the bong in this song is, first of all, double-barreled (which, is that even a thing?), and second of all, purifies the weed smoke (Is that true? We’ll put together an article about it someday).
- One Draw by Rita Marley. You don’t spend a lifetime married to Bob Marley without being intimately acquainted with cannabis. Rita Marley met her husband in the mid-60s and joined his band as a backup singer; in the course of working together, they fell in love and married. After Bob’s death in 1981, Rita continued recording but soon devoted her life to charity. In “One Draw” she comes right out with the basics in the first line: “I want to get high, so high.” It’s a fantastic song and everyone should listen to it.
- Cheeba Cheeba by Ton Loc. Ton Loc – who once played a lizard in a children’s movie about rainforest fairies – might best be known for “Funky Cold Medina,” a transphobic ode to roofies with an unreliable narrator. It’s a shame, then, that “Medina” got so much radio play and “Cheeba Cheeba,” an unambiguous meditation on the awesomeness of pot, wasn’t released as a single. No, really: That’s how much American culture hates weed. Radio stations were ready to play a story-song with one scene involving a man being disgusted at the thought of sex with a trans woman, and several more scenes about dosing women’s drinks to make them easier to have sex with. But they weren’t ready to play a song about smoking weed and having a good time.
- Roll Another Number For The Road by Neil Young. This isn’t so much a song about weed as it’s about the kinds of situations where having a little bud comes in handy. Young, a Canadian citizen whose own marijuana use could hurt his chances at a desired American citizenship, has, in “Roll Another Number,” penned a song bearing all the emotional hallmarks of the country and blues that inspired much of his creative output. It’s a song from the point of view of someone whose life is in a low spot – the cops are after him and he’s largely depending on the kindness of strangers – but a little bit of weed will make the burden easier to bear. “I feel able to get under any load,” Young sings, and you can tell he means it.
- Sweet Marijuana Brown by the Barney Bigard Sextet. This song is nothing like “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and it’s doubtful that the squeaky-clean Harlem Globetrotters would ever adopt it as their theme song. A clarinetist who played with Duke Ellington for 15 years, Barney Bigard later worked with Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Nat King Cole and more. In “Sweet Marijuana Brown” Bigard’s vocalist, Joe Thomas, calls the titular character “the wildest chick in town,” and sings that “in her victory garden, the seeds grow all around.” The song has an older feel, but it was released in 1945.
