Cooking cocaine down to its base in someone’s kitchen can be a very bonding experience---granted, not one I encourage anyone to indulge in anymore, but there was a time… Before the DEA interdiction efforts successfully shut most of it down, the Caribbean served as the main stopping point for cocaine entering the United States, and this predictably left behind a wake a violence and addiction issues, perhaps most destructively of all in Jamaica; by the late ‘80s, crack cocaine had turned the island into one gigantic gang war, with bloodshed easily rivaling that of any inner-city American ghetto (if not worse). As with everywhere else however, initially coke was seen as “not addictive” (yea right…), or so everyone was told; its use was taken outrageously lightly, without the criminal stigma that other illicit drugs engendered. The rhyme heard in this track, “a knife, a fork, a bottle & a cork, that’s the way we spell New York…” has been traced back to the turn of the 20th century, and though no one is sure exactly what it means, most speculate that it refers to the gang violence, diverse food, & love of alcohol inherent to the city at that (and all) time(s).
