Since the first evidence of consumption in 3,000 BC, mankind has enjoyed the mildly-hallucinogenic effects of marijuana. Shown to have medicinal properties and effects far less harmful than alcohol, marijuana has now become a more accepted part of American culture and is experiencing legalization for the first time since its prohibition in 1937.

Evidence of this popularity and acceptance can be found in songs like Tech N9ne’s “Colorado” from his album Something Else. The track is a celebration of the plant and its availability in one of the first states to legalize the good green. With an approaching Colorado dates for The Something Else Tour, fans in the rockies are hoping for a full performance of the marijuana anthem.

We talked to the emcees on the song “Colorado” to get their thoughts on the drug. In the course of our interview, the Strange Music mic controllers answered the following questions:

• When did you first use marijuana?
• Why did you first start using marijuana?
• What do you enjoy about it?
• What’s your preferred way of smoking?
• What has the more negative effect on the consumer, weed or alcohol?
• Should we legalize marijuana and why or why not?

When did you first use marijuana?

TECH N9NE

I was a kid dude. I was in fucking 9th grade or something. Maybe in fucking 6th grade. I don’t fucking know dude, I’m 41 years old. I grew up in the hood my nigga and when I did move out of the ghetto, when I did move out of Wayne Minor, I was around kids that were just as bad as me.

Really what I remember…I remember in 9th grade, locker room with my homeboy Jack, this white kid that always had the weed. I’d smoke with Jack every once and awhile. We’d just skip gym and smoke. That’s what I remember. I know that I probably had weed before 9th grade because I used to skip school a lot back in the day, before I started wanting to make my music coincide with my school work. Then I was on the honor roll 12th grade year and shit like that so a lot of those years were skipping, kicking it, fucking, smoking and drinking and shit. I’ve got a lot of stories because of it.

Then later on in life I got in a group with one of the Luniz, Yukmouth the Smoke A Lot Regime, and we were truly the Smoke-A-Lot Regime, i watch that word because I’m still fucking with The Regime, but them niggas are the reason I don’t smoke like I used to. I used to smoke every day. When I was listening to Jim Morrison and all that shit, Lenny Kravitz, fucking Rush and all that shit with IcyRoc and Brian Dennis, we were smoking weed. I mean not Brian Dennis, but me and Roc, we were smoking big weed. Roc used to have bongs and shit. I lived with him nigga so we were hitting bongs and listening to Portishead, all that shit man, just getting high nigga and we did it on a daily. Me, Dyno Mac, my other friend Carlos, we used to get weed every day and go get this stripper named Jade and just roll around the van, just puffed out daily while I’m doing this Midwestside shit with the Rogue Dogs. Years just went on and the Smoke-A-Lot Regime, twenty blunts turned to fourty…shiza! Niggas sent me down to a Jamaican food spot on Goddamn Crenshaw when I was in Cali recording with QDIII and I wasn’t really hip to the brownies. They got a gang of brownies and brought them back to QDIII’s house and I ate two of them motherfuckers with a glass of milk and they were good, I was like “Hell yeah! These are good!” I got so high I got sick muh-fucka. It made me stop in ’98 but as the years progressed I started going overseas (laugh) and then I went to Amsterdam and it was safe to walk down the street and smoke in front of police and I’m rebellious so I had to do it. So when I’m in Amsterdam I smoke that shit. When I’m in Canada like right now, it’s like a peace offering: “You smoke that shit.” Not a lot but you smoke that shit if somebody offer it to you.

I go to Colorado now…c’mon man, you know I got to smoke in my second home. When I go to Denmark, anywhere in Denmark but most likely Christiania, where the cops can’t come in. There’s a place called Pusher Street in Germany, it’s like a peace offering too. They give you weed like “Welcome motherfucker, smoke.” I’m like “Okay, but after the show.”

So certain places I smoke but regular days and shit I don’t fuck with it. It makes me think that everything is impossible. Lately, when I do smoke it, it’s a different feeling for me now. I don’t feel like everything’s impossible, I just feel ultra happy. I don’t know what happened to my body chemistry with weed. I don’t smoke a lot of it when I do smoke. I smoke that real shit, that purple shit. It don’t take much (laughs). In certain places I smoke that shit so I did that song “Colorado” man, an ode to this town that loves me so much. When I heard that beat (hums beat) and “You know it’s that fire, I can’t get no higher.” B.o.B. already had that hook on there and I’m like “Oh my God, I came to turn the night up so watch me as I light up.” I’m like “Oh my God, that’s ‘Colorado’ right there dog!” Yeah I’m going to do a “Kansas City Here I Come”, i already did “Welcome To The Midwest”, of course, but I just had to do the weed song because they legalized it in Colorado. They said in October it would be totally final and all that kind of shit, I don’t know. It’s tight. So I had to do a song dedicated to that.

STEVIE STONE

16. That’s when I first really tried it.

INFO GATES

When I was 15, I think.

UBIQUITOUS

I first tried marijuana when I was 14 years old.

BERNZ

I dunno. I guess right when I got out of high school.

WREKONIZE

I first tried it, I think I was like a sophomore in high school. I’ve kind of been on-and-off ever since. I’ve never been a straight up, full-time smoker but I definitely have been on-and-off. When you’re in the music game it’s like all around you at all times: shows, studios, all that jazz. I guess I’ve been on and off smoking ever since. I’m a dabbler. I don’t have the same credentials that a lot of people that I roll with but you know. I dabble.

RITTZ

I started smoking weed I think when I was 13. It was ’93, so 20 years? Yeah that’s 20 years. I’ve slowed down a little bit than I used to be, but yeah – been 20 years strong!

KRIZZ KALIKO

When I was 14. My first experience with marijuana was horrible because it had something else in it, it was laced. I rolled it up in a newspaper called The Scholastic News. I was 14 and I rolled it up in a scholastic newspaper in my junior high school in the 8th grade. I don’t know if it was the ink that was mixed with whatever was in there, because there was some kind of powder substance in the, I got the weed in a vial, like a vial that you keep film in back in the days. I smoked it and I felt like so crazy and my heart – and I was paranoid. My mom came home and almost caught me. I had to play it off. It was crazy.

Why did you first start using marijuana?

STEVIE STONE

It was always recreational – with the homies and everything like that. Actually when I was younger I was really involved in basketball so I really didn’t like cigarettes or weed. I tried it but I didn’t use it. I probably really started using it and smoking for real probably when I was 18.

INFO GATES

Probably peer pressure. I think the first time I tried it I smoked it because it was there. Yeah because my friends were and I was like “Fuck it.” People were asking me to try it and I was like “Fuck it.” I kind of wanted to for awhile. Maybe I was a little bit scared as a young’n, because I didn’t do anything like that for awhile. I was a basketball player, a real straight edged kid, kind of stayed away from it, but I was always curious to at least try it.

UBIQUITOUS

It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time? (Laughs) I used it because my friends were using it. I didn’t really know shit about it, but for some reason we had a 9th grade kid running around, busting off Mexican dirt weed to everybody and I guess what I liked about it was, it wasn’t as much the weed itself, but it was having some illicit adventure, sneaking out and meeting in some fucking graveyard and getting high there and eluding police or what we might thought was the police, but really it never was because you’re just paranoid. That’s what it was really about.

BERNZ

Just something fun for us to do.

RITTZ

It’s just like a kid when they first, weed was just a gateway drug, so like the first thing you’re waiting to do. You see older people doing it. You’re in middle school and somebody show you like “Hey, I got some weed!” They’ve got it in their socks and shit – the little tiny ass bag. You just experience it. I was a crazy kid. I think I knew my parents had probably dabbled in some drugs so when I was real young like 9 or 10 I was going in the backyard and pulling up plants and rolling them up in notebook paper and trying to smoke it, not even knowing how to smoke (laughs). I was real eager to smoke weed for some reason man. I’ve had the feeling growing in order to be that way. I think that’s the initial thing. My brother, he was a senior in high school when I was a freshman, and I went to hang out with all of his older friends and shit and they’d get me stoned and laugh because I’d act like an idiot, giggling and shit, but that’s how I first started.

I got expelled from school because I had a bunch of weed. All the administrators had to open up my car and as soon as they opened up the car door they started covering their nose with the suit jackets and shit. The school cop had to escort me out of school and when I finally got to come back they had to smell my fucking hands every day before school. I had to go into the administrator’s office and empty my pockets and they’d have to smell my fingers, which is really weird. Yeah, it kind of drove me out of school but I was kind of really heavy into weed at that point to where that’s all I did.

What do you enjoy about marijuana?

STEVIE STONE

You heard “Indigo” right? Because I like how it feel! It relaxes me. It’s therapeutic. If I blaze one and I go in the studio and I’m about to create something, I don’t know, I just like how it feel, you dig what I’m saying?

INFO GATES

Everything. I like the smell, I like the taste, I like how it makes me feel. It relaxes me. I think I’m naturally kind of high-strung and weed helps me not be quite as high-strung and quite as obsessive about things. I like everything about it: the smell, the taste, how you feel. Everything.

UBIQUITOUS

It can be good for so many different things if you master it. If you want to be tired it can make you tired, or you can make it wake you up if that’s what you want to do. It can make you focus if that’s what you want to do, or it can make you space out if that’s what you want to do. It can make you hungry or not hungry, if that’s what you want from it. It can just really add so many effects that I can’t even tell you. It can be very useful in brainstorming. It can be good for writing. It can be bad for writing. It’s got so many uses. It’s just so wonderful. It comes right out of the Earth Jeff. Have you heard about this? It just comes right out, just like that.

BERNZ

I just think it goes well with creative people. It’s a good creative drug for creative and recreational purposes. That’s really my main thing for it. I think it takes your mind somewhere else, not that people get dependent on it or anything, but I just think it’s a good break. It opens some gateways.

WREKONIZE

I’d say these days it’s just a great stress reliever. I get tense as fuck in a studio situation sometimes or just stressed out from situations I’m dealing with and that’ll be the best time to take a toke man. It’s just a great stress reliever. I find it to be incredibly relaxing.

RITTZ

With weed it’s a release. I got to a point where if I’m doing business and music stuff and doing what I gotta do, I don’t like being stoned, I like being assertive and being on top of things. When I was, I don’t even want to say younger, all the way up to a couple of years ago, just from 13 up to then, I wanted to be stoned all the time. It was like “Where’s the weed? Where’s the weed? Where’s the weed?” But as you get older you just smoke when you feel like relaxing, listen to music, or smoke whenever you feel like it. It’s not like a necessity. That’s kind of where I’m at with it as far as now.

But it’s really just something to relax you man, it’s like having a drink or something. It takes the stress off and it’s relaxing. It lets you have a good time and have your mind altered a little bit just by a little buzz.

KRIZZ KALIKO

I’ve never been an avid user. Maybe it’s because I haven’t smoked the right strain, because all the weed I smoked makes me paranoid. I think I’ve had a couple of the right strains when I’m up in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, Denmark at a place called Christiania. I think I’ve had a couple of good strains there and if I drink wine. I maybe do it twice a year.

What’s your preferred way of smoking?

TECH N9NE

Motherfuckers hand it to me in Colorado in a blunt wrap. Some of them be flavored blunt wraps, but I’m old school man, you could roll some purp in a joint. When I was in Amsterdam I rolled the purp in a joint. Just some Zig Zags homeboy. I’m old school nigga. I don’t need a lot of consumption. Motherfuckers need the consumption because they smoke everyday. I don’t smoke everyday so it’s like when I do, it’s just a little bit here and there. When I’m in Amsterdam I might smoke a couple of purps when I walk up the street. You can buy four sticks of purp, wrap it in a joint and just walk down the street and take your drink from the Bulldog and fucking just walk down the street, Red Light District and everything, just chillin’ on your off-day. When I’m rapping, nah, we gotta do that after the show.

STEVIE STONE

Blunts. White Owl. Backwood.

INFO GATES

Uh…man…I really don’t have one. If there’s a lot of people, obviously a big joint or a blunt, but if I’m by myself I’m cool with just a little bowl. It’s cool for me if I’m just dolo. Bowl. You can taste it a little better. You don’t have to share it. But if I have more people then a joint or a blunt or something.

UBIQUITOUS

These days if I had my option I’m really about the vape pen. I hate to be such a hipster, but these vape pens are fucking great. It’s amazing. They’re very small. There’s this vapor, so it’s not offensive as far as odor and whatever else. It makes it very portable and you’re able to do it wherever you feel like doing it. It’s super potent so you don’t need to do it more than once or twice. It’s just crazy. It’s revolutionizing the weed game. The vape pen: know about it.

BERNZ

Joints. I like the papers and the leaves. I like burning leaves.

WREKONIZE

Well I don’t do bongs anymore, if anyone’s heard “Green Funyuns” they know I don’t do bong rips anymore after having a freak-out, think-I’m-going-to-die episode. A joint really would be classic or when we were on the last tour I was running into a lot of people that have the vape pens. Those vape pens are dope man because they’re so non-intrusive. They’re just very lightweight, so you don’t have to deal with all the other shit that comes from smoking regularly. But I think a good old classic joint does the trick.

RITTZ

I don’t know man. Before I would always say these blunts you know? I’d have to say just smoking blunts was probably the main way, but I never really had a way that I preferred. Whether it was blunts, or joints. You know, roll a fat-ass joint and as the joint gets smaller it doesn’t take as much for it to do what it has to do. Shit now I just hit the bowl a few times or smoke a bong at the crib and do it like that.

KRIZZ KALIKO

Joints. Joint man. I got a song I’m going to put on my EP it’s called “Joint, joint, joint, joint.” I say “I don’t smoke no reefer, but in Amsterdam I’m on a joint, joint, joint, joint.” You know?

Between alcohol and marijuana, which one do you think has the more negative effect on the consumer?

TECH N9NE

Everybody knows alcohol dude. Everybody knows that. Impairs your driving and shit like that, woozy, dizzy, have a wreck – everybody knows that but they say marijuana can do the same thing, but not as harsh. You can’t grow liquor motherfucker (laughs).

STEVIE STONE

Alcohol. You can drive high, you can’t drive drunk.

INFO GATES

Alcohol. For sure. I’ve never heard of an angry stoner, but an angry drunk is probably one out of every two or three drunks.

UBIQUITOUS

Alcohol. I think that because I’ve seen endless statistics to support that fact. Violent crime, 85% of violent crime is related to alcohol. One of both parties are intoxicated on alcohol when violent crime occurs. Drunk driving deaths, thousands a year. Yeah alcohol’s terrible (laughs). It’s terrible! Alcohol’s the worst thing ever! You heard it right here from your boy!

BERNZ

Ooh, that’s a tough one. I guess if you abuse it, alcohol, but if you abuse pot the negative effects are also there. You don’t do anything with your life. It’s tough. The thing about pot is when people have used it it’s easier to hide than alcohol

WREKONIZE

Man, even though I tend to lean towards drinking more, I would say alcohol for sure. There’s just more negative effects and I’ve seen some people go down some more dangerous roads on alcohol than I’ve ever seen on weed.

RITTZ

That’s hard. I think alcohol definitely has a bad health effect on you. That shit will kill you. So I’m definitely going to have to say alcohol has a more negative effect. It can definitely fuck you up so bad. Car wrecks and just your health period. But I do also think that weed, and I’m a perfect example of this like in the song “Wastin Time” – I got to a point where all I did all day, every day was smoke weed for 15 years so life was all about weed. It kind of unmotivates you a bit, to a certain extent if you let it do that to you. I would say alcohol would be the case because I know a lot of people who have fucked up livers and won’t live long.

KRIZZ KALIKO

Absolutely alcohol. When’s the last time you hear of somebody dying, ruining their family or smoke weed and go pick a fight? There’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it’s not Mothers Against Potheads. People don’t generally smoke weed and go out and, they just want to eat and kick back. It’s generally a sedative and has more of that effect. With alcohol, it has a sedative effect when you drink a lot but you go out and act stupid on alcohol. I have personally, so. It’s definitely one that negatively effects you.

Do you think we should legalize marijuana and if so, why?

TECH N9NE

Totally. Tax that shit and then we won’t have that big ass deficit we’ve got. Yup.

STEVIE STONE

Yes. It’s like I said, what effects someone more negatively? Drinking. If that can be legal, why shouldn’t marijuana be?

INFO GATES

Does Pinocchio have wooden balls? Yes he does. Yes they should definitely legalize it because people are going to smoke it no matter what. I actually just recently read a really long, official White House document. I think it’s three or four years old, but I read this official White House document about why they should or shouldn’t legalize it. They have pros and cons and all this stuff and all the pros were obvious.

People are going to smoke anyways man. People are going to get it on the streets. People are going to smoke weed. They’re going to get it. They’ll find a way to grow it, they’ll find a way to get it. The government comes with that research that marijuana makes 70 percent of the people that smoke it either paranoid or have memory problems or are judgment impaired.

It’s just like, anything can impair your judgment. You can do too many donuts. You could eat so many donuts that you’re so full that you feel like you’re going to shit your pants and you could get in a wreck off of that. Their arguments are retarded man.

People are going to get high, they might as well stop throwing marijuana smokers in jail with child molesters and shit. That’s something that I speak on. I’ve been arrested several times for marijuana or other marijuana-related charges. Thank God I never had to do any hard time, but I have been to jail off of marijuana. There were people in there for guns and all kinds of shit. I was cellmates with a felon who got caught with guns and you know it’s just completely different shit. I feel like rehabilitation should be an option but only if people want it too.

People get hooked on over-the-counter medicine, people get hooked on food that’s terrible for them. There’s all kinds of shit that can and does hurt people, but you got to put the apples with the apples and the oranges with the oranges. Marijuana smokers don’t belong in the same jail cells as gun sellers and fucking child abusers and rapists and shit. It’s crazy.

UBIQUITOUS

Absolutely. The tax revenue it would create: you could pump into the education system, infrastructure and build fucking America. Yeah they need to legalize it in all 50 states. Tax it. Sell it in every corner store.

BERNZ

That’s a good question. Actually, I’m okay with the way it is right now. I don’t know of anybody that has any issues picking up pot. But yeah I guess it’s probably good to be legal so people can smoke and not have to be prosecuted by the law and end up in jail. If they made it just so it’s illegal but you don’t go to jail, I’d be okay with that. I don’t really care either way, I just know that it’s easier to get it right now as it is. I don’t know how much I like the fact that maybe Uncle Sam will have a hand in my pot.

WREKONIZE

I’ve heard a lot of arguments on both sides. I would say yes because I just hate having to get locked up for that shit. Especially because we live in Florida and they don’t fuck around at all in Florida. To see people get thrown in the cells for that is ridiculous. It’d be cool if they get rid of that.

RITTZ

I don’t see why not man! I don’t have a big stance on the legalizing weed situation. I think they put a lot of people in jail for weed when there’s a lot of worse things going on. You know what I’m saying? Plus there’s so many sides of it to where you might be able to make more money in the economy by legalizing weed. Who’s legalizing weed right now? Colorado legalized weed? I think California to a certain extent. I wouldn’t see why every place shouldn’t have the same approach. It seems to be working. There’s a lot of people, especially where I live at, who get locked up for having a seed in their car or having a little roach or even some shake just laying around in that car, just for a cop to take them to jail. I think that’s kind of ridiculous man. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be legal.

KRIZZ KALIKO

Absolutely man. If you listen to my song from the pre-order bonus tracks, “Death To America”, in the first line of the song I said “My president ain’t black, he high-yellow, tell ’em legalize weed, shut the hell up!'” I think it would help the economy actually. I mean really the money from marijuana is functioning in the economy anyway, because if you’re selling marijuana you’re still buying cars, houses and food and everything else. Actually the government would be the one who would benefit most from it, so why wouldn’t they legalize it?

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• Which artist would you most want to smoke weed with? Why?
• What do you think is worse, alcohol or marijuana? Why?
• Who’s take on weed did you agree with the most?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!