The 50 Best Weed Songs of All Time, Ranked

Album: The Red Light District
Producer: Organized Noize

In the grand scheme of Ludacris’s discography, most forget the infectious “Blueberry Yum Yum,” off 2004’s The Red Light District. The song sounds surprisingly modern, thanks in part to the futuristic vision of Nayvadius DeMun Wilburn.

The songwriter of the indelible hook is a pre-fame Future, more commonly known around this time as Meathead. Before Future was writing about his one true love, “dirty sprite,” he was the inspiration for Sleepy Brown singing, “Get your lighters, roll that sticky, let's get higher (let's get higher)/Got that blueberry yum yum and it's that fire (it's that fire).”

Album: Anti
Producer: Kuk Harrell & Shea Taylor

“James Joint” is perfectly succinct.

The song, written by James Fauntleroy, only clocks in at slightly over minute, but that is all it takes for Rihanna and Fauntleroy to spin an engaging story. Listeners hear Rih softly sing, “I’d rather be smoking weed whenever we breathe,” as she tells us about a man with a history. By song’s end the cops are coming and the paranoia sticks to the track as the magical strings whisk you away. There is no resolution. We don’t know what happened to Rihanna and her lover, but one doesn’t need to. The greatness of the song lies in the thin and relatable line it paints between love and dysfunction.

Album: This Is Not A Test!
Producer: Missy Elliot and Timbaland

They'd been making the same cigars since 1911, so the folks at Dutch Masters must've wondered what was up when their sales started spiking in the mid-1980s. Suddenly, if you were not rolling White Owls or Philly blunts—which, as rapper Guru observed, “burn much quicker”—then Dutch Masters was the other primary wrap.

The bugged beat of “Pass that Dutch,” produced by Miss E and her studio homie Timbaland, bounces like a cartoon ball. The video, featuring blunt master Busta Rhymes roaring like a dragon, was directed by Dave Myers (biting the trademark Hype Williams style) and shows dancing scarecrows and a newly thin Missy driving a truck full of man-eating (literarily) BBWs.

Album: Big Baby D.R.A.M.
Producer: J Gramm Beats

It isn’t often that a song about weed becomes a massive hit. D.R.A.M.’s “Broccoli” went quintuple platinum, peaked at No. five on the Billboard Hot 100, and put the Virginia rapper on the map. The reasoning for this is two-fold. First, Lil Yachty delivers one of the best intros to any song in recent memory with the sweet, “Hey lil mama would you like to be my sunshine.” Second, D.R.A.M.’s hook, “In the middle of the party, bitch get off me (Get off of me)/In the cut I’m rollin’ up my broccoli (My weed, my weed) is insanely quotable.

Album: Trip
Producer: The Fisticuffs

Back in 2017, Jhene Aiko and Swae Lee teamed up and created the perfect stoner anthem, for anyone who prefers to vibe out to sativa over anything else. The Fistcuffs-produced beat is soothing and mellow, but don’t be surprised if the single pops up at a kickback or house party. “Is it hot in here or is it just me?/I’m so high in here, been smokin’ on this weed,” Jhene sings. Layering Jhene and Swae Lee’s vocals on the chorus was the perfect touch. Once this song comes on, it’s easily to get swept up and lost in your own world as clouds of sativa fill the air.

Album: Long.Live.ASAP
Producer: A$AP Ty Beats

“Purple Swag” was iconic from the beginning. In the summer of 2011, the world first saw a problematic white girl with gold grills mouthing the words “This is for my niggas getting high on the regular,” as a braided rapper brought Texas to Harlem streets. The song is a chopped & screwed anthem, made by a New York collective, during a time when Tumblr was still relevant. “Purple Swag” became more than a song about “purple drank” and “purple weed,” but a statement of purpose that real swag wasn’t beholden to any one region.

In a 2012 interview with Complex, A$AP Rocky described the making of the song. “We definitely recorded that shit in some small ass closet,” says Rocky. “I was getting high. I was high as a kite. On some purple drink, purple weed, shouts to this weed. It just felt so natural. Holy shit. I was in a world where everything was purple. I was just high. Purple lights was everywhere. It was just like, dark room, purple lights. Music blasting. That type of shit. Everything is purple.”

Album: Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Producer: DJ Rad

While 50's official stance is that he doesn't smoke weed, that story crumbles like herb when you hear the Queens native dropping blunted ballistics on “High All the Time” from his classic debut Get Rich or Die Tryin'.

“Give me some dro, purple haze, and some chocolate,” 50 rapped. “Give me a Dutch and a lighter I'll spark shit.” Still, he claimed to a SPIN journalist that his rhymes were a mixture of fact and fiction: “When I rap lines like, 'I smoke the good shit," that's just me using my head," 50 said. "That's me, knowing that there are 500,000 people out there who just want to play my records and get high. I watched Method Man base his career on that.” Okay, so while other rappers were simply blunted, 50 Cent was being a good businessman.

Album: Madvillainy
Producer: Madlib

The supreme power of weed can fuel some of the greatest creative heights known to man. Nowhere is this more evident than on the 2004 track “America’s Most Blunted,” off the classic MF DOOM and Madlib album Madvillainy. The beat for “America’s Most Blunted” contains 18 samples, ranging from “Ninety-Nine and One Half” by the Fever Tree to “Come Out” by Steve Reich. Most rappers would get lost in this cacophonous haze, but not DOOM, who’s known “for the best rolled L’s” or Quasimoto “the most blunted on the map/The one astro black, in the alley, with a hoodrat.”

Album: The Trinity
Producer: Renaissance Crew Productions

“We Be Burnin’” is an energetic single from Sean Paul, that finds the reggae artist celebrating his endless fortune. And there’s no better way to commemorates your riches than to start a huge cyph. “We be burnin’ not concernin’ what nobody wanna say/We be earnin' dollars turning cah' we mind de pon we pay/More than gold and oil and diamonds, girls, we need them everyday,” he sings. The danceable nature of the record and its carefree spirit is what easily makes Sean Paul’s 2005 a classic.

Album: Beach House 2
Producer: DJ Spinz

Ty Dolla $ign’s silky voice is naturally intoxicating, and with Wiz Khalifa riding shotgun the West Coast lothario details the numerous ways he gets high. For those not aware, if you’re running to the bodega for Ty don’t bring back dutchie—he prefers papers. The weed better be organic and either OG Kush or Wiz’s “KK.” These are the rules.

Album: XXX
Producer: SKYWLKR

“Kush got a nigga feeling awesome/Ate that bitch pussy ’til she squirted like a dolphin,” ranks as one of the best opening lines of any song. “

“Blunt after Blunt’s” hook is so direct it borders on the mundane, if you just read the lyrics on the page. To truly enjoy the song you need to listen to the overwhelming aggression in Danny’s voice as he yells, “And I smoke Blunt after blunt, after blunt, after blunt, after blunt, after blunt.” An inordinate amount of songs about drug consumption use flowery prose, metaphors, and symbolism to get their point across, but on “Blunt After Blunt,” Danny cuts straight to the center, no filler.

Album: When Disaster Strikes
Producer: DJ Scratch

Produced by the underrated DJ Scratch, this track from Busta's second solo disc, When Disaster Strikes, was a dope celebration of friendship and weed. Rapping in his booming style, Busta put the blunt where our eyes could see and declared, “Weed smoking got me moving slow motion like we floatin' on relax ocean.” It's a shame director Hype Williams couldn't have brought that image to video.

Album: Pilot Talk
Producer: Ski Beatz and Yasiin Bey

Picking the best Curren$y song about weed is the equivalent of ranking Kanye albums. It is a foolhardy attempt at categorizing that which changes with the seasons and feelings. Curren$y raps about marijuana the way a sommelier can talk your ear off about a Pinot Noir.

“Breakfast” sounds like a wake and bake session attained sentience. Spitta rides over Ski Beatz expertly chopped sample of “Trumpet on the Beach” like it is his birthright. “Rolled Bambus in the Bahamas, momma/It’s either that or them strawberry coladas/Xbox web browser, download an updated NBA roster/Play an eighty-two game season/Condo full of snacks, Spitta not leaving,” has the type of detail that would make a high F. Scott Fitzgerald proud.

Album: Black Sunday
Producer: DJ Muggs

A track so meticulous and detailed it doubles as a bong owner’s manual, Cypress Hill’s “Hits From the Bong” is a classic stoner anthem. Built around a lackadaisical guitar sample from Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” DJ Muggs’ beat exists in a warm, smoky haze, while B-Real dispenses wisdom (never spill the bong water, make sure you clean your screen, etc.), with veteran ease and charisma. Bongs have never been the preferred smoking apparatus in hip-hop, but Cypress Hill certainly makes a strong case for them here.

Album: Lord Willin'
Producer: The Neptunes

The Clipse's debut Lord Willin', considered a classic disc in rap circles, was all about “that stuff.” While the Thornton brothers Pusha T and Malice mostly rapped about the coke/crack that kept them on their grind, those good ol' boys were also down with getting blitzed on blunts.

With a Neptunes beat and Pharrell's “faux-falsetto” crooning on the hook as smoothly as William DeVaughn, the track “Gangsta Lean” was laced with weed references as the group told tales of the spell their “lady” whipped on them. “'Cuz I'm lovesick, got me all choked up,” Pusha T rapped. “Look, you keep my head in the clouds mami,'till I can't breathe.” As grandma would've said, “That stuff make ya act strange.”

Album: Lobby Runners
Producer: Dun Deal

For years, Young Thug’s existence has been an anomaly. He’s an amalgamation of Wayne’s most martian-like qualities, Gucci Mane’s work ethic, and Prince’s gender-bending charm. However, it wasn’t until “Stoner” that the larger public latched onto these idiosyncrasies.

Over Dun Deal’s stuttering beat, Thug melodically sings about his YSL lifestyle. He slurs the delivery of the undeniable hook, “I’m a stoner, I’m a stoner, I’m a stoner,” his adlibs ooze with reckless abandon, and by the time he sweetly sings, “I feel like Fabo, I feel like Fabo,” the listener transports to his otherworldly multiversal plane. Most people will never know what it’s like inside Thug’s mind, but “Stoner” might be the closest approximation.

Album: KC and the Sunshine Band
Producer: Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch

Originally recorded by his label-mate George McCrae on his Rock My Baby album, Miami disco maestro KC sped-up the arrangement and made it a sensation. Sampled by everybody from Madonna (“Secrets”) to Jaz featuring Jay-Z (“Pumpin'), this "blazing" track is still fire.

Album: Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
Producer: J-Swift

For better or worse, The Pharcyde acted a little crazy, like they were hanging-out with the Joker at Arkham Asylum planning to break him out so they could all go skateboarding.

Coming out at a time when other rappers were trying to kill each other, the Pharcyde's goofy debut Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde was a welcome diversion from all the Blood, Crip, crack and guns scenarios. Not everybody could be NWA or Above the Law—thank goodness.

Like the Native Tongues with better smoke and garages, these cats embraced the jazzy side of things and on “Pack the Pipe” beat-master J-Swift flips heavy-hitters Coltrane, Herbie Mann and Cannonball Adderly into a jazzy gumbo. In addition, Fuct designed a stunning tribute to P-Funk art kings Pedro Bell and Overton Lloyd for the album cover. It's the kind of cover high people can stare at for hours.

Album: N/A
Producer: N/A

Although Cab Calloway wore white tuxedos and led a big band, don't get it twisted like an L—he was still down with the “Reefer Man.” Hanging hard on the streets of Harlem, as documented in Mezz Mezzrow's classic autobiography Really the Blues, the “Reefer Man” was all around the hood selling loose joints from the shadows of crumbling tenements and inside noted jazz clubs. “He smokes a reefer, he gets high, then flies to the sky,” Calloway wailed over the swinging music.

Album: Who Feels It Knows It
Producer: Grub Cooper/Rita Marley/Bob Marley

Released the same year her husband Bob died from cancer, Rita Marley’s enthusiastic ode to sensimillia “One Draw” was a big hit in her homeland and around the world. In England, where her song was treated like the Sex Pistols "God Save The Queen" and banned by the BBC, the track went on to sell over 2 million copies. Back home in Jamaica, the “respectables” were appalled by the skit in the middle of the record where a class of teenagers schools their teachers on the powers of pot.

Album: Poetic Justice Soundtrack
Producer: Warren G.

Although the Warren G.–produced track features on the Poetic Justice soundtrack, Mr. Grimm was never as big as other West Coast rappers who embraced the G-Funk movement. However, if the G stood for ganja, then Grimm—like Dr. Hook—was at least in the right place at the right time.

Looking more like a suburban pretty boy than a boy from the hood, Grimm could still hold his own on the microphone. The “Indo Smoke” video was all in good fun as it reprised all the classic Cali clichés: cars, girls, swimming pools—and cheeba.

Album: Tical
Producer: RZA

Method Man was the first Wu member to release a solo album when Tical dropped from the blackened skies in the fall of '94. “Method Man's gripping rhymes creep out of the darkness and take listeners hostage,” Entertainment Weekly scribe Tracy E. Hopkins wrote.

With or without the killer bees buzzing in the background, the man called Iron Lung had a menacing voice that sounded like grimy fog, all blunted and raw. “What's that shit that they be smoking?” he asks over the spooky RZA beat. Of course, it's Tical.

Album: Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
Producer: Organized Noize/Andre 3000/Big Boi

Signed by L.A. Reid and Babyface to LaFace Records—the label that was home to both TLC and Toni Braxton—the dynamic duo of Andre 3000 and Big Boi came out the gate hard and funky on their debut as Outkast. Produced by the smoked-out trio that comprised Organized Noize, the hotness of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik remains undisputed.

Like Super Fly meeting up with Shaft to share a blunt, these country boys were all about phat sacks, mack daddy tracks and gleaming Cadillacs. The bass-heavy soulful track “Crumblin' Erb” samples an Isaac Hayes' Blaxploitation beat (the 1974 instrumental “Joe Bell” from the movie Three Tough Guys) while preaching to the converted about the pleasures of escaping “this crazy world” by simply chilling out and crumbing herb.

Album: Because I Got High
Producer: Afroman and Loppy Octopus

Back in 2001, “Because I Got High” was one of the rare songs that shock-show host Howard Stern spun on a regular. With weed icons Jay and Silent Bob appearing in the video, the laid-back track was described by non-weed-smoking writer Dave Bry as an “easy, breezy, catchy as a cold hit that appeals to every demographic.” Afroman was a one-hit wonder who could've been the next Jay-Z, except that he… well, you know.

Album: Police In Helicopter
Producer: Henry "Junjo" Lawes

Like an island version of Sam Cooke, this Kingston, Jamaica native sang such smooth love songs you'd never dream he was could be a rude boy. While some yardies were sleeping on his smooth timbre, John Holt hooked up with sound scientist Junjo Lawes and created the politically charged “Police in Helicopter.”

Made as a protest song against the anti-weed policies of Prime Minister Seaga and President Reagan, this track was recorded as a show of support for Jamaican weed farmers (backed up by a threat to "burn down the cane fields.")

Album: A Lesson to Be Learned
Producer: Black C
Bammer means bad. Northern California doesn't do bad weed, and Hunters Point duo RBL Posse want to make that clear. This song's hook was originally "don't give me no bammer joint, we don't smoke that shit in Hunters Point," but Black C and Mr. C made it city-wide, and created a classic, which virtually everyone who grew up in San Francisco and ever smoked weed is familiar with.

Album: Loc-ed After Dark
Producer: Matt Dike and Michael Ross

With a voice that sounded as though Loc started smoking blunts in the playpen like a hip-hop Baby Herman, the big man from Cali sampled Stevie Wonder's “Maybe Your Baby” and helped put his label Delicious Vinyl on the rap map. Coming a few years before the world was toking on chronic, this smoky song helped Tone Loc propel beyond being a “Wild Thing” one-hitter.

Album: Black Sunday
Producer: DJ Muggs and B-Real

Taking over like a blunted multi-culti Beach Boys for the hip-hop generation, Cypress Hill were the original hip-hop prophets of pot. B. Real, Sen Dogg and underrated producer DJ Muggs—the Brian Wilson of the bunch—defined the group's bong-inspired boom.

The song “I Wanna Get High” was the lead track to their sophomore album Black Sunday. Their strangely sinister soundscapes were a dense wonderland of screaming sirens, eerie echoes, and slowed-down funk. Although rarely given real props, the Cypress cats were game changers for real, son.

Album: Back To Black
]Producer: Salaam Remi

With a pitch-perfect Phil Spector girl group sound courtesy of Salaam Remi and a topic that even bad girls like the Ronettes wouldn't touch, Amy Winehouse sang to all the folks in our lives who toke all our Tical without bringing any buds to the table. “Tell your boyfriend next time he around to buy his own weed and don't wear my shit down,” she wails while patiently waiting for “the green man." We feel her pain.

Album: Btnhresurrection
Producer: DJ U Neek

The video for this dreamy Wake & Bake anthem takes places at 10:30 am on 4/20/2000. "If everybody smoked a blunt, relieved the mind, the world could be a better place," Krayzie reflects. "If everybody took a break and we all just get wasted."

Album: Brainchild
Producer: Organized Noize

Featuring members of the Organized Noize production clique that crafted some of the best wicked, weeded and wise tracks of the 1990s for Outkast, Joi, Goodie Mob and Cool Breeze—to name a few—this track features on their slept-on joint Brainchild.

Coming out around the same time as D'Angelo, these bong brothers got lost in the soul sauce. Colder than an iceberg and hotter than July, this is multi-generational mack daddy marijuana music for Mayfield lovers, funk fans, and southern hemp-hop heads.

Album: The Joker
Producer: Steve Miller

Sampled by the Geto Boys and covered by Homer Simpson, this 1973 classic is all about the smoking, toking adventures of frontman Steve Miller. So cool, Miller has a few names including Space Cowboy and Gangster of Love, each referring to one of his own jams. Back in the '70s, this was the perfect soundtrack for smoking in the boy's room.

Album: Daily Operation
Producer: DJ Premier and Guru

Always raising the rhythmic bar of what constituted great rap records, b-boy perfectionists DJ Premier and Guru were no joke when it came to making masterful tracks. For two dudes not originally from New York City, these brothers from different mothers adapted to the city's grit, grime, and gruffness and translated their experience into some of the hardest tunes of the 1990s.

Along with DJ Muggs, Tricky and RZA, our Primo was on top of the heap. Recording at the legendary D&D Studios back when insiders joked that the initials stood for “dirt and drugs,” nobody made records like these dudes.

On “Take Two and Pass,” the late great Guru unleashes an ill flow that's the vocal equivalent of an Abel Ferrara film as he rolls through the maddening metropolis while rolling up. “'Take Two and Pass' is the greatest ode to blunts since (the first) Cypress Hill album,” former Source scribe Chris Wilder wrote in 1992.

Album: Just Tryin' ta Live
Producer: DJ Premier

Surely a lifelong stoner like Devin the Dude deserves a spot on this list just because well...he's that dude. Mixing funky blues with hip-hop, “Doobie Ashtray” has the feel of the Ohio Players leaning back like ganja gangsters. Devin has got a lot of classic smoker anthems, but this one takes the cake clip.

Album: Kush & Orange Juice
Producer: Sermstyle

“Just gimme a quiet place and lemme roll my weed,” Wiz says over a fake Jamaican beat on the track “Still Blazin'.” Featured on his classic 2010 mixtape, which transformed the Steel City into Smoke City, Wiz's needs were really quite simple, “Just get up out my face and lemme roll my weed.” Sounds like the black and yellow kid ain't sharing.

Album: Master of Reality
Producer: Rodger Bain

Back in the day, a lot of Black and Spanish living in various New York City ghettos were fans of Ozzy Osbourne. Years before becoming the wonderfully brain dead dad beloved by America, he was an unruly drunk pothead touring the globe with his group Black Sabbath.

One graff king, the late Dondi White even named his most famous subway painting series “Children of the Grave,” after a track on Black Sabbath's stoner rock masterpiece, Masters of Reality. Blaring the album at the crib before trekking to the train-yards, Dondi created three separate “Children of the Grave” cars between 1978 and 1980.

Opening the album was a song called “Sweet Leaf,” which—not surprisingly—was all about getting zooted. “Marijuana was still the band's drug du jour,” biographer Paul Wilkinson noted in Rat Salad: Black Sabbath, The Classic Years, 1969-1975. Taking the song title from a pack of Irish cigarettes, “Sweet Leaf” featured guitarist Tony Iommi coughing up a lung before Osbourne swoops in like a giant bat.

At the end, he proclaimed, “Straight people don't know, what you're about/They put you down and shut you out/You gave to me a new belief and soon the world will love you sweet leaf.” Long before Spinal Tap, this was what being a metal head rebel was all about.

Album: Whut? Thee Album
Producer: Pete Rock and Redman

Although a few old school cats might remember buying loose joints on the schoolyard with Julio, by the late 1980s, it was all about Philly blunts.

Formerly the kind of stogies senior citizens smoked while seated on the stoop, the cheap cigars and revolutionized the reefer game when weed heads started buying them seemingly overnight on the grounds that they made weed last longer, the better for passing around.

This dope Redman track serves as a streetwise instructional on mastering your technique. Let the good times roll.

Album: Super Fly (Soundtrack)
Producer: Curtis Mayfield

Wearing eyeglasses and strumming a guitar, 30-year-old singer/producer Curtis Mayfield appeared with his band in the landmark Blaxploitation film Super Fly, for which he also did the soundtrack. Not only was this funky groove a perfect smoking soundtrack, but it was about the man who's always there saying, "have some coke, have some weed."

“Technically, 'Pusherman' was the first song we recorded,” guitarist Craig McMullen recalled 40 years later. “Unlike the rest of the album, which we recorded back in Chicago, 'Pusherman' was done in New York City during the same time we came to film our cameo.”

When a journalist asked Mayfield about puffing, the singer who made a point of saying he was never "a victim of ghetto demands," confessed: “I smoked herb. I didn't do nothing until I was 27 years old and smoking herb didn't seem like a heavy cost to pay to cure my curiosity.”

Album: Return of the Boom Bap
Producer: DJ Premier and KRS-One

Billed as the first KRS-One solo album, as opposed to a Boogie Down Productions record, Return of the Boom-Bap didn't disappoint when it comes to witty wordplay.

On the wonderfully whimsical “I Can't Wake Up,” aurally sculpted by DJ Premier, Kris approaches the song as though it were a weed version of 50 Cent's fantastical “How to Rob.” Instead of jacking famous hip-hop stars for their gold and money, KRS dreams that he is a blunt getting smoked by Redman, Showbiz, Grand Puba, Fab 5 Freddy and others. With a tone that sounds lighter than usual, this is one of KRS's best.

Album: Crying Time
Producer: Joe Adams

Ever heard some weed seller claim his smoke was so good it would make Ray Charles see? Well, if brother Ray were still walking the earth, I would say "prove it." Indeed, any of us who watched Jamie Foxx in Ray knows that that piano-playing, gospel-wailing, blues-screaming soul man wasn't playing around when it came to smoking a little somethin'-somethin'.

On “Let's Go Get Stoned,” which came out during the mid-60s when long-haired freaks and short-haired sneaks began puffing as though bud was legal, Charles has no problem getting' his buzz on. Covered by Joe Cocker at Woodstock, “Let's Go Get Stoned” was an early writing credit for Ashford and Simpson, who initially met at White Rock Baptist Church in New York City.

Stone, rock, do you see the connection? The song was later dissed by former Vice-President Spiro Agnew, who thought it and other songs put drugs in “such an attractive light, that for the impressionable, turning on becomes the natural and even the approved thing to do.”

Album: Man on the Moon: The End of Day
Producer: Dot Da Genius

Flipping the title of a Cole Porter classic was where Kid Cudi cut his ties to traditional pop music. Inspired by the Geto Boys infamous “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” Cudi comes across like Portishead without the accent. Working with long time musical partner Dot da Genius, the Cudi constructed one of the coolest chill-out tracks since trip-hop flew into the states via Concorde. For all those lonely stoners out there, “Day ’n’ Nite” is an atmospheric, trippy, dreamy piece of music that takes you higher without inhaling.

Album: 2001

Producer: Dr. Dre and Mel-Man

Utilizing the sinister David McCallum/David Axelrod sample “The Edge,” the always on fire Dr. Dre and Snoop took the world higher with this song about “California love, this California bud.” While the smash single was already extremely gangsta, the Paul Hunter–directed video further explored the shoot-'em-up motif with a slick neo-noir clip. Invoking a money, bitches and perms aesthetic, some folks are still wondering what Snoop was smoking when he decided to show up to the set with that black Barbie hairstyle. Church!

Album: A Gangster and a Gentlemen
Producer: Swizz Beatz and Saint Denson

If you don't believe things go 'round in circles like a dusty Billy Preston record, then how come the first official rap record “Rappers Delight” sampled Chic's monster disco record “Good Times” and then twenty-three years later Styles P put out a record called “Good Times.” Unlike Chic founder Nile Rodgers—another New York dude who rose up from rough beginnings—Style's joint is literally about joints.

“I smoke like Bob Marley did,” P spit, “add to that, that I smoke like the Hippies did back in the '70s.” The irony of the song's title is that Style's crazy world, with its random beefs, paranoia and violence, doesn't sound like “Good Times” at all. Keep puffing, P.

Album: Operation Stackola
Producer: Tone Capone

The video may have been shot at a mansion complete with a blue water swimming pool and dancing hoochies, but Bay Area rhyme slingers Luniz kept it reefer real when they took up a collection to buy a phat sack. Funky as a bag of skunk, this blunted beat is habit-formingly hypnotic.

Album: The Blackout
Producer: Eric Sermon

Before becoming the Heckle and Jeckle of rap, these cannabis connoisseurs made no secret of their love for bud, which made their first featured collaboration, “How High,” an ideal match.

Produced by EPMD fisherman hat wearing dude Erick Sermon, who sampled the zooted disco track “Fly Robin Fly” by Silver Convention, this is the kind of song that stoner Jeff Spicoli would make love to. The song became the jump-off for the duo's 2001 film of the same name. They also did a remix and a part two of this track, but none tops the funk of the original.

Album: Kaya
Producer: Bob Marley and The Wailers

Released a year after the seminal Exodus album the year before, yet with songs cobbled from the same sessions, Bob Marley's wonderful Kaya album was all about peace and love. While some hardcore aficionados believed the record soft when compared to past releases, others thought the laidback tracks revealed a well-rounded artist, one who could be both a sonic warrior and introspective observer.

The title track, which Marley had recorded a version of a few years earlier, was inspired after hanging-out with producer Lee Scratch Perry. In 1973, Perry had recorded the original version of the song for his album Soul Revolution Part II.

Not as big a Marley expert as some folks I know, I asked noted writer, teacher and author Vivian Goldman, who penned The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century (2006), to give her thoughts on Bob's dreamy love song to weed.

“'Kaya' fulfills Marley's aesthetic criteria of being exceedingly accessible, and its vivid chalice inhalation and hummable hook is instant in both versions of the song—the original cut in the 1973 with dubmaster Lee Perry, where the harmonies of the three original Wailers, Bob, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone, seem to hover in the air like parallel smoke signals; and the crisper, better known 1978 version on which Bob's vocal mastery rings out, counterpointed with the I Three's swooning backing.

Each has its charms. Whichever, in both 'Kaya's,' Bob creates a sensual, languorous space out of time; the cosy sense of being sheltered while the rain pounds down outside and we relish a respite from life's turbulence, able to view it from the more serene vantage point of one who is 'feeling irie I, cause I have some Kaya now...'"

Album: Brown Sugar
Producer: D'Angelo and Ali Shaheed Muhammad

Co-produced with A Tribe Called Quest sonic architect Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the soulful “Brown Sugar” served as the D'Angelo's debut single. A sticky-icky ballad where the object of his desire was a strong spliff, the track was as smoked-out as its subject matter.

The Grammy-nominated song could've been a comic novelty record if D'Angelo's haunting vocals, funky drums and churchy textured organ didn't sound so damn serious. Simultaneously retro and revolutionary, “Brown Sugar” was the perfect introduction to a great artist.

Album: Come Get It!
Producer: Art Stewart

Although, the late punk-funker, Rick James, would go down in history as Black pop's most notorious cocaine cowboy—and comic fodder for Dave Chappelle—there's no denying the stone-cold genius behind “Mary Jane,” a track that combined elements of rock, pop, and doo-wop.

Working alongside underrated producer Art Stewart, who engineered and produced for such Motown luminaries as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, wild boy James' brilliant song about bud paved the way for a whole puff, puff, pass generation of hip-hop and soul heads including Cypress Hill, Snoop Dogg and D'Angelo.

While coke, a least for Rick, was an evil drug that contributed to his decline, the brother could always count on Mary Jane to turn him on “with her love” and take him to paradise. Without a doubt, many parents might have thought their kids were listening to a love song about “the girl-next-door,” but of course it was all about getting lifted.

Album: Doggystyle
Producer: Dr. Dre

Before the Death Row Records empire crumbled to the ground like a hip-hop version of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were the baddest boys in Black pop. Death Row was led by super-producer Dr. Dre, whose aural mixture of yesteryear soul and contemporary swagger made his emerging G-Funk a global soundtrack.

According to journalist Kevin Powell, who covered the Death Row camp extensively in the 1990s, the song was essentially a freestyle. “Snoop smoked mad weed,” Powell wrote in 2007, “and had the uncanny ability to craft hit records off the top of his head.”

As for Dre, he once rapped "I don't smoke weed or sess / cause it's gonna give a brother brain damage," but later called his solo debut The Chronic—so draw your own conclusions. As the second single released from Snoop's seminal debut Doggystyle, the party jam “Gin and Juice” was nominated for a Grammy.

Album: Legalize It
Producer: Peter Tosh

When former Wailers co-founder Peter Tosh sat in a marijuana field smoking an ornate pipe on the cover of his solo debut album Legalize It, he wasn't just striking a pose. The Rasta rebel was making a bold statement directed at any and all governmental entities whose “war on bud” amounted to nothing but Babylonian brutality.

While most stateside stoners had never heard Tosh's terms like “tampee” before, it didn't take a genius to know what the Stepping Razor was talking about—ganja. Considered a roots reggae classic, with its Rasta rhythms and rebellious vibe, thirty years later “Legalize It” is still relevant, although the song's vision statement has yet to be fulfilled.