Why Is Eric Clapton’s Song “Cocaine” Not Censored on the Radio, but Drug References in Rap Songs Are?

Question by Anonymous: Why is Eric Clapton’s song “Cocaine” not censored on the radio, but drug references in rap songs are?
Eric Clapton: “…When your day is done and you wanna run; cocaine. If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues; cocaine…” This is obvious reference to recreational/self medicating illegal drug use.

If this song is acceptable, other drug references in music should be too. The importance or necessity of the lyrics is irrelevant; the right to express yourself takes precedent over the value of such expression.

Best answer:

Answer by Dave
cry about it; rap is for the fake people who havent found a purpose yet 😀

Answer by Sarah
“Cocaine” is an anti-drug song. It was also written some 40 years ago when censorship was much different. Many contemporary songs either promote drug use (e.g. talking about getting high and being laid back) or use slang which is often unnecessarily edited (saying “pot” may seem more offensive than “marijuana”…pretty dumb, but it happens). But yeah, the most important fact, the lines you quoted are an effort to be sarcastic. I looked it up on Wikipedia to make sure I wasn’t making this up in my head…

“Eric Clapton describes ‘Cocaine’ as ‘an anti-drug-song. The fans only listen to the refrain: “She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie, cocaine.” But it says, “If you wanna get down, down on the ground, cocaine.’”[2] The song also contains the lyric: ‘Don’t forget this fact, you can’t get it back’.[3] Clapton has called the song ‘quite cleverly anti-cocaine’, noting:[4]

‘It’s no good to write a deliberate anti-drug song and hope that it will catch. Because the general thing is that people will be upset by that. It would disturb them to have someone else shoving something down their throat. So the best thing to do is offer something that seems ambiguous—that on study or on reflection actually can be seen to be ‘anti’—which the song “Cocaine” is actually an anti-cocaine song. If you study it or look at it with a little bit of thought… from a distance… or as it goes by… it just sounds like a song about cocaine. But actually, it is quite cleverly anti-cocaine.'”

(from Wikipedia)

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Medic – Dr. Impossible (2/3) – The episode of Medic takes us back in history to explore the use of cocaine as an anesthetic. The doctors who discovered this medicinal use of cocaine were very enthusiastic about its possible use in surgery but knew nothing of its addictive potential. Here we see the consequences they endured. Richard Boone, appearing as Dr. Konrad Styner, is your host. This video brought to you by hwy61media. Please take a moment to rate this video and add your comments. You can see all of my videos at: www.youtube.com Please take a look and subscribe to my channel. If you would like to comment on my channel as well, please do so. Your feedback is important to me. Thanks for watching.