Why subscribe?

You’ll receive occasional dispatches about drugs, hip-hop, or both, and have access to my full archive. Here are examples.

The Hip-Hop 25: This list counts down the 25 best rap artists in history. These long entries feature rare photos and my never-published interviews with members of acts including Outkast, Run-DMC, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, N.W.A, and many more.

Tom Petty’s Death: “I spoke with one of Petty’s lawyers, who said that after a concert performance shortly before his death Petty ventured onto the street outside the venue, and asked a random person to sell him pills. It seems likely that one of these black market pills was cut with fentanyl, and that’s what killed him.”

Ask a Fentanyl Saleswoman: I spent over a year investigating a Chinese chemical company called Yuancheng, which sold fentanyl ingredients, and my expose made international news. Kicking it all off was this conversation I had with this saleswoman.

My Joe Rogan Experience: “Rogan’s hideout is top secret. His booker warned that I couldn’t take any photos or ‘geo-tag the location in social media posts.’ Sort of a cross between a man cave and an art gallery, the studio sits inside a windowless bunker, nondescript from the outside, about the size of a small airplane hangar.”

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From West Coast gangsta rap to Wuhan synthetic drug labs

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Ben Westhoff is the author of Fentanyl, Inc., about new synthetic drugs, and Original Gangstas, about the birth of West Coast Hip-Hop. He writes the Substack newsletter Drugs + Hip-Hop.