It's no secret that creating while high will catch up to you in the worst way. Case in point: Smokepurpp, who revealed in a new interview with Highsnobiety that he was in a cycle of nearly dying from his drug use while crafting his celebrated Deadstar and Deadstar 2 projects.

"I started making music on the drugs, so when I stopped doing drugs I didn’t really want to make music," he explained. "It just became some weird cycle. I had to really tell myself I don’t need the drugs to make the music, and then I just got back into working on it.

"I’m going to always talk about drugs in my music because drugs were a big, big, big part of my life, big part of my story, big part of my image. Big part of everything. It made me who I am today—overcoming all that shit. If you listen to Deadstar, it’s really all about me feeling like I’m dying. The reason it means so much to me is because I nearly died making it. Making Deadstar 2, I was in that same cycle. I was nearly dying. People were worried for me. Then, once Deadstar 2 was finished, that’s when I was like, okay, I’m done with this shit."

Of course, reading Purpp's comments is a harrowing experience. To hear that a young man was close to death twice over for the sake of creating music is sobering, to say the least. Thankfully, after his experiences with drugs and multiple close calls with death, Smokepurpp appears to be done with drugs, and for good reason.



The 21-year-old, born Omar Jeffery Pineiro in Chicago, Illinois, is not the only artist pursuing sobriety, either. A$AP Rocky recently revealed that he is creating while sober. Vince Staples has always been a sober act, too. There is always the fear that the music will suffer if artists go the sober route, but the truth is, the music will suffer more if artists hurt themselves during the creative process.

If Smokepurpp overdoses, his music won't be better for it. Good for him, for realizing he had a problem and confronting it as best he could.