{"id":792060,"date":"2019-01-15T16:11:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T23:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=779616"},"modified":"2019-01-15T16:11:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T23:11:49","slug":"vince-staples-on-why-hes-sober-reality-hurts-but-so-does-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/vince-staples-on-why-hes-sober-reality-hurts-but-so-does-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Vince Staples on Why He\u2019s Sober: \u2018Reality Hurts, But So Does Addiction\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vince Staples<\/a> is matter-of-fact: about his music, about his upbringing in Long Beach and about his sobriety. If anything, the FM!<\/em><\/a>\u00a0rapper has become more direct and slightly prickly explaining his choice to avoid alcohol and drugs over his career \u2014 an understandable decision, considering how quickly outside observers tend pigeonhole sober rappers. In an interview with GQ<\/em><\/a>\u00a0as part of a feature on sober musicians, Staples described his reason for sobriety as a survival mechanism and, in his opinion, a different approach than the other musicians \u2014 Steven Tyler, Julien Baker, Joe Walsh \u2014 interviewed for the piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very sure that I\u2019m gonna think different answers than Steven Tyler or anyone involved in this piece. I\u2019ve lived a completely different life,\u201d Vince said. \u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is: The drug usage was the last thing on my mind. When you\u2019re surrounded with death and dismay and poverty and all these things that happen every day, I didn\u2019t have time to worry about using or partaking in certain things. People where I come from don\u2019t use drugs in a recreational sense. We\u2019re not at a party, or at the rock show, or at the rap show, doing lines in the bathroom. Where I come from, life comes day after day after day, and people use these things to cope. People use drugs as a coping mechanism, and I\u2019ve always held that reality. Reality hurts, but so does addiction\u2014it\u2019s just which pain you choose. That\u2019s the reality of my situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staples admits that he didn\u2019t have the luxury of time growing up to stop and think about his sober lifestyle, and that the violence around him was a more pressing concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never had time to think about whether my father\u2019s addiction issues led to me not doing drugs, because I was too busy trying to cope with the reality of people dying and people trying to kill me every day,\u201d he continues. \u201cThat was really where my focus was. When you have to think about your next 15 minutes\u2014you have to think about the walk to the store, you have to think about how you\u2019re getting to school, you have to think about the bus ride home, you have to think about how you\u2019re going to sneak a gun into the football game\u2014the last thing I was thinking about was getting high.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vince Staples is matter-of-fact: about his music, about his upbringing in Long Beach and about his sobriety. If anything, the FM!\u00a0rapper has become more direct and slightly prickly explaining his choice to avoid alcohol and drugs over his career \u2014 an understandable decision, considering how quickly outside observers tend pigeonhole sober rappers. In an interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-792060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 13:15:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}