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For a certain sect of Southern rappers, cough syrup is a recreational pastime on par with mint juleps at the Kentucky Derby or Busch Light at the Indy 500. In Portland, it's a medical necessity for suppressing hacking fits brought on by a winter bug spreading at a rate Michael Crichton would find alarming. There's one thing we can all agree on: Codeine tastes gross, but is fun.
Perhaps too fun—Lil Wayne and Rick Ross have allegedly been hospitalized for seizures related to sippin' on sizzurp. Thanks to Obamacare, I was able to get codeine for my mild case of pneumonia. And thanks to the Internet, I have a recipe for chopped and screwed sizzurp: a bottle of Sprite, 4 ounces of codeine-and-promethazine-based cough syrup, and a pair of Jolly Rancher candies.
Looking for local alternatives to Sprite, I got bottles of Hotlips lemon soda and Crater Lake Soda's lemon-lime to try masking the cloying, bittersweet goop. Hotlips lemon soda would be fine with cheap gin, but it did very little to dilute the pungent flavor of the key ingredient. Crater Lake's lemon-lime sizzurp, however, was a real treat—the grapefruit-pink liquid was smooth and effervescent, with a sugary aftertaste you wouldn't mind taking with an espresso and a slice of tiramisu at a bistro with a pretentious name. Imagine a chilled glass of Fernet-Branca with a cherry Freeze Pop melted at the bottom.
It's no wonder the feeling that follows—a strange body buzz akin to being wine drunk and completely sober at once—launched a subgenre of rap devoted to creating the perfect soundtrack for being couch-locked and cough-free.
WWeek 2015