Looking back on old times, it seems only three types of people don’t remember smoking mids in the ’90s: growers, rappers, and liars
If you listened to hip-hop in the 1990s or 2000s, then you wanted to be smoking Branson’s weed. You didn’t know exactly what that meant or who he was, but we all had it on the good word of Biggie, Redman, and every other rapper who mattered that his sacks were the plumpest and skunkiest.
When those guys boasted about copping jars of Harlem’s finest cannabis from Branson, their braggadocio had roots in something tangible. The average person didn’t have that beeper number, and access was a bragging right. If you were smoking his trees, then you could claim superior status over those who were still separating seeds out of most bags they grabbed. In other words: ordinary people like me, and, if you were alive and burning at the time, probably you too.
In short—I actually know what it is like to smoke mids. I’ve smoked more than I care to remember. Sold quite a bit of schwag too. I’m not proud, nor am I embarrassed. It’s just something that you did if you had lungs. One out of 10 times, if you got lucky, your dealer served you a proper bag of peppery piff. Or maybe your cousin with a mid-size cultivation four hours away in Maine rolled down with her haze for the holidays. But besides those rare and amazing occasions, or unless you were a big-time rapper, you smoked mids. Again, we all did.
Having experienced that halcyon period, I am more than just a little bit annoyed to see the word “mids” used as a pejorative slang cheap shot by people who never caught a headache from a dry bag of brown shake. It simply doesn’t jibe in a time when any person can walk into an adult-use dispensary and purchase something hovering around the 35% TAC mark. Whether you’re a lyricist in 2024 who is still boringly boasting about roasting copious amounts of (yawn) orange-haired (insert popular strain of the moment) post-chronic bonfire booyah, or a cannabis company cleverly grabbing big headlines for slagging a sports rival city for puffing on “mids” on a billboard, the reality is that you may be waiting on line behind someone’s grandfather at the sackie for your top-shelf sativa. There’s nothing wrong with that, and props to grandpa, but it’s no longer a delineator.
It’s kind of like sneakers. You can talk trash about having a certain pair of rare Jordan reissues made out of sloth skin or whatever the cool kids are kicking around in these days, but if we’re being real, that’s hardly a distinguishing signature when any huckster schmuck can jump online and sharpen their own ankles overnight.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that all weed produced these days is great, or even decent. If someone’s smoking garbage out of ignorance, perhaps because they have only ever shopped at one dispensary and didn’t realize that there is much more out there to discover, then it’s your job to lead the way toward the light. People get enough fumes from Instagram rappers claiming their mids are Midas, and ought to be able to rely on their friends with good taste to guide them to the real gas rather than deride them.
