Want Something That Keep Me Easy

I don't know why, but Purple Drank has been on my mind for the past two weeks since I heard of it.

It's been reported that Britney Spears, among her other publicly-displayed vices and ill-advised undergarmentless- and child-driving adventures, enjoys chillin' with something called Purple Drank, basically a colorful mixture of the prescription cough syrup your mom would give you when you were eight and barking with the croup all night and Sprite (or diet Sprite in its calorie-conscious version), served, apparently, in a Styrofoam cup (you know, to keep it cold).

Specifically, it's codeine to chill ya shit out and promethazine to roll ya brain (and Sprite for fizz, I guess), favored by the hip-hop community out of the South, like in Atlanta, Houston, and New Orleans. Gin and juice it's not, immortalized in a song by Frayser Boy ("I got dat drank, that purple drank"), who note that it makes you "movin' leanin' slow seemin'." You also drink--er, drank?--it while you're "grippin grain," which was harder to look up but I think means grasping your faux wood-grain steering wheel and leaning to the right while you drive. Or drizive.

Purple Drank is known by variety of other monikers: Southern Lean, Purple Tonic, Texas Tea, Memphis Mud, and--my favorite--Sizzurp. As in "Sippin On Some Sizzurp" by Three 6 Mafia. You can perceive in the lyrics ("Sexy thang on my arm, cup of drank in my palm") hints of the artistic vision would bring them the Academy Award only six years later.

But I think the song's video sheds some light on what actually sipping Purple Drank is like.



It means you may look and/or feel like an animated, plaque covered tooth dancing on some "gums" and eating lots of sugar.

Oh, and it reminds me: I gotta call the dentist. I think I have a cavity.