(Read to the tune of Rudolph The Rednose Reindeer) You know Snoop Dog, Redman, Tupac, and King T. Bushwick Bill, Daddy Kane, Bob Marley, and Public Enemy. But do you recall, the first person to out-smoke them all?
A Brief History Of Cigars
Before we get into blunts as we know them today, first we need to do a quick spotlight on cigars, because without cigars, we would have never had cigar wrapping which is crucial for blunts. So we turn to South America.
The Mayan empire extended through much of Southern Mexico. The present-day states are Guatemala, Belize, Northern El Salvador, and Western Honduras.
The Mayans were extremely prolific people who are celebrated for ingenious discoveries and accomplishments, including developing a complex calendar using astronomy, inventing the mathematical concept of zero, and creating a written language of hieroglyphs.
So it’s hardly a surprise that archaeologists uncovered a piece of Mayan pottery dating back to the 10th century depicting the first people puffing on cigars.
Hell yeah.
The Evolution Of Cigars and Tobacco
Shifting focus to off the coast of Mexico, now we look closely at the Caribbean, Cuba, The Bahamas, and Jamaica.
Chris Columbus’ dumb ass arrived here and was introduced to tobacco by the locals. Columbus went home to Spain and narced about his “discovery”, which then spurred a gigantic cigar and tobacco boom.
The French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot was so obsessed with smoking cigars that nicotine was named after him. Spain then claimed Cuba as their own (which is insane, colonialism is so mean), and so the tobacco industry was born.
People in Europe stopped rolling cigars in leaves and opted instead for paper wrapping instead. So that is how cigarettes split from cigars and came into existence.
But this article is about blunts, and so we say goodbye to Europe because we need to remain focused on the leaves that make up a delicious cigar/blunt wrap.
Modern Day Blunts
New Yorkers are obsessed with Starbucks, Derek Jeter, and blunts. The form that blunts have taken on today as a cigar skin filled with weed is very much a New York thing.
In 2018 a law went into effect that raised the price on all tobacco and tobacco products in New York from under five dollars to over 15 dollars overnight. Celebrities like Desus Nice clapped back on Twitter because a blunt should not cost more than a couple of bucks.
For being such a New York thing, the name “blunt” itself comes from the famous Phillies Blunt cigar brand. Philly, like Pennslyvania. Not New York
Phillies began to manufacture blunts in 1910 in Philadelphia. The famous painting by Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” prominently features an ad for Phillies on top of the nighttime diner crowd captured in this New York moment. Only five cents a pop! Don’t tell Desus.
Each individual smoker has their own preference when it comes to what they use to roll their blunt up with. Phillies, Backwoods, Swisher Sweets, straight up fronto leaves.
Blunts in Music
The modern blunt was first referenced in rap songs 35 years ago, appearing in “Raw” by Big Daddy Kane in 1987.
“Try to front, perpetrating a stunt
When you know that I’ll smoke you up like a blunt”
Uh-oh! I’m shaking in my boots, Big Daddy Kane!
The next year King T makes mention of a blunt in his song, “Flirt”.
“I diss a stunt after smokin a blunt
Catch a real fly girl cause they think I’m a hunk”
Four years later Redman came out with a whole song detailing how to roll a blunt in his hit song, “How To Roll A Blunt”
But Who Smoked the First Bleezy?
Okay okay fine! The short answer is, we don’t REALLY know.
But! Using all that good history that we reviewed at the top of this article, it’s safe to assume that the idea of a blunt traveled in cigar form from either the Caribbean or South America and into New York City.
Snoop Dogg mentions in an interview that the first person to ever sit down and split open the guts of a blunt and re-roll it with weed was Geto Boys member, Bushwick Bill. After some heavy Googling, it was revealed that Bushwick Bill is straight up from Jamaica… but before you get too excited thinking we just cracked the Da Vinci Code.
Snoop Dogg has also gone on the record and said that Tupac passed him the first blunt Snoop Dogg ever smoked at a wrap party for the film Poetic Justice in 1993. Before they smoked the blunt, the two rappers were rivals. Once Tupac realized Snoop had never seen a blunt before, Tupac showed him how to roll one up, and from then on they were cool.
In Conclusion
Blunts rule. There’s nothing more badass than rolling up a blunt so fat that you are suddenly out of weed and then sharing it with your friends.
So, to whoever the stoner is that actually sparked up the first blunt, props! Nothing will ever be as cool.
