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'Snowfall' re-ups the story of crack in pop culture and on the streets

The new FX series Snowfall grapples with the conditions that brought crack to Los Angeles in the early '80s.

The age of crack transformed cocaine from a luxury party item to a cheap, high-impact killer. It amped up the war on drugs, as the criminal justice system created new sentencing guidelines that made crack exponentially more illegal than powder cocaine (and subsequently created an incarceration crisis for black men). And it helped destroy many black communities.

But where did this plague come from? The new FX series Snowfall grapples with that question, dramatizing the conditions that brought crack to Los Angeles in the early '80s. At least it claims that it will. Through the first six episodes we meet the entrepreneurial South Central Los Angeles teen Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), looking to graduate from pot dealing to bigger things. There's a feckless CIA agent (Carter Hudson) who teams up with a Nicaraguan soldier (Juan Javier Cardenas) to sell kilos of coke and buy guns for the Contras. Meanwhile, two cousins (Emily Rios and Filipe Valle Costa) enlist a lucha libre wrestler (Sergio Peris-Mancheta) to forge a dealing alliance with a Mexican gang.

What we haven't yet seen is a crack rock. You can sense the pieces of Snowfall gradually coalescing: Mass quantities of cocaine are circulating among parties destined to do business together. But Snowfall, for all its melodramatic flourishes, is a pretty slow burn so far, especially for the story of a drug known for high-speed impact. The series is playing a long game, and trusting its viewers' patience. The perfect snowstorm of crack takes time to develop here.

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Snowfall is hardly the first pop culture product to light up the pipe. The movies have been doing crack for years, if not in Snowfall's this-is-how-it-all-came-together fashion. The year 1991 brought a pair of vivid looks. Spike Lee's Jungle Fever provided Samuel L. Jackson his breakout role as Gator, the crackhead brother of Wesley Snipes' successful architect, Flipper. In one scene Flipper goes looking for Gator at the Taj Mahal, a sprawling crack house depicted as a stylized, nocturnal circle of hell. This was the first glimpse of a crack house for many moviegoers. (It was also the first movie appearance for Halle Berry, who played a fellow addict.)

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The same year, New Jack City reimagined the classic gangster movie for the age of crack. This time Snipes plays Nino Brown, a ruthless drug lord who has no qualms about getting rich off the death of his people.

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This was back when crack was still a somewhat exotic subject matter for the screen, an underground menace and a symbol of urban malaise. We were still years away from films in which young white schoolteachers fell victim to the rock, films like Half Nelson (2006) and Smashed (2012). By then, crack had become part of the mainstream.

The film that overlaps the most with Snowfall is actually less a crack movie than a journalism movie. Kill the Messenger, from 2014, is based on the story of Gary Webb (played by Jeremy Renner), a San Jose Mercury News reporter who wrote about connections between the CIA, the Contras and the flood of cocaine in '80s Los Angeles (essentially the CIA subplot in Snowfall).

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Webb made some mistakes in his reporting and oversimplified a complex story, and he was dogpiled by anonymous CIA sources and rival journalists. He committed suicide in 2004. But much of what he wrote proved to be true. Webb's work is largely responsible for the theory that the CIA brought crack to Los Angeles and used it as a weapon against inner cities. It will be intriguing to see where Snowfall goes with this story line.

Jeremy Renner stars as journalist Gary Webb in Kill the Messenger.
Jeremy Renner stars as journalist Gary Webb in Kill the Messenger.(Focus Features)

Among the real-life major players portrayed in Kill the Messenger is Rick Ross. Ross was an L.A. cocaine titan who worked largely with a Nicaraguan national named Oscar Danilo Blandón. As a federal informant, Blandón helped put Ross in prison. The business-savvy Ross would seem to be among the inspirations for Snowfall's Franklin Saint: young, smart, ambitious, hungry.

Rick Ross is not a rapper, but a rap star did borrow his name. The real Ross brought copyright suit against William Leonard Roberts II, a.k.a. Rick Ro$$, who likes to rap about the crack game. He's hardly alone. Hip-hop is laden with anthems dedicated to the business of moving rocks, a stamp of street approval and also an income stream for several future rappers.

Clipse had a hit with "Keys Open Doors" (kilos, that is). UGK had a "Pocket Full of Stones" ("When I first started back in 1989/I wasn't moving keys I was barely moving dimes"). The Notorious B.I.G. broke it all down with his "Ten Crack Commandments" ("Number 4: I know you heard this before/Never get high on your own supply"). Biggie also touched on the limited options for inner city kids on the haunting "Things Done Changed": "Because the streets is a short stop/Either you're either slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot."

Snowfall looks to shed some light on how we got here, how crack became readily available poison, big business, modern gangster trope and inspiration for rap braggadocio. It's also a reminder that the American Dream — get rich and move ahead, no matter the cost — has always had a dark underbelly.

Different drugs may come and go, but outrageous wealth and power have long held the same addictive power as any lethal substance.

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Snowfall premieres Wednesday, July 5 at 9 p.m. on FX.