Pusha T – “White Lines (Cocaine Bear Remix)”

Some ideas write their own marketing pitches because they make too much sense. This is one of those. You might’ve noticed that the trailers for the new movie Cocaine Bear, a meme-addled romp about a grizzly bear eating a brick of coke and going on a killing spree, heavily feature Melle Mel’s 1983 rap classic “White Lines (Don’t Do It).” Today, the movie is in theaters. Its soundtrack features a new version of “White Lines” from Pusha T, the present-day rapper most associated with cocaine. See? Easy.

Melle Mel, formerly of Grandmaster Flash’s Furious Five, released “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” shortly after the breakup of that group. Melle and his collaborators built the track on the bassline of Liquid Liquid’s underground dance-punk classic “Cavern,” and a very young Spike Lee, then an NYU film student, directed a music video for the track. “White Lines” went down in history as the anti-drug song that makes you want to do drugs. Melle was going through serious addiction problems when he recorded the track, and he later claimed that he was trying to impress his dealer.

Pusha T, the grand wizard of the almighty blizzard, has been having an eventful year. Just 10 months ago, he released It’s Almost Dry. Kanye West produced half of the album, and that might be the last Kanye-related product that’ll get any kind of positive reception from the world at large. Since then, Pusha has finally left G.O.O.D. Music, and his career could now go in any number of directions. On “White Lines (Cocaine Bear Remix),” Pusha is in his comfort zone, rapping over a reworked “White Lines” beat and doing the old Will Smith thing where he recaps the movie’s plot: “It’s no storm without thunder, the bear crawls up and under/ Cocaine overload, the only fuel to his hunger.” Check out the Pusha T version and the Melle Mel original below.

Cocaine Bear is out in theaters now. The Cocaine Bear soundtrack, which is just this song and the score, is out now on Back Lot Music/Universal.