Paul Wall Says He Feels ‘Bad’ for Introducing Juelz Santana to Lean

Paul Wall has shared that he has some remorse about introducing lean — or ‘purple drank’ — to Juelz Santana.

The Houston rap legend spoke with The Art of Dialogue for an episode posted to YouTube on Friday (September 5), in which a previous clip was shown of Santana discussing the illegal substance.

“I was drinking it through … It got introduced to me through Houston guys — my man Paul Wall,” Santana said in the cutaway scene.

But the “Sittin’ Sideways” rapper confessed that he felt “bad” that Santana got a sip of the drank because of him. “At the time, you know what I’m saying, we all drink, we’re all drinking. And you look at people that drank … they’re not crackheads,” he explained.

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“We’re not breaking in people’s houses, selling your mama TV, pawning it to buy
drink. Drink wasn’t even that expensive back then. You wouldn’t even do that to get, you know, drink was cheap as hell back in those days,” Wall continued.

The rapper explained that “long-term addicts” were mainly overweight, which contributed to their struggles with the substance. “So, it was not directly from the drink, but indirectly from the drink. And all of that was all something that’s manageable to some extent,” he said.

He added that after Santana tried drank the first time, he had a “full-on bottle” the next time they ran into each other. And it’s like, ‘Damn, that’s what’s up.’ You know, of course, I didn’t — you never know how it’s going to affect different people, how people are gonna immerse [themselves] in it.”

In Santana’s interview with TAOD in January, the Dipset member said he wanted to see what the Houston “culture was about” by giving lean a taste. “It was sweet, it was tasted like candy,” Santana said. “I didn’t even really know about the effects and all that I gradually learned about all that as it was [happening] to me.”

Santana also recounted that he began to actively drank lean among the likes of Lil Wayne and that he began to feel “physically dependent” on it.

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