The United States is going through a serious presciptin pill and heroin crisis that is sweeping the country and taking many, many lives. It is an issue Macklemore, a former and recovering opiate addict himself knows all too well. He bears his soul on the vulnerable and poignant ballad, “Drug Dealer,” with Ariana DeBoo — from his MTV documentary Prescription For Change, Ending America’s Opioid Crisis.
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The cathartic record allows the Seattle emcee to reveal how he started doing drugs like heroin and prescription medication along with his constant war with addiction. Leaving no stone unturned, he also manages to address the role the major pharmaceutical companies play and how these drugs — along with the popular codeine syrup — claimed the lives of our musical heroes like Pimp C, Amy Winehouse, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston, among many others whose lives were mentioned.
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Not only that, but he also address the blatant double standard of how the government is taking the epidemic more seriously with a less harsher approach towards white and affluent addicts versus poor people and people of color in the inner cities with bars like, “God damn they’re making a killing/Now it’s getting attention cause Sara, Katey and Billy/But this shit’s been going one from Seattle out to South Philly/It just moved out about the city/And spread out to the ‘burbs/Now it’s everybody’s problem, got a nation on the verge.”
Listen to the soul stirring record here.