Addiction is like any other disease – it doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care what color you are, whether you’re a guy or a girl, rich or poor, whether you live in the inner-city, a suburb, or rural America. This doesn’t just happen to other people’s kids or in some other neighborhood. It can happen to any of us.
Award-winning Hip Hop Artist Macklemore
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performance AMAs 2015
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis capitalized on their American Music Awards performance Sunday night with a brand-new song. Soul singer Leon Bridges lent his talents to the debut, titled "Kevin," the lyrics of which told a tragic story of drug abuse and addiction, with underlying messages pointed at pharmaceuticals. "Doctor please, give me a dose of the American dream," Bridges crooned. "All this is on you; we're overprescribed." Listen to the song in full below
In this week's address (May 14, 2016) , Grammy Award-winning artist Macklemore joined President Obama to discuss a disease that affects far too many Americans: addiction. Macklemore opened up about his own experience, his life in recovery, and the loss of a friend who overdosed on prescription drugs at a young age – emphasizing that substance use disorder affects people from all walks of life.
To underscore the importance of Macklemore's story, the President noted that we can help those suffering in private by making the conversation public, and we should do everything we can to make treatment available to everyone who needs it. While the House of Representatives passed several bills on opioids this week, without more funding to expand treatment, these bills will not be enough to provide Americans the help they need. President Obama said there is hope, and that when we treat substance use disorder as the public health problem it is, more people will get the help they need.
If you are looking for treatment in your area, call 1-800-662-HELP.
Kevin
Macklemore about Kevin on Google Doc
Blog:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19cBLvI0RBjHFfC5PNu4NFjZpHl40l30bsYY-mROLdkg/edit?usp=sharing
"This one is personal... I started writing it when my friend Kevin passed from an overdose on prescription medication. It was my attempt to process his death. To grieve. And also to examine the over abundance of prescription drugs in America. How quick we're taught at an early age to put a pharmaceutical bandaid over our pain/anxiety.
Not only is the topic close to home because of Kevin and others that I've lost to pills, it's close to me because of my addiction. I've come very close to dying. I'm far from proud of that, but it's my truth. I wish I could say I'm cured. That I have it all figured out. But that's not the case. One day at a time I work to stay sober. There's so much more to say. And hopefully a bigger conversation to be had. But I didn't want to share this song without giving some context. I think of Kevin. I miss him. I hope he's somewhere listening to this... I hope he got to watch our performance last night. I hope he'd be proud."
Kevin” is a serious song about the perils of prescription pill addiction, name-checking the likes of Adderall and Xanax. And for the chorus, retro R&B crooner Leon Bridges snagged the spotlight for a somber guest part. “Put down the pen and look in my eye,” Bridges sang.
The song also calls out America’s massive pain-killer overprescription problem, which has resulted in opioids becoming one of the country’s most lethal drugs, according to the New York Times.
Publicist: carrietolles@4ad.com
BY ERIC RENNER BROWN • @ERICRENNERBROWN
Posted November 23 2015 — 9:01 AM EST
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis debuted a new song, “Kevin,” at the American Music Awards Sunday night. The up-and-coming R&B singer Leon Bridges provides the song’s hook and appeared alongside Macklemore on the AMAs stage.
With lyrics about “a pill that a doctor prescribed / and a drug that a million dollar industry supplied,” “Kevin” addresses addiction to prescription drugs, specifically oxycontin. Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, struggled with addiction years ago before getting sober in 2008, but relapsed in 2014 after the success of his debut studio album with Lewis, 2012’s Grammy-winning The Heist.
“Kevin,” along with previously-released “Downtown” and the rest of the album Macklemore promises to release in the coming months, stemmed from getting clean again. “The sobriety was the wake-up call that I needed,” he told Complex earlier this year. “And, as it always works, the minute that I start actively seeking recovery – not just sobriety, but recovery – music is there. It always has been.”
Check out the performance below.
Hey McClemore, I'm sorry you are a dirtbag addict looking for drugs to get high, but because of drugseeking lowlifes like you, the people who actuaaly are in pain and need the meds are having a tougher time getting them because of scumbags like you. Thank you for being a slimy, grimy, drugseeking scumbag and then singing that it is the doctors fault, so much for accepting your own behavior, what a loser. You may have money, but you are the reason so many suffering from pain now have to suffer even more. I look forward to hearing you ruin more peoples lives who actually suffer from pain. FCUK YOU!!!!
MONDAY, NOV 23, 2015 01:28 PM EST
Macklemore’s new Very Special song: Do we really need a Bono for hip hop?
Macklemore debuted the aggressively mediocre "Kevin," about prescription drug abuse, at the AMAs last night
Kevin
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
[Intro]
OK, OK
Yeah
We live tonight
Check it, now
[Verse 1]
I seen pain, I felt the losses
Attended funerals and seen coffins
21 years old, an angel was lost here
Wings clipped by the grip of 80 milligram sniffs of oxycontin
Everyday through the nostrils
Never went away, never does it stop there
Death a line or two away and a couple tall cans
Cause you never know when God is gonna call, man
Precious, what we all share
I said peace at 5:30, the next time that I saw him was in the hands of the pallbearer
What if I would've never gone and dropped him off there?
Blaming myself, in hysterics, screaming "It's not fair!"
21 years old with a book of rhymes he was gonna recite to the globe
Only thing to numb the pain besides that shit in his nose
He was gonna quit tomorrow, we're all gonna quit tomorrow
Just get us through the weekend, and then Monday follows
Then it's Wednesday, then it's "fuck it, I'm already feeling hollow"
Might as well go crack a seal and might as well go chug a bottle
Might as well go pop a pill and go and band-aid that problem
And escape this world, vacate this world
Cause I hate myself
No praying's gonna cure this pain
[Hook: Leon Bridges]
Doctor, please, give me a dose of the American Dream
Put down the pen and look in my eyes
We're in the waiting room and something ain't right
All this is on you, we're overprescribed
[Verse 2: Macklemore]
For me and Kev
He went up in jail, institutions are dead
And with our lives, we play Russian Roulette
And try to find a life where we could be content
Cause for us, we're just trying to minimize the fear of being alive
And now my little brother is in the sky
From a pill that a doctor prescribed
That a drug deal a million dollar industry supplied
And the cops never go and profile at night
Yeah, the, the, the orange plastic with the white top they sell to you
Has us looking for the answers and not instead of you
Quick fix, whatever'll do
We just gonna neglect the truth
Because a doctor with a license played God and said it's cool
Played God and said it's cool
But me? I don't blame Kev or his mom freebasing while pregnant with him
I blame the pharmacy companies
And country that spends trillions fighting the war they supplying themselves
Politicians and business and jail
Public defenders and judges who fail
Look at Kevin, look at Kevin
Now he's wrapped in plastic
First dealer was his mom's medicine cabinet
Got anxiety, better go and give him a Xanax
Focus, give him Adderall, sleep, give him Ambien
'Til he's walking 'round the city looking like a mannequin
Ups and downs, shooting up prescriptions you're handing him
So America, is it really worth it? I'm asking you
[Hook: Leon Bridges]
Doctor, please, give me a dose of the American Dream
Put down the pen and look in my eyes
We're in the waiting room and something ain't right
All this is on you, we're overprescribed
[Outro: Leon Bridges]
Doctor, your medicines, and your methods
Can't cure my disease without killing me
You're killing me, you're killing me
You're killing me, you're killing me
Doctor, your medicines, and your methods
Can't cure my disease without killing me
You're killing me, you're killing me
You're killing me, you're killing me