Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter made waves Thursday when he teamed up with visual artist Molly Crabapple to release a 4-minute video slamming the War On Drugs as an “epic fail.” The video A History Of The War On Drugs, From Prohibition To Gold Rush, was featured in the opinion section of the New York Times and went viral.
The music mogul, who has rapped about the life and trials of being a drug dealer, narrated the video over Crabapple’s animated drawings, describing the impact of Richard Nixon’s war on blacks and Latino people.
“Even though white people used and sold crack more than black people, somehow it was black people that went to prison,” Carter said. “The media ignore actual data to this day. Crack is still talked about as a black problem. The NYPD raided our Brooklyn neighborhoods while Manhattan bankers openly used coke in impunity.”
“The war on drugs exploded the U.S. prison population, disproportionately locking away Black and Latinos, our prison populations grew more than 900%,” he continued.
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