Leave it to Run the Jewels to find the connection between psychedelic drugs and systemic disorder. The new video for "Legend Has It," the first from the duo's third LP RTJ3, finds Killer Mike and El-P tripping on acid in a police lineup alongside a rotating cast of unusual suspects: a nun, an "innocent" little girl, a fireman, even a clown-faced police officer.
Directed by Brian Beletic, the treatment intentionally "plays with the theme of guilty until proven innocent," he says. "We live in a world where the stronger the truth the greater the opposition. In this story EL-P and Killer Mike are in a police lineup and the cards are stacked heavily against them. But why is that?"
Go figure. As for those numbers flashing at the bottom of the screen around the two-and-a-half minute mark? Those would be the rising rates of mass incarceration between 1980 and 2010, which is surreal in itself considering the U.S. accounts for less than five percent of the world's total population but close to 25 percent of the world's prison population.
It's enough to make you want to smoke a stuffed bunny rabbit. But as RTJ assures us, "No bunnies were hurt in the making of this video."
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