Hear Killer Mike Rap About Mass Incarceration on ‘South Park’
Killer Mike delivers a brief verse on the latest episode of South Park, rapping about the injustice of long prison sentences. The new episode, titled “Hummels and Heroin” addresses both United States’ criminal justice policy and the country’s ongoing opioid epidemic.
It’s South Park, though, so of course there’s a twist: Killer Mike is rapping from the perspective of a senior citizen stuck in a nursing home. “In here nobody knows you by your name, you’re just a number living by the bitch-ass rules of a broken game,” he raps. “They put me here to die and left me angry and alone/ For the crime of being old they threw me in this nursing home.” The aging prisoners pass around various bottles of prescription pills, knit and play cards. At the end of the segment, a new delivery of pills arrives in the back of a dump truck.
Killer Mike is a vocal critic of mass incarceration in America. Run the Jewels’ “Don’t Get Captured” video, released this summer, took aim at courts which pass down sentences that are grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime committed. And when Killer Mike interviewed Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential race, the two men also discussed problems with the prison system.
South Park has incorporated hip-hop into episode narratives three times already this season, which is only five episodes old. Last month, the show parodied both Logic’s “1-800-273-8255” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble.”