Screenshot : YouTube

If you’ve kept an eye on the looming opioid crisis in recent years, it’s more-or-less guaranteed that you’ve heard about fentanyl by now. Last year, the extremely potent medication—which is generally prescribed to help end-stage cancer patients cope with pain—surpassed heroin to be the most lethal opioid on the planet; it’s been linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths, including those of musicians Prince, Tom Petty, and Mac Miller.


It’s also the subject of an increasingly bizarre lawsuit happening in Boston right now, in which families are accusing several current and former executives from manufacturer Insys Therapeutics Inc. of, essentially, bribing doctors into over-prescribing it to their patients. And that, somehow, is where the rapping, dancing fentanyl bottle comes bounding into the mix.


The above video—uploaded by The New York Post—is not, in fact, a rejected cutaway gag from the darkest 30 Rock episode never filmed. It’s a real marketing tool that the company created in 2015 in order to motivate its sales force, encouraging them to encourage doctors to focus on “titrations” that up the dosage of the drug. Apparently worrying that people wouldn’t be sufficiently jazzed up by a shitty A$AP Rocky parody, the video introduces a late-game twist: The aforementioned rapping bottle of fentanyl nasal spray, which brags about being “created in a lab in the land of the cactus” and its “38 percent of this industry.” Later, it’s jokingly revealed that the guy in the suit was VP of sales Alex Burlakoff, who, shock of shocks, pleaded guilty to racketeering charges last year, and is expected to testify against his former colleagues during the current trial.



Anyway, we can’t wait to see this powerful new representation of America 2019 rap its way into our increasingly broken hearts. Move over, bald eagle: Give this thing an assault rifle and a red baseball cap, and Fenty could take pride of place on the back of the dollar bill.


[via The Associated Press]