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Music

Please God, Can Rappers Stop Forcing 'Rick and Morty' On Me

Run the Jewels' new video for "Oh Mama" stars the popular animated scientific ne'er-do-wells, but the show's worst fans make it tricky to use as marketing.

Run the Jewels have dropped a new video for RTJ3 cut "Oh Mama," but rather than starring Killer Mike and El-P, the clip has fellow beloved Adult Swim compatriots Rick and Morty (of the titular series) as suited-up, Tarantino-esque badasses going on typically dimension-hopping escapades covered in alien goop and vomit and blah blah blah blah.

Look, I get it. Rick and Morty garners lots of love because it manages to combine Family Guy-ish general gross-out humour with dark character arcs and the theoretical science of speculative fiction. Many people who haven't experienced The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which found the absurdist comedy in astrophysics decades before R&M did) or literally any sci-fi anime (Neon Genesis Evangelion is just as psychological and just as loopy) find this show mind-blowing and that's fine! I think the art is ugly and the jokes aren't for me but if Rick and Morty is your introduction to how heady ideas like time paradoxes and parallel universes can be incorporated into enjoyable fiction, by all means have fun and let this show serve as a gateway to other properties that get you that same fix.

Of course, the show has now become associated with a certain type of devoted internet fan, a usually male libertarian who praises R&M for its science elements and claims that those who dislike the show don't understand it because their IQs aren't high enough. Upon posting this blog I'll probably have a sniveling horde of these Jordan Peterson-worshipping types nipping at my Twitter timeline insisting that I "just don't get it." Not all of Rick and Morty's fans are the bro-y neckbeards who threw online and real-life tantrums at McDonald's after they didn't properly partake in that Szechuan sauce viral marketing campaign, but they're the ones who are the loudest. The fact that both RTJ and Logic, high-profile hip-hop acts, are using Rick and Morty to market their music about a full year after the show has become irreversibly tied to its worst adherents and become something of a punchline about pseudo-intellectuals just looks like another case of jumping onto what's broadly popular too late.

That being said, "Oh Mama" still goes and the partnership between RTJ and Rick and Morty is just good brand synergy, seeing as Adult Swim was integral in getting Killer Mike and El-P working together in the first place and thusly made the world that much of a better place for doing so. The duo (RTJ, not R&M) are even headlining the inaugural Adult Swim Fest that's happening this October, which should be pretty tight. Given that history, this video isn't nearly as embarrassing as Logic using a self-referential Rick and Morty skit as his album intro. You can watch the video for "Oh Mama" above.

Phil is on Twitter and really doesn't give a shit if he doesn't have a certain level of IQ or whatever.