'Blind Eye' by Portsmouth rappers focuses on opioid addiction in southern Ohio
*Note: This story has been updated to clarify the profits from the streaming of the song, "Blind Eye."*
A rap group from Portsmouth. A producer from Helsinki. And a crowd-funding music platform based in Stockholm.
Those are the key ingredients behind “Blind Eye,” a song released in November by Raw Word Revival that is available on Spotify and Apple Music. Portions of the profits from the song benefit Scioto CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates).
In 2020, Mattias Tengblad, the CEO of Swedish crowd-funding music platform Corite, was looking for ways to expand the company into charitable directions and raise its profile internationally.
He reached out to the company’s Senior Project Manager, Caroline Taucher, a U.S. citizen who is based in Finland.
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“I lost a close friend and musical partner to a heroin overdose in 2014, and I always knew that I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what. Then last year, when I started working at Corite, Mattias came to me and suggested that we do some sort of charity project. I came across a CBC interview with Clint (Askew) and I reached out to him and we started talking and that was that,” Taucher said, speaking by phone from Helsinki.
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Clint Askew of Portsmouth is one of the founding members of RWR (Raw Word Revival). The rap group got its start in Portsmouth in 2011, and in 2013 released the song and video “What the Hell You Know About That 740?”, referencing the local area code. The song became popular around the area. Sam Quinones, who wrote the bestselling book “Dreamland” about the opioid problem in Portsmouth included the stories of the members of RWR about their songs and how they reacted to the opioid epidemic, which destroyed the lives of many of their friends. That led to the Canadian Broadcasting Company interview with the group.
RWR had gone through several incarnations by the time Taucher reached out to the group in late 2020. Because of the pandemic, the group was not active at that point.
“Caroline, out of nowhere, hit me up, and I reached out to the rest of the group members,” Askew, 39, said in a phone interview.
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Taucher suggested that they write a new song, to be produced and promoted by Corite. This song would become the basis of a new Ohio Against Opioids program designed to raise money to combat the effects of opioid addiction.
Askew and four of the other original group members got together and wrote and recorded “Blind Eye.” The song directly deals with the problems of children whose parents and other caregivers are addicted to drugs.
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Askew and Taucher researched possible programs to funnel contributions, and decided on Scioto CASA, which serves children in the foster system, many of whose parents are involved in the drug court program.
They reached out to Judge Alan Lemons of the Scioto County Drug Court in the summer of 2021, and he pointed them in the direction of Scioto CASA.
They have been working with Cortney Reiser, executive director of the CASA program for the Scioto County court system, since she began working there in August.
“Some CASA programs are nonprofits and some are court-based,” Reiser said. “We are court-based, so we don't have a lot of funding to do outreach activities or to provide school supplies or clothes or birthday parties for the kids or gas cards for the volunteers.”
Contributions made on the Corite website as well as those raised by RWR and “Blind Eye,” will go to those “extras” that the program is not able to provide.
“Blind Eye” has so far raised more than $13,000 toward its $25,000 goal of aiding the Portsmouth-based Scioto CASA program.
The campaign backers each own a share of the streaming rights to the song for one year after its release, Askew said, and they can choose to funnel any profits from streaming to Scioto CASA as well.
"So it's a double thing. If the song becomes successful, even more money from the song will be able to support the charity,” said Tengblad, speaking by phone from Stockholm.
“Blind Eye” is just the beginning, both for RWR and Ohio Against Opioids.
The five members of RWR are back together again writing songs, with concerts planned for the spring.
Taucher has been flying from Helsinki to Portsmouth every two months for the past year to work on videos about RWR and the fight against opioid addiction, the first of which will be released on YouTube in mid-January, with a longer one due in April, and to work with Scioto CASA.
“In January, Clint and I are going to sit down and go over with them what their needs are. We want to make sure that each cent is targeted towards their needs. We are hands-on there to make sure that it's used the right way,” Taucher said.
A website for “Ohio Against Opioids” is in the works, as are other projects.
“What we hope is that this is a pay-it-forward sort of thing. We would love to see this continue and bring in more music and ignite other projects. And then we could take this local story and try to spread it in the global community,” Tengblad said.
As for Portsmouth, Askew is cautiously optimistic.
“It's still a drug hub, but there are a lot of people trying to rebuild the city. There's still darkness, but there's a light coming.”
“Blind Eye” is streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.