Overdose prevention · founded 2021
We bring overdose prevention to the music world — naloxone, fentanyl test strips, and judgment-free help, carried right to the stage. We don't judge drug use, and we don't endorse it. We just refuse to let people die at a show.
What we do
Beats Overdose provides overdose prevention services to the music and entertainment industry. We neither judge nor endorse drug use — we just recognize that it happens, and that nobody should die at a concert. In every city, we link arms with the harm reductionists already doing the work.
The opioid-overdose antidote, placed directly into the hands of people who can use it — fans, friends, staff, anyone.
A simple check that tells you what you can't see — so people can make informed decisions about their own safety.
Straight, stigma-free information about how to stay alive — no lectures, no shame, just facts that matter.
Warm hand-offs to the harm reduction and treatment resources already on the ground in each community.
From the stage
Harm reduction, on the mic. A reminder that the people in the crowd are worth keeping alive — and that the artists on stage believe it too.
Hip hop doesn't shy away from talking about drug use — talking about how to stay alive if you use was the natural next step. When yet another rapper overdosed and died, we thought: what if we brought harm reduction out of the margins and into the mainstream?
Slug, on stage at sold-out shows, exposed tens of thousands of people to harm reduction. Lives were saved and the culture was changed.
Watch on Instagram: @beatsoverdose
Our history
When we started in 2021, bringing harm reduction to hip-hop shows was pretty unheard of. Festivals had been handing out test strips and water for years — but at concerts, and at hip-hop shows especially, you didn't see it much. So we gave it a try.
A lot of venues were skeptical at first. But year after year the conversations got easier and more doors opened — and by 2024, some venues were putting out their own press releases in support of Narcan.
Today it's everywhere, carried by many different organizations. We couldn't be happier to see this movement grow into something bigger than we ever imagined.
We bring naloxone and fentanyl test strips to the hip-hop concert, setting up at the merch table — something you didn't see much at shows back then.
We hit the road with Atmosphere, partnering with local harm reductionists city after city, state after state — a booth at the show in town after town.
Early skepticism fades and more doors open. By 2024, some venues are championing Narcan in their own press releases.
Our last show, summer 2025: the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand, with Atmosphere headlining. The booths are quiet now — but the work they stood for isn't finished.
Minnesota State Fair · August 2025
Our final booth: naloxone and fentanyl test strips at the Grandstand rail while Atmosphere headlined. Tens of thousands in the crowd — and a quiet table at the front for anyone who needed it.
The Current's Music On-A-Stick · Minnesota State Fair Grandstand · August 23, 2025.
Tap a clip to play with sound. One plays at a time.
About the founder
Beats Overdose was founded by Morgan Godvin — a writer and harm reduction advocate from Portland, Oregon, who came to this work through her own survival. An overdose survivor who was formerly incarcerated, she watched the drug war treat addiction as a crime and take people she loved — and refused to accept that as inevitable.
She also noticed that while harm reduction was common in festival and electronic scenes, it was rarely present in hip hop — even as the genre lost some of its brightest voices to overdose, and even as the young people at those shows were among the least served. So she started Beats Overdose to help bring it there, partnering with Rhymesayers Entertainment to bring naloxone straight to the stage.
She previously served on Oregon's Measure 110 Oversight and Accountability Council, and today consults with the Health in Justice Action Lab — and more often than not, she's still the one covering the cost of the kits herself. Beats Overdose is where her conviction meets the music she loves: people who use drugs deserve to live, and the fastest way to reach them is to meet them where they already are — in a crowd, at a show, with the bass still going.
Gratitude
Beats Overdose exists because people with real reach chose to use it to keep others alive.
Rhymesayers believed in Beats Overdose before anyone else did, and backed us when no grant would. Their support made our founding possible and has carried us ever since. With gratitude — rhymesayers.com
For bringing us onto their stages and into their crowds, night after night — and for telling the world, out loud, that harm reduction belongs at the show.
Whose belief, advocacy, and steady support made our founding — and everything since — possible. Thank you.
And to the dozens of local harm reductionists, volunteers, and partner organizations across more than 20 states who showed up in their own cities — this was always a community effort. Thank you, every one of you.
In the press
Stay in touch
The booths are folded up.
The work isn't finished.
Beats Overdose is quiet right now. But if you want to bring naloxone to a stage, carry this forward, or just say hello — the door's open. Reach out anytime.
