Is the Southern rap legend a truth teller or a capitalist in activists clothes?
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This interview originally ran in 2023.
But the 48-year-old rapper has no problem clapping back.
This monthsMichael(out June 16) is his first solo album since 2012s El-P-producedR.A.P.
Hes an effective orator, and what he doesnt say is just as illuminating as what he does.
I was surprised to hear youd made a solo album.
For the past decade, you and El were focused on trigger the Jewels.
What made you itch to talk about it 11 years afterR.A.P.
Music?I am one half of execute the Jewels, and execute the Jewels is an X-Men-like universe.
Theres God bless the dead our confidant, Gangsta Boo.
Theres Zack de la Rocha.
But every character has an origin story.
OutKast gave me an opportunity to change my life.
But I was still an attachment.
There was never a moment where people got a chance to see the whole of Michael.
They saw bits and pieces in the music.
I just needed people to know that the character Killer Mike was created by a 9-year-old boy named Michael.
And that boy grew up in a distinctly southern Black city where his enemies and heroes looked like him.
Doesnt mean poverty wasnt around him, doesnt mean violence or crime wasnt around him.
But it means that Black millionaires who didnt sing and dance for a living were around him.
It meant the Black educated and elite who taught him were his teachers.
It meant he went to schools named for Frederick Douglass.
I think I told the best story of a young man in Atlanta.
You mentioned the X-Men.
Ive heard that you grew up on comics.
Who were your legends?I have two great fathers, biological and non-biological.
Big Mike is my bio dad.
We would go to the West End together.
You know how your dad would creep off and go buy aPlayboyor something?
Hed let me peruse the comics section.
I fell in love with the X-Men and Batman and later Spawn.
Im not a read-every-comic guy.
Comics are like rap or skateboarding or BMX: something adventurous for boys.
Theres stories of glory.
Comics make you a better reader.
She was good to me and for me.
She was good to my wife.
She was good for my wife.
initiate the Jewels was better for having known her and having hermake dope art with us.
Im worse off without her.
I miss her terribly.
It is difficult to even talk about her now.
I pray that the people of Memphis can hold her name high.
Man, as a 15-year-old girl, she changed the world as a member of Three 6 Mafia.
Oftentimes my wife and I just play her music and just smile and shed a tear and keep going.
We knew that L.A. also had made their way.
But at one time, the South was just considered the third coast.
But you get this big gumbo of funk and soul and gospel.
We all understand each others sound.
OutKast and Goodie Mob opened doors for a more soul- and funk-based sound out of the Curtis Mayfield school.
Dungeon Family provided an alternative to what was predominantly dance based, what we call booty music.
I think that that was the first phase of the flower opening up.
You had room for other people withT.I.bringing trap music into the fold.
It says 2003: Killer Mike makes the first attempt at making a conscious trap album.
I was a rapper, but I also was a kid that trapped in front of your house.
And I went to Morehouse.
So I was a hybrid of sorts presenting what was important to me.
Im very proud to be a part of that.
Dungeon Familyhascracked the code.
Unfortunately, every record deal doesnt go through the roof.
Cool Breeze is that guy.
Hes pretrap trap music, you know what Im saying?
He predated Tip and DJ Toomp.
He was a cue that trap music aint got to be badly mixed, redundant, slow, stereotypical.
It can be slick, cool.
It can even be sexy, for lack of a better word.
Yall like to do pills and party.
Your grandparents did coke and party.
The problem was they didnt know there was bad news around the corner.
I say that with no judgment.
It was just fun.
The Dont Let the Devil video is based on parties my mom would throw in the 80s.
They drank and smoked pot and danced, but eventually that moved onto freebasing.
The story in Something for Junkies where I talk about my aunt, is a true story.
She told me, Nigga, your dope aint no better than nobody elses.
The reason I come to you is because you treat us like human beings.
One to the two, the three, the four …
I meant what I said.
I meant exactly what the fuck I said.
Let me pull the line that struck me …
In High and Holy, you said, I apologize if I ever spoke distasteful.
In Motherless, you agree you might beargumentative.
Im saying you were reflecting, not retracting.Talkn That Shitstands as what the fuck I said.
I was saying I shouldnt speak distastefully in front of my elders.
Im not thinking about shit.
Oh, so you use Twitter as a way to talk shit to me?
I dont give a fuck by what youre saying.
Im going to use this record to show you I can rap over three different DJ Paul beats.
Let me tell whoever sees this interview: Black folks be fooling yall.
Behind closed doors, you better believe Barack Obama saying, Nigga, what is you talking about?
Im talking that shit, but I just stopped dressing it up.
Im talking directly to Black folks.
That aint for nobody else.
That record is letting Black folks know that I dont give a fuck what you think about me.
I love you because you Black.
And at the end of days, man, Id rather die Dick Gregory than die silent.
Id rather die someone who had the courage to tell the truth to my people than someone who didnt.
So Talkn That Shit is for Black folks.
It is for our space.
Am I going to discuss this record on CNN and MSNBC?
Am I discussing this record with you because you Black?
Will we talk about it in a room full of white folks?
White people who hear this record, understand that you experience this record as voyeurs.
I hope you feeling it affects you.
And if it doesnt, man, too bad.
I just feel like theBrokebackverse opens you up to questions of what youre about.I dont have aBrokebackverse.
I dont have aBrokebackverse.
People So help them understand.
Help them understand, Black man.
Its not my job.
Thats what Im here for, one of the many reasons Im here.
I need to find out whether you meant well.You know I meant well.
I dont know.You got Langston Hughes on your shirt.
Im not letting you convince me youre dumb.
I know you brilliant, brother.
We aint going to let them do it.
I know you aint going to let them do it.
Heres what Im saying: That trust doesnt exist anymore, and this is not about you personally.
The trust for people with platforms is not where it was.
We watched people with valuable platforms say ridiculous things and detonate money.
Weve seen a lot.Im not comparable to anything you just said.
So I dont accept that.
Im not trying to compare you to Ye.
Im explaining why I have to ask you about what Im asking you about.I understand the reasons.
What Im telling you is I trust you to be intelligent, Black man.
Like my grandma would say, Nigga, you got good sense.
So I trust you.
What we got in the second verse, I told everybody,Get their goddamn guns.
I live in a time where my life is under threat from the state.
My life is under threat from criminals.
But they aint worried about getting stopped before they get it in their house, right?
Negroes, the state is not going to protect your Black ass.
So you better take your Black ass to a firing range.
You better take your Black ass to a political rally.
You better fight for your rights.
By the time we get to the third verse, what am I talking about?
I dont give a fuck who the president is, if the president aint for me.
I said, Im a bad nigga.
Im Stagger Lee, poor house man, Spike Lee.
I like the Spike LeeStagger Lee line.As a Black man, you are the media.
You are responsible to teach people how to think right.
As a Black man, I could get caught up on wokeisms.
I could get caught up on what the fuck Kanye said.
I could get caught up on if this one line offended somebody.
Or I could introduce the world to who Stagger Lee is.
I asked my granddaddy about N.W.A.
one time, Poppy, why they mad about N.W.A.?
He said, Shit, I dont know.
They act like they aint never heard Stagger Lee before.
You should have a revolver.
You should have a semi-automatic pistol.
You should have a long gun like a shotgun.
You should have a bolt-action rifle.
And you should have a military-style rifle.
You should go shooting at least once or twice a month as a family.
Yes, its legal to have a wealth of arms right now.
Should we be tightening up whats out there for sale?No.
I dont believe a new law should be passed.
I believe any law affects Black people worst and first.
Ive given you a statement about what I feel like Black people should do.
There aint nothing else to say.
Im never going to change my stance on it.
What we got next?
My responsibility is land ownership and fishing and hunting and self-defense.
It is being reinforced to my daughter by me, who was born in 1975.
In my household, that will never change.
I dont know the data.
Thats what I know.
Im taking my boxing classes like every other man to lose a little weight, throw a sharper punch.
I think that every warrior is balanced by an artist.
Rap is pugilistic poetry, right?
But it is alsoThe Iliad.
It can even be Don Quixote fighting windmills.
I believe that boys and men have to exercise a warrior spirit mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Michael is a lover of Renaissance art.
Im a lover of sculpture.
Ive done that before with the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Gold is money anywhere you go in the world, is what Ive learned.
With a $50,000 chain around my neck, I know how much money I got.
I saw my idols do that, not just my rapper idols.
My father bought a beautiful Franco.
So thats why people see me wear gold.
Now help the audience understand what the fuck going on.
Im glad you noticed the chain because the chain has meaning.
Im named for this angel because my father was.
I love this beautiful sculpture, so I had my own made.
It is a beautiful thing.
I got a friend, hes a white guy out of Kentucky.
He grew up on a farm.
He had one Black friend.
They would listen to N.W.A.
Hes a rich guy now.
Has amazing cars and shit.
We drink moonshine together.
But rap music brought us together, so he better understood culturally who we were.
Hes one of the coolest, most well-adjusted white guys Ive ever met in my life.
But I understood the importance of having a friend or a guide to take you culturally into different things.
I didnt know anything about Korean culture.
People that go outside our culture are diplomats and ambassadors of sorts.
This album is a Ta-Nehisi Coates moment.
You remember when all the white folks woke up like, Oh, shit.
ThisTa-Nehisi Coatesguy wrote some shit.
Think about this now.
This album is by a Black man from the Deep South and a Black community, a Black city.
Its for Black folks in the spirit of a returning or a church homecoming.
