Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Killer Mike

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Killer Mike is an Atlanta-born rapper and actor. His music career began in 2003, with his solo debut, with the album Monster, reaching the Billboard Top Ten, and later gaining global recognition as part of the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels alongside El-P. Since the start of his career, Killer Mike has released seven studio albums, including Michael, for which he won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 2024. Outside of music, he has established a career in television as the host of Netflix’s Trigger Warning with Killer Mike and PBS’s Love & Respect with Killer Mike and as an actor in shows including Billions, Dave, and Ozark. Building on the success and the impact he’s made in hip-hop and culture, Killer Mike is teaming up with Dave Chappelle on their tour, Still Talkin’ That Sh*t, blending music and comedy starting on November 15th.  On November 22nd, Killer Mike is also releasing his latest ten-song project, Michael & The Mighty Midnight Revival: Songs For Sinners & Saints. He describes it as a "testimonial" on life's trials and triumphs, aiming to connect deeply with listeners through themes of faith, struggle, and resilience. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Vivo Barefoot http://vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. There's never been a time that I didn't understand the importance of a man and masculinity to

my direct household and my greater family. I tell people all the time that I hear stories of when the world was totally patriarchal and ran by men and women were oppressed. Within my family structure though, that has moreover not been the case. The deed from the 1940s of my great grandparents when they bought land that we still own in Tuskegee, Alabama has my great grandfather's name and my great grandmother's name.

I knew both of them, lived in the time they lived, sit down to the farm, kicked it, have fun, learn some hard lessons, you know what I mean? But yeah, they're worth it. Tell me about their farm. It was more than 30 acres. And then the eminent domain took some of it because of a highway.

It's in Tuskegee, Alabama. Did they have animals? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had mules, they had chickens, they had cows, they had a pond that was stocked with fish. Everything you needed to live was there. And when we first started going out there, it was the outhouse and later it got plumbing.

A farm is essentially a functioning free state because you don't need government, you don't need to depend on people. You know what I mean? So yeah, my family's from Tuskegee, Alabama. My great grandparents were sharecroppers. They saved enough money to buy their own land. Their kids and them worked that land.

My grandparents, my grandmother was educated with her eight brothers and sisters, so nine kids were raised on that farm. That's how I know eggs aren't white, they're brown. When they come out of the chicken, you know, that's why I was a sickly, or what they call, carry child, I had asthma. And we were down there, all the kids that got dropped off

to the farm, some just down there, my big mama, all the other kids are off at the pond, like messing around. And I'm on the porch with her and a dog, I saw a dog cut across the yard and get at a chicken. I went to tell my big one, was a dog, I said, the chicken, she came outside, it was like Muppet Babies. I could remember the hem of her garment, the apron,

and just the movement of the dress of sort she had on, she pulls like a, what's it like to be a 22 revolver, pow, shoots the dog right about the thigh, dog yelps, scrams back across the yard and fields, he picks the chicken up with one jerk. The chicken head is now in her right hand. The chicken is running back and forth headless. She looks at me and says, go fetch me some water.

I run through the house right out the back door, right past the well, going to tell my older cousins that Big Mama's went crazy. She's killed the dog, killed the chicken. She's gonna kill us next. Were you shocked? I was shocked to shit. How old were you?

I was a little boy, maybe seven, six or seven years old. No, maybe even younger, I might have been like five or six. But she just wanted to make out the kids, the other kids who lived, because some of my cousins lived down there full time with her, others got sent to the summer for days or weeks. And they just giggled at me, laughed and told me, just get back to the house.

The girls fetched the water, they brought it back, they boiled the water, that chicken got dumped in that water, got plucked, that chicken was on the table by three, four o'clock. That's it. And I was just saying, man, chicken was my friend, I'm not gonna eat my friend. See, and everybody laughed at me.

I ended up having to eat some of my friend to get away from the table. But afterwards, my big mom, after the older people, like our parents and stuff, had come back from, they would go to Montgomery or Birmingham with Charbina and whatnot. After they got back, she got to my dream and took me around back and had a talk with me

about what had happened and why that happened and why you don't waste food. So if an animal gets killed, you dress, you kill it, you dress that animal, you eat it, you use it for something. And that's when I understood that, you know, the chickens aren't just my friends, that they're substance too, you know, you got to have protein to keep going. But I loved her to death. She died while under my grandmother's care. She suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's later in her life. But I loved her dearly. And I

think she just felt sorry for me because I was a sickly child. So she took some extra time to talk to me. How old did she live till? Ah, man, she lived to be in her 70s. My grandmother died at 79. I think her mother died maybe mid 70s. But my grandmother never got over it. I was part of me writing the song Motherless. This is my mom, this is Denise.

And this is my grandmother who raised me, her mom, Betty. And Betty was the daughter of Truezella, who I was just telling the story about. And I was the daughter of Truezella, who I was just telling the story about. And I got a picture of Truezella in my phone somewhere, but Truezella was a firm woman. She would be hard. And my grandmother could be very firm too, but she loved her mother.

She adored her mother, and her mother was a word, was absolute. And after her mother died, she just, she never got over it. And that's what I understood, you never get over the passing over mother and the grandmother, depending on, you know, my grandmother died at 79 and it just struck a blow. She died in my arms.

And she's one of the reasons I firmly believe. How did that happen that she died in your arms? Well, my daughter, Mikey, who's graduating high school this year, Mikey was in her last year of pre-K, and Mikey had a black history program. It was leap year, so it was the last day, the month of February,

and we were told we couldn't park at the top of the hill, so we had to park at the bottom and walk up. And this guy, he felt horrible for it later, but I forgave him and moved on. But he had me and my grandmother walk up the hill. Now this is a 79 year old woman, but she's stout. She moves around. She never stopped moving her entire life. She walked two, three miles a day.

But we were walking up the hill, and it was after we had had a very intense conversation in which Mikey's mom had married another guy. And she had, my grandmother had said to me, Betty said to me, you know, why don't you let the other guy adopt your daughter? And I was fucking spassed. I'm like, the fuck would I do that shit for?

And I never talked to my grandma like that. I mean, we had some go back and forths because she raised me. And it was one of the first times she had ever said, a few times she ever said this, she said, did I hurt your feelings? After she saw how passionate I was about raising my own daughter.

And this was counting me getting off my ass, figuring out music again after I'd wanted to give up. And I was like, yeah, why would I want another man to raise my daughter? I said, you know, I could co-parent with him, but I'm just not going to give up rice to my daughter. And she was like, I hurt your feelings. I was like, yeah, you hurt my feelings a lot. She said, I'm sorry. And she just smiled.

And it was hilarious because she didn't say, I'm sorry. She would say, I beg your pardon. But she wouldn't say I'm sorry She would say I beg your pardon, but she wouldn't say sorry Wow But we're walking up the hill after the guy tells me couldn't park up top and I couldn't even drop her off I just come back and this is after we've had that in conversation after she's asked say I'm sorry I'm back there. I've pardoned her in we're walking up and she turns around She looks at me. I look at her and the day is as beautiful as it is today But she looks at me and she looks past me,

right over my right shoulder. And I see in her eyes, she sees something. Oh, the fuck she sees. But you see that she sees something. I see that she sees something. And she looks at back at me and she smiles and she puts her arms around me. And she's gone.

Wow! And that was it. And I laid her down. I knew CPR, so I attempted CPR a while. And then I just stopped because I realized I'm pushing air into a body, but whatever you call the soul, it's gone. I knew my grandmother, who I'd known all my life,

I knew that she was. She's not there. She's not there anymore. It's amazing in that moment how the physical features, it doesn't even really look like them anymore. No. It's a different, it's like the clothing. Yeah.

You really get to see it. It's like a jacket when you take it off. Yeah. But yeah, my girl left me, but she left in such a state of peace that I never questioned it. You know, I understood that this is the way it should have been in my sisters.

Two of my sisters, I have five sisters, two were raised in the same house. Obviously. And my sister said, well, at least we know she died happy. She's one of her favorites. Interesting. What an interesting experience. Both the fact that you had that conversation, the fact that you got to see her,

see what was coming, that was not nameable, not understandable. Not at all. But you could see something clearly happened. Yeah, absolutely, without a doubt. That's when I knew absolutely that ultimately that was her lesson to me my entire life. Her lesson was that you can't keep running from God. What's her?

Old people in the South say, you have an anointment. I was just told that by our oldest reading widow, he said, another short way, he says, you're a preacher. I've never really accepted that. But I tell people all the time, I realized in that moment, God has a purpose for me. I don't know what that purpose is,

but I trust that there's one for me, and I know that I'm on a journey toward it, and I don't know where I'm going. But I just trust God. Yeah. I don't think anyone can know. People pretend to all the time. Yeah, but I don't know where I'm going, but I just trust God. Yeah. I don't think anyone can know. People pretend to all the time. Yeah, but I don't think we can know.

Yeah, no one knows. Our intentions can be good, but I think that's where it ends because it really is the great mystery. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a mystery until it isn't. My grandmother, I saw the book she read, she went through the phase all of us go through. You know, who am I?

What am I there for? I read all her books, her old Reverend Ike tapes, that type of stuff, her Betterment books, like stuff that people charge thousands of dollars to go on retreats to. She had already taught me by the time I was nine. But at some point she had accepted that this life ends, but life doesn't end.

That the energy she is was going to keep going. So her whole life's mission, her and my grandfather, was to tell me and my sisters, our job is to, because we're gonna leave, they didn't say we're gonna die necessarily. They'd say a few times, they said, we're gonna leave one day. We're gonna be gone, this physical thing is gonna be gone.

And our job is to make sure you're independent and can take care of yourself. And mission accomplished. When she realized, literally literally in that moment, that argument was mission accomplished for her. Yeah. And I realized that that her purpose had been served in terms of, because she asked my mother to raise me. You know, my mother was 16 years old.

When she had me, she was 20 years old. She married my second dad. So I had two dads. I got lucky. I got left, you know, even my mother's death. I got left with two dads, but she realized that my mission is accomplished. He is a man. And he is on his path to his purpose. And it seemed like to me that once she left, the world just opened up and blossomed. You know, Run the Jewels happens. Over the course of a decade, we grew into a group that I couldn't have predicted. I saw, but I couldn't have predicted, I saw, but I couldn't have predicted it. Like once we all got in a room together,

I was like, oh yeah, this is as natural as Chuck D putting on a pirate's hat, you know what I mean? So, you know, I am glad that I was her purpose. And part. Isn't it interesting also how once the mission is complete, she can smile and let go. Yeah. Yeah, it was. It's a very beautiful story. Yeah. And that's just the truth, you know.

Tell me more about your spiritual life. My spiritual life? Yeah. Oh, man, it seems like I'm always boxing with God. I think I've given up running from them. I've known since I was very young, there's something, not something, I can't say different about me,

there's something unique about me than other people in relationship with God. I didn't necessarily need religion to find God. I didn't need to study the famous yogis or meditations. There was some things that were just literally innate that I got, and I really truly believe that the reason that I got it was two people raised me who were old.

My grandparents were born in 1922, 1932. I was born in 1975, so, you know, I was stable like 44 and 54 when I popped up. And when I popped up, they just didn't have a lot of room to bullshit. So a lot of the lessons, like for for instance now you go on Instagram grounding, walk barefooted outside, you're an electric man. My grandfather would just say, well, you need to walk outside barefoot today.

It was just no other than just that's what you need to do. And you know, my grandfathers, other people, we were selling copper wristbands on, on late night by your copper wristband. My grandfather would say, you and arts and crafts class, y'all doing copper wiring, make me a bracelet. So I could put it, why? Because it helps with arthritis and all the shit that you have to pay for it now on TV already got. So spiritually, I just entrusted what my grandmother said, that the people who were here before you have prayers for you and they didn't even know you. And you have a responsibility to them to live a good life and to be a good person.

And you have to understand that you're going to do bad things or bad things are gonna happen. And that's the way life is. My grandmother, when it would rain, would say, "'Be still and let the Lord do his work.'" Well, it's like the Lord is working every day. But there's something different when raining. It's like, I remember we got to Jamaica one time

and my wife complained it was raining and the cab driver said, you know, the farmers pray too. Yeah. You know, and in that moment of peace came about her. So I guess spiritually I realized I'm connected to it all and all people. And I have found peace on a Buddhist retreat.

I found peace sitting in a Christian church. I found peace sitting in a Christian church. I found peace in a mosque. I found peace and understanding of the synagogue. So God has been everywhere I've been. And at some point I realized this because God walked in with me, because God is in me and God is of me. I also understand that there's a darkness

that dwells within human beings. And if we succumb to it, we become the worst versions of ourselves, you know? So I guess my spiritual journey has taken me into a lot of religious paths, and I've gotten a chance to see that there are a lot of similarities, even though sometimes we act like they're worlds apart. But ultimately, I think that God is in, of,

all about and around me, and in every human being I meet and encounter. Beautiful. LMNT. Element Electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element Electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper.

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Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra, and stay salty with Element Electrolyte. LMNT. How big was your family? Mom and dad had me at 16 and 19. My mom got married at 20, I had another dad. So I grew up with three grandmas, grew up with two grandpas, one who died when I was seven.

I grew up from a huge family in Tuskegee, and my grandmother had nine siblings, the Blackmans and the Mackys, where there are two families that can join, the Blackmans are the paternal side, Mackys are maternal. My father's a Render, that's a very big family, used to be smaller, but it's a big family in Georgia. I know my family's history back on the maternal side. I know the slave port that her African great-grandfather's

grandfather was brought through in South Carolina. And do you know where he came from? He came from Western Africa. I don't know which country yet, but we're trying to find out now. But he was brought into a port close to my wife. My wife's family is from Hilton Head. They're Gigi and Gullah.

Her dad's side, her mom's side is from Savannah. But we came in through one of the ports along that South Carolina. He was brought to Alabama. My great grandfather's grandfather was used in the Tuskegee experiment. That's a part of the darkness of the family history, but I'm from a big family. How much do you know about the Tuskegee experiment?

What have you learned? Well, I've heard about it my entire life. Tell me about it. So Tuskegee experiment where it depends on, if you're hearing it from black Tuskegeeans, the government gave black men syphilis and allowed them to take that disease full term and to death in order to study the effects on the human body and what it did to the mind and the functions of the other functions of the human body.

According to the school books you read, it took me that had it and allowed them to keep it and did not try to use penicillin and other methods to cure them But still study either way is still I'm not sure one's so much better than exactly both were pretty fucked up and die Volatile either way. It's I would call it murder. Yes. Yeah, and I think that my lawyer cousin Nate Nathaniel Blackman I think he reported that our family received 540 bucks or something as compensation for letting a man die. So I knew that without the tachycardia experiment, just like without the black woman whose stem cells were used in terms of discovering cures for cancer, that black bodies had been used

to simply be guinea pigs of sorts. And I know that it is diabolical and I would even call it evil and murderous. And with that said, there's a nobility in it because on the other side of that, it has helped. And the nobility does not come from the government or the workers that were paid to conduct the experiment, but from the black men who were allowed to have it and die so that their death means something more

than just a venereal disease. Yeah. You said that when you went to visit the farm, to have it and die so that they deaf means something more than just some venereal disease. You know? Yeah. You said that when you went to visit the farm, it was its own independent state and it didn't need anything from the government

or anyone else. No, you did. You did. Did that model, does that model seem like the model? For me, yeah. Yeah. Tell me about that. Well, I mean, I'm from a city,

so I've had to deal with infrastructure, we've had to deal with some stuff, but my grandfather, after that incident with my great grandmother, he said maybe two, three years later, you need to understand food doesn't come from the store. And my grandfather would probably be described as a libertarian, he detested government.

His thing was if God gave you an appetite to eat and a mind to build a fishing rod, the government should not be able to dictate which lake you fished in and got food because God would give you an appetite in the mind. And my grandmother who was probably a devout Democrat would say, yeah, but when somebody got to pay the gang, we're going to clean up the parks.

So I grew up between these two extremes. But when I was on the farm, whether it was the hog farm down in Eton, Georgia, where my grandfather was from, or the family farm in Tuskegee, where my grandma was from, I was just free. I didn't worry about government agents coming up saying what we couldn't do on our property.

We didn't worry about if they say you could shoot or not shoot, or if you could kill an animal and dress. You know, Kure, it was just, you're here, this is our land, our job is to work and till it, have as much fun as you like, and it's probably not good to be at that part of the woods at dark. You know what I mean?

It was like, okay, I gotcha. What would have been in that part of the woods at dark, by the way? What would have been the animals? Shit that'll eat you. I mean, like even my, I live in South Fulton, essentially in North Falvern County. Yeah, we got coyotes, but you know,

there's always something with teeth that'll eat something at night. That's also, I didn't know what predators were exactly Tuskegee, but I know my cousins were like, that part, you don't need to be at night, so don't go past the outhouse. That was still an outhouse. Because I was a bear wetter, my cousins hated me.

I was like, I'll just, I'll pee right here. But in Atlanta felt pretty free. And cause I grew up in an all black neighborhood, school's name for black people. All my heroes and villains looked like me, but there was still governance. There was still people got to tell you what to do in terms of when your trash can went in and out,

what the, you know, what the, whose yard was cut? was the city gonna come say, but in Alabama it was just nothing. I remember asking my grandma one time, y'all didn't worry about the clan, because as kids you grew up hearing these stories, the Alabama clan, my grandma was like, shit, if those white folks who had been brave enough to ride their ass down on a horse, that Afer would mile down the driveway to our house, their ass was gonna go back up laying down on their horse. Yeah. And I'm like, oh shit. And I remember, you know, there was always a shotgun and a rifle behind like the door of my great-grandparents' house. Then I grew up in my grandparents' house, same shotgun and rifle, you know, there. My house now, God bless it. That little dog barks

and you come through my door in the middle of the night, you're gonna meet a shotgun. God bless that little dog barks and you come through my door in the middle of night, you're going to meet a shotgun. So it's like, those things never left me. So freedom for me was slightly dangerous because there was no police to call. It's this. So if, you know, if a wolf or Fox or coyote got it, something you were going to take care of it, or you're going to wake up. No chickens in the morning. Yeah. And if you, if you got hungry, like my grandfather said, you just got your

fishing pole, you went and ate, if you needed hungry like my grandfather said you just got your fishing pole You went and ate she needed a if you went you went to went to the chicken hut You got you got some eggs out, you know, you also had sugar cane out there collards So so everything was self-contained and self-sustaining. We had a great aunt who was my great grandfather's sister T Sweet she lived about probably a quarter mile up on the land You just you walked to her house, but it was just free. It was free because there was no worry about being questioned beyond the, you know, your immediate family, there was no government, governance over you essentially. It was just, you were responsible.

So you were free, but you had responsibilities. Like the little kids had to go get eggs. The big girls had to get water. They had to help prepare. So, and that was what for the everybody. I have a concept why I say if everyone does a little, no one has to do a lot. And some of that I realized is picked up from the farm.

Some of it's everybody, you do your little bit, so everyone doesn't have to do a lot. And then the work becomes more of just, this is my responsibility. Doesn't even feel like work. This is just my part of making sure that we do it. There was a lot less TV, you know, shit like that. And it was that we're just figuring out what the fuck to do. But you also have a hand in what keeps you alive. Yes, absolutely.

Both the place you live and the food you eat. It's like you're part of that. You're not disconnected from nature. No, you're that. And it's not anything unique or anything, it's just the way it is or was. It's probably the way it was forever until recently. Absolutely, absolutely it was, absolutely it was. Even in the neighborhood I grew up in in Atlanta, in the Collier Heights, Namsill area, I would argue shit at one point in the neighborhood in the early 80s, you're looking at every,

two to three out of every five houses has chickens in the backyard and a garden and goats. You know what I mean? My grandmother had a garden in the backyard. I next door neighbors had a garden. A neighbor, a few doors up had chickens. There was a neighbors in our house with a goat. So there used to be a vegetable truck from the man who grew his garden in his yard. So a lot of it was less about corporate stores and more about what could I

barter with or buy from a trade with my neighbor. If we went, we were a family that fished a lot. My grandfather fished individually for fun and sport, but it was always for food. So we'd catch 50 crappy breams, fish that about big as your hand. My grandmother and the girls would be in the back, clean 25, get the other 25 to get clean,

get put in bags with threes and fives, and get taken to old people in the neighborhood, you know, who are no longer able to go out for their own. They're not gonna stand in the line in the projects and wait on cheese and stuff. Their neighbor's gonna make sure they have, you know, the simplest of stuff. And they know that when they get older,

their neighbors are gonna take care of that. Absolutely. It's a system. Absolutely, absolutely. My sister, Levy, is a part of Community Garden, still helps feed seven, eight families right now. And she was the wild one. She was the one that liked clubs

and drinking, partying and shit. And she's the one that's most like my grandmother now. My sister, Shonda, is like my grandmother in terms of she keeps coin very well. She's very good about, see she ended up being an accountant. I tell her, I always tell everybody, I'm the failure, I dropped out of college.

I saw Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, I wanted to be on Def Jam, so I went to rap. I was the one that got called up in the glamor of wanting to have the city life and that type of stuff, but my sisters are very stable, you know what I mean? But you talk about the farm life with great romance. It doesn't sound like... It's hard, but it's the nature.

Like, I'll still grow shit. I got shit growing in my backyard. Not very good. I'm not as good as my sister. I can shoot and kill shit really good. I fished, I fished. What's the first time you went hunting? First time I was hunting was with Mr. Carter and my grandpa.

Might've been the time before my grandpa and one of his brother-in-laws, but that's when I learned deer are brilliant. They are dumb animals. If you can shoot a deer at 70 yards, it's gonna stand 75 and look at you. You know, it's gonna just kind of peek like, the fuck are you sitting up in that goddamn tree for?

But fishing was a more regular thing because fish would actually bite more. Hunting a lot of times- Fishing was easier probably. Yeah, hunting is like, hunting is hard and a lot of people don't realize it's not easy. You see Joe Rogan camping, romping through a fucking mountain

with a bow on his back. Yeah, he deserves the right to eat fucking elk meat. That's a hell of a lot of fucking, you know, when you talk about killing a deer, you're talking about getting up in a deer stand, you're sitting all night, you're cold, can't piss a shit. If you know you do, you want to make the deer shift and move. You don't have, that time, you don't have electronics and optics to tell you where they are. If you're hunting boar, like a boar turned on my cousin and ran him up a tree, you know, tried to kill him,

pigs are intelligent animals. You put a domestic pig out in the woods long enough, you can make a bigger, huskier animal with a lot more hair, so boar, so, yeah. And in both of those cases, there are more animals than can be managed. Yes, yeah, if you're in Texas, you gotta hunt boar. You gotta turn your-

Otherwise, they overtake the whole, everything. Exactly, and it kills the farm. If you're talking about even deer, you gotta hunt boar. You gotta turn your farm. Otherwise they overtake everything. Exactly, and it kills the farm. If you're talking about even deer, you gotta manage them. And if you don't, I mean, that's just a part of the system. And if you don't, no matter how you feel ethically about killing animals, first of all, you need some protein. And if you don't get any protein,

you don't get those deer now, you're not gonna have any crops. It's just gonna go awry real quick. So there's a balance to it. But I was taught like that too, I was taught not to kill things for sport. You don't kill a deer just because you want his head on the wall. And that may be the trophy of the deer kill

so they believe you actually killed the 12 or 13 pointer, but the meat has to be eaten, the meat has to make its way to the smokehouse or the freezer. And if you're not doing that, you're not doing right by God's will. Yeah, it's not, you're not respecting the animal. Absolutely. So tell me about the first hunting trip.

It was just cold. It was just cold. I wanted to use the bathroom. Was it overnight? Yeah, it was overnight. We'd stay overnight. And I just, by the morning, I was fed up with that shit. First day didn't kill shit. Second day killed the small. And didn't feel bad, but felt, just understood I had taken a life. Based on that, when you got to eat the meat,

did you feel some connection to it? I did, I did, because it was something I had done. And my mom, Denise, who wasn't a very good cook, actually made a hell of a roast out of the venison. She did, she she roasted shit out now Just like it brought it made my grandparents proud because they thought my mom was just an irresponsible hippie You liked marijuana and music too much it for her to cook it It made my grandpa and uncle's proud because I had made you know

my first killed that I had saw it through a hamlet the rifle well handled the whole situation and You know it made me proud because I felt like I had finally stepped into the manhood circle in my family because most of my cousins that had lived in the deep in the rural South had already done this shit like years ahead of me. And it was like nothing to them, but I felt kind of like, I felt like I was inadequate.

Like I didn't, I hadn't done what my big cousins had done. It was like a coming of age thing. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And I remember my grandpa had given me a BB gun. I remember getting angry with a kid after my grandpa had talked with me, like, you know, kill something, but if you're using the fur, using the meat to eat,

you're not disgracing, you're not dishonoring God. You're doing what you're supposed to do. I remember my mom took me to play with this kid who was like around my age. He was a friend. Her son, I remember us seeing a chipmunk or something. And he, I was, we were shooting, we were just shooting at cans and stuff

and just showing them how to use sights and stuff. I remember him shooting the chipmunk. It didn't die, he didn't kill it. He just shot it for fun. And it was struggling and you could tell what it's not going to it's not going to make it But I'm just like, okay, you got to put it out of his misery and him Taking so much pleasure in shooting the first shot and then just kind of what I realized later is he became a kid again almost Yeah, and I had kind of probably been about a year or two after my first hunt I had I was a kid still,

but I understood life and death from that step. And it pissed me off so bad, I can remember shooting that kid. Not shooting him to hurt him in terms of, I didn't shoot waist up, but I shot his legs like three, four times, because I ended up, I had to kill the chipmunk. But I was so fucking angry with him.

And I told my mom about it later. And she understood why I did what I did in terms, because I stood him there, I shot his fucking angry with him. I told my mom about it later. She understood why I did what I did in terms of... because I stood him there. I shot his fucking leg. I was like, this is what you did. But her saying that every family is not like ours. Every family does not understand hunting or fishing. He was just a little boy excited to have a BB gun in his hand, and he didn't understand the life and death consequences.

She was just saying that what you essentially did to him was a whooping or a beating, but that's not your job to do. You should have come and talked to me and talked to his mom. But I just remembered being pissed as fuck because I'm just like, you're killing something for nothing. My grandfather had told me, you don't kill for nothing. You knew that was wrong. Yeah.

It was more of an opportunity for me to teach. But the way I talked the lesson was wrong. Me taking the BB-9 and then, because you would pump up, and if you pumped it up 70 times, it became almost stronger. But if you only did it two, three times, it just hurt the shit out of somebody.

And I did it to hurt the shit methodology. But it was, in retrospect, I was just, I was being as mean as him on a certain level because I was angry. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy using one of Squarespace's best in class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus, so your

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I mean, I realize in the city, I might be shooting another human being if they try to interrupt my going and coming or my life or the life of my wife and children or people I care about. And I'm prepared to do that, but that's not something I want to do. No, no, no. But it's something I'm prepared to do.

It would be a last resort. Yeah, absolutely. But you would protect your family. Yeah, the first resort is just get the fuck outta there. I'm at the gas station and the car blows up too quick, I'm just getting the fuck outta there. I'm not worried, bit of pressing, you have to do it. You have to be prepared to do it.

And that's something I probably learned from my dads, in particular my dad, Big Mike, because his dad died when he was 10 years old, so he became the head of a tribe of people. He had two brothers, two sisters under him. He grew up in a pretty rough part of the city in terms of Summahill and People's Howl. So my dad was a life-scaring guy, curly hair.

But he had to be a take-no-shit kind of guy. He said, I remember going somewhere and my father was just gonna beat me up because I was like, up because he had to throw down and fight like hell. His mother was a Long. His family was owned by Dr. Crawford Long, who invented ether for the Civil War, the anesthesia.

So his family owned my dad's family. So his family was tough as shit too from North Georgia. They were an interesting mix of people. My great grandfather on that side, there was a man that assaulted his daughter, my grand aunt Jenny, and he went right back up to the store and killed him. You didn't insult or put hands or, you know,

sexual pressure, you just didn't do that to his daughter. You know, my grandfather raised me, and he said, he was 14 years old, my man kicked his bike down or something, he got on his bike, went home, came back with a rifle, shot the man in church. So the men in my life. In church?

Yeah. Wow. The men in my life have been very absolute about shit like that. That's why I just don't like to play the tough guy game shit, because my shit is just when it comes to that, there's no decision as to where to hear him. When did you decide to call yourself Killer Mike?

I didn't, I didn't name me. Shit, I would've named me Playboy Mike. I loved Heavy D, I wanted to be like Heavy D. Yeah, I would've named me. I got my name in a rap battle. I got my name because they used to hold these things called Greenlights, shout out to Spence and Zulu, shout out to the group Hard Knocks,

who were not from Atlanta, but they got signed out of Atlanta. They used to host these things called Greenlights. And in the Greenlights, you had groups that would battle. So my homies were the unruly scholars. They were the first guys to take me in the studio. They were the guys I rap nerded with. Shout out my manager Rod X.

He just got his name. How old were you then? Man, I'm 13, 14 years old. And my nickname was Skunk, because I slammed a door in my sister's face and it hit her nose. And my grandmother called me a load of ass skunk in front of my friends.

And my friends would just call me Skunk. In the family, my nickname was Nuck. And I'll never forget, I'm in this battle, man. These coward ass motherfuckers, man. They knew my partners weren't coming that week and they just would rhyme and this shit. And they could rhyme, but then they started calling my partners, they knew my partners weren't coming that week and they just were rhyming and shit and they could rhyme But then they started calling my partners out and saying my partners were scared

I'm like me, you know, they weren't coming as we had already said they like awesome suckers man And I just remembered that rock him live. I'll take a 7m C 7 1 7m C I was just like me I'm from the battle all these are fuckers And I went I went I went on a room full of motherfuckers, and there was a guy named Double D, he was a coalition DJ, still a great guy, still DJing. Double D was like cocked easily, he told everybody shut the fuck up. He said, this kid's a killer, he's killing y'all.

He killing all y'all. And they were fighting to get another taste of him, and he was like, no, this kid's killing y'all. And that shut down, I wanted to battle that night. When I came back to the next ring, like the next my name was no longer skunk or big mic or anything in it was killer that's killer Mike right there that's killer Mike that's who double D was talking about that's killer Mike right there and they just stopped and that was it and I figured if you're earned it you keep it but I

wouldn't call myself it's a great name it's so distinctive I think about all the names in hip-hop I don't know another killer anything. Yeah, we got Killer Priest. We got Killer Mike and Killer Priest. That's it. It's an honor. It's an honor because I earned it. You know what I mean? Like I said, I would give myself some slicker, but I earned it. You know, I earned it, but I don't wish to kill another another human being but I have to understand that I have to be willing To make sure I deserve my life. Yeah, and you're happy to kill another MC on the mic every time every single fucking That's your job every time every time every time tell me about battle rap. How important is battling in rap? I used to love it when I was a kid man

It was the event rap is a is a, is a pugilistic poetry form. You know what I'm saying? What made Cool J the illest motherfucker in the world was that man, he would battle rap your ass under the table, then seduce your girl with a rap the next day. So battling is important to me, but only when it's truly from a pure place. You know what I'm saying?

An honest place. I don't like dishonest battling where it's from a place of jealousy or envy per se, but just for the metrics of skill. Let's see who can get it all. And then it's like fighting. It's like, yeah, it's like pugilism.

It's like afterwards you shake hands. Like I have enjoyed over the years, some of the biggest and best and most bad ass battles in that the battles were dope, they advanced the culture in the style and Afterwards the two human beings were still alive. I Have not liked the battle so much where it was a test of bravado machismo and ego And afterwards some of both people are dead

Those I don't think have a place. I don't like the battles that are stoked by other people for other reasons. I want a Grammy, I want three Grammys. Travis Scott's audience are younger than some of my audience. Some of my audiences as young, they felt like their guy got robbed, that's fine. They troll online, that's fine. Travis dropped a couple of lines, that's fine,

because I'm sure someone from his side interpreted the lines. I dropped line That's fine But when his manager for instance, who's a white guy Who's not of the culture that Mia Travis off in terms of being black? turns of being black men turns of being black southern men in terms of having a lot of the same heroes whether from the screwed-up clique or Outcast I thought

Him trying to stoke something I thought was a low class and bullshit because- Why do you think he was doing it? I think he was moving from a place of ego and insecurity. And I think that that's what gets wrong with rap battles today. I think that when the rap battles are between the two fighters who look in the fight,

you have a good battle. Me and Travis don't have a battle. We don't have the same audience. I don't have the same aspirations or goals. I've, you know, I want to be a bad ass motherfucking MC running around like Joey Simmons and Darrell McDaniels. My dreams, I've achieved every dream I wanted to achieve. I don't envy his dreams or achieving in any way.

So there's really no ground that we meet on where there's anything. But for management to stoke that or to poke that on Twitter, it just seems bullshit. So I, you know, if I'm talking to Travis, I'm just saying, I like you, I like your shit. I got lucky, I made in rap's 50th year, the best rap album.

I know you're gonna continue to make dope shit. If you want to lyrically engage me at any point, I'm sure you would step up and do that, but it doesn't seem so. But don't let the sucker sit next to you, stoke you up to do stupid shit. Cause I don't want what you got. I know you don't envy what I have.

But I think that battles, when you see battles within what, say, Calris won a fucking Juice Crew. That was a battle. That was, man. South Bronx and Queens, that was one where the culture got better for it. When you look at NWN Ice Cube, Ice Cube leaving a crew, becoming bigger as a solo and that crew though becoming better because without, in my opinion, without the

weighted measure of Ice Cube's pro blackness and positivity, they just became pure beautiful evil on a hundred miles and running and niggas for life. Oh my fucking God. I get goosebumps thinking about just how dark to me those had battled, but you know, trying as management to pit me against Travis. It's just lying. I like Travis.

I think he's dope. Tell me the story of the album, Michael. Oh man, Michael is, I'm in this hugely successful rap group, Run the Jewels. My partner is the best rapper producer in the world, Bar None. That motherfucker writes his own bars and makes his own beats. And I get to sit right in this room and we make it happen together. And he is off doing a score for a movie about Al Capone. He's doing some stuff with some other artists who we like and revere and respect. And I'm just at home twiddling my fucking fingers, bored as shit.

And COVID happens and then I'm really at home like, I don't have shit to do. I don't know how to produce. I'm not going to be one of those motherfuckers all of a sudden. I want to learn to produce. And I was just like, man, I was working with Cuzz Lightyear, but we had him over in Mass Appeal Records. He's an amazing artist, rapper, producer. I was like, well, man, fuck it.

In my opinion, they didn't do the job that they could've or were supposed to do on your CD. So shit, let's just go back in. Let's just record a mixtape. I'll just do it with you. We'll get something back out. And Cuzz did one of the most beautiful things to me that any human being can do.

He said, I'm gonna put my career on pause because you've been talking about doing a solo album again, if you ever had a chance forever. It's been eight, nine, 10 years, let's do it. He said, I'm gonna just put my stuff on pause and I'm gonna A&R your album. And I'm not even trying to be on it. And the A&R, Michael, we started at No Face No K Studios,

Shots Out The Fresh, got on the stake on these studios, Tip Studio, and then man, we went out to LA to East West and we just, we went in. And over the course of two years, we recorded the best album in the 50th year of hip hop. And Michael is the story of a nine-year-old boy, heavily influenced by what he saw Run DMC do, heavily influenced by what he saw the Fat Boys do, heavily influenced by Roxanne Chantel, by O.J. And he was determined to be an MC. And he was an MC dead in the middle of the crack era, dead in the middle of the Reagan era.

He lives in a totally black world where all his heroes and enemies look like him. He grew up in a world where the only white people he saw literally were on PBS or wrestling. So if it wasn't Ric Flair or fucking Mr. Rogers, I'd find no white neighbors, I didn't have no multi-ethnicities or diversity. How great is Ric Flair?

Ric Flair's so great I asked the teacher, could I be in for Black History Month? Yeah. That's how great Ric Flair was. So I just wanted to give the world a perspective of a black child who grew up not knowing what it felt like to feel insecure. I didn't have a lack of confidence. I didn't doubt my competence because everywhere I turned it was being instilled in me, you can, you must, you will be the absolute best human

being you can be. Because of your family? It's because of my family. It's because of my family, it's because of my community, it's because of my teachers. I lived in, and people should Google this, the Collier Heights. It's a historically black neighborhood. It was started in 1946 by black people for black people.

It was not Buttermilk Bottom, which was another black neighborhood. It was not The Bluff, it was not Vine City, it was not Dixie Hills. It was for working class people, through very rich black people, all in this same neighborhood. Grew up with the Russell family

who were black real estate developers. Grew up with Billy and Cynthia McKinney who were US representatives. Grew up with the coaches from Morehouse, the principal of my elementary school, all in the same neighborhood. Now also, the biggest weed dealers and the biggest numbers man,

a liquor people all in the same neighborhood. So I grew up in this all black. If you were watching the Goodfellas and saw an all Italian neighborhood and where it operates, this is it to the black. So I didn't have any issues of going to a school that was predominantly white, feeling less than insecure. I didn't have any wants or desires to be anywhere else. If I wanted to see a big fucking house full of rich people, I just rode my bike four or five streets back. We grew up in these 900 square foot A-frame houses, but five streets back with the richest black land developers in the Southeast.

And you could see their house with an indoor pool, basketball, coals and tennis. And so I knew innately I can have that. I just have to figure out what's my pathway to that. And that isn't even just the material stuff, but the reputation. My grandmother died and the church was filled as though a dignitary had died

because she had done so much good in the community. My wife's aunt who never knew her, but had heard of her, drove from South Carolina to attend the funeral. It was as though we were there in the representative. So for me, you know, I just grew up in a Norman Walkwell painting as a black exploitation film. That sounds incredible. That's what it, that's exactly what it is.

And that's what the album is. That's what the album is. Yeah. Yeah, so was it Million Dollar Nights? What's the new movie that comes out about the big heist in Atlanta during the Muhammad Ali fight? Well, that happened in my neighborhood. In my neighborhood, black people built clubs.

Tell me the story. I don't know that story. So there was a... So Muhammad Ali fought with an unsanctioned fight in Atlanta, I think in 72 or 73. How did that even come to be? That's what happens when you have a black city. When you have a black city ran by black people with black money, and it's partnered, of course,

with white money, but, you know, white southerners like making money. But they were like, we can have an Ali fight down here, doesn't have to be sanctioned, even though they get pushback from it, they managed to push it through. Ali has to fight there, all the hustlers, and it was like all the fur coats, all the Cadillacs,

all the Lincoln's, all that are supposed to come to this one party after the fight and they have a casino night in the basement. In my neighborhood, their houses, because those black people didn't wish to fight to party next to white people, so they built clubs in their basement in my neighborhood, their houses, because those black people didn't wish to fight to party next to white people. So they built clubs in their basements. So this house essentially just had a casino

and there's a man, a chicken man, who was like the low level promoter, put it together for all the hustlers to come together. Someone got wind of it and they robbed it. And after that robbery happens, people gotta die, people gotta answer for it, investigators gotta find out. Don Cheadle is the guy who plays the investigator.

Samuel Jackson plays, I think one of the New York gangsters that got robbed, that has to figure it out. And Kevin Hart plays chicken man. Well, I heard about this story since I've been in eighth grade, my art teacher. Wow. So, you know, there's two Americas, you know, few Americas rather.

There's a Chinatown America, K-town America, Greek town America, Little Odessa America, and then there's Black America. Black America's always happening. So Michael is a reflection of all of these things. I'm a reflection of the first black mayor who empowered black people to give an economic opportunity to people like the Russells.

I wasn't enamored by having a black president in the same way a lot of people were because all I'd ever saw was black leadership. All my mayors had been black. I've never not had, I should have helped get three of them elected. I've never believed that black people couldn't because all I've seen was black people could.

Now I've seen black people who couldn't, I've seen black people the system worked against. My grandfather worked for Chattahoochee Brick which used convict labor as slave labor at some point. So I knew the horrors were out there. My grandparents made me watch roots and chakazulu and talk to me about everything was slavery and colonialism. But with that said, on a day to day basis,

what I saw more times than not was the decisions of those that I saw who were failing or winning were solely their decisions. They were, did you decide to study harder and work harder? Did you decide to go get a job versus bullshitting around in a store? And those things showed me that it's possible. It might take a little longer. My grandfather told me you might have to work a little harder. You were never a victim. No, no. And even when I, at times I was, I never allowed myself to rest on the laurels of that too long. First time I went to Virginia was with a group called Black Tames for Advancement. I remember going to a 7-Eleven or something and us trying to go in the store and them locking us out.

And they were like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, first of all, we're a bunch of kids up here doing some positive shit. We don't want to be locked out of a store. We were kind of a little spooked that night walking into the hotel. But a guy called the police and the police handled us fucked up. We went back to our own, but I wasn't going to let that determine the way I felt the rest of my life.

That was one bad incident. That guy fucked me over. He was an asshole. The cop was an asshole, but that didn't stop me from respecting and revering investigator Richard Williams. He's someone I met in say 91, 90, 91. He was in a wheelchair.

He was a cop. And just when I had decided to kind of get that rebelliousness about me, he pulled me to the sideline. He was obvious, you intelligent, you was like, what are you, what you, what you trying to get out of this? I even hear your dad was, I was like, what's up with this? And I'm like, well, you ain't anymore, but you know, why do you care?

You know what I'm saying? I learned that he had got shot in the back. He had, or he was, he was investigating two or three juveniles He searched them although he didn't handcuff him probably was not trying to shame him Put him in the back of his car to drive them down To be talked to and one of them produced a handgun and shot him and paralyzed him for the chest down And I asked that man. I said if he is did this to you this happened him at 87 So this is only three or four years later. I say, why you ain't here, you know,

really wasting your time and working with us? He say, if I believed what I said about you all, if I believe what I said to you about your potential and what you could be, if I never came back to do the work, I never believed it at all. Oh man, it knocked me off my feet. Amazing.

You met some incredible people in your life. Yeah, but what's crazy is they were, by their own words, regular people doing what you're supposed to do. And what they understood was, I am a black person in America, and it is not my job to make this child afraid of America. It's my job to make them aware of the systems

and the means of control and the visionary tactics, but it's not my job to make them afraid. It is my job to empower them and make them fearless. Not dumb, not crazy, but fearless. And to help them be cunning and to help them use their minds. That's what I encountered. That was the unspoken agenda

out of the community I was raised in. You know, that's like Ms. Murray. Again, I come from a very rural Southern family. You don't eat collard greens and cornbread with a knife and fork. You eat collard greens and cornbread with your hands. The same way you eat fufu in Africa. You know what I'm saying?

The same way you would eat beans or anything in any country where more people are rural than that. I remember going to kindergarten. It's the first thing I started doing. She said, hold on, hold on. She said, I know I like to eat it like that at home too. She said, but that's cool. We just can't do it like that. We got to do. So she helped me understand that there was a duality and I laugh about it. Cause later my grandmother told me the first time my grandfather took on a date for a state, she just grabbed it and started tearing me off a bone.

She was like, shit, I didn't know no better. That's the way you hate me. Because for her, it wasn't about being prim and proper. It was just about I'm enjoying myself, the food is good. And now you see people who tell you, you don't eat with your hands. So it's just interesting to me that the overall agenda pouring into me

was that our job is to make you the best human being. You happen to be black, you're proud to be black. We want you to always be proud, but our job is to make you a human being in which when your name is said, it's said in a dignified way. Miss Harrington, who owned Harrington Daycare Center,

was determined to make sure that every child was literate going into kindergarten. So by the time we was going into kindergarten we were already reading. She meant the world to me. Her son Gene still works for the Atlanta Board of Education. I can't forget these people because of what they've meant to me. You know my former art teacher Mr. Murray who told me about the heist with Chicken Man and the Muhammad Ali fight, he does not teach art anymore but he still calls his old students out. We still have to help him with murals and shit Muhammad Ali fight. He does not teach art anymore, but he still calls his old students out. We still have to help him with murals and shit.

But more importantly, he helps us garden. He teaches us to garden. So he has one student that surpassed him named Lilo, who has a community garden now. Another one of his old students is former chief judge Asha Jackson, who grew up with me. We went all through school together. Asha has a pinnacle program, and when she takes people

who would've gotten prison sentences, gives them a year to turn their shit around, and part of her process now is pairing in with Mr. Murray to learn to grow food, and things of that nature. So I'm from an environment where, and at a time where everyone was pushing everyone else to be their absolute best. Amazing. Yeah.

Is that community still like that? Yes, I just bought my daughter a house Is that community still like that? Yes. I just bought my daughter a house in that community. Wow. How close to there do you live? Me, I live within four exes of there. I live close enough to be there in 15 minutes and far enough that the robbers are following me,

I see them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The human foot is a true marvel of engineering. With 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles and tendons, it's built for flexibility, balance, and natural movement. Unfortunately, today's narrow, rigid, elevated shoes undermine this natural brilliance and

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It puts them closer with the being that put us here. It gives them order and structure. Men are distrustful of church because usually the guy who's running the church dresses a little too nice and his car is a little too fancy. So my grandmother loved church. She was from a very religious background. I think they were raised Methodists or attending a Methodist church in some capacity

because the school that educated them was a Methodist one. But by the time she got to Atlanta, she had joined a Baptist church. But she always took me and my sisters to the, after we would go to Mount Olive, which was a bigger Baptist church of some prestige, she would take us to these little smaller churches like storefront churches, little house churches almost.

And these churches were not pastored by men. They were pastored by women. Bishop Jean was one, Sister Mary Jackson, Sister Mother Mary Jackson was another, Bethlehem Healing Temple. But these churches are really where I learned to love music and I learned to love understanding the Scripture. How was music in the church? So in a Pentecostal church, music is very important because part of it is, you know,

poor people build a lot of shit all week. And the way you get shit off sometimes, you go to a concert on a Friday or Saturday at the Blues Join or the R&B club, or you go to church, because the same people are playing at all three clubs the same person that played in the clubs of my mom Go tell Saturdays was without of the family that played in the church on Sundays So you have many drum kits bass electric guitar these singers and songstresses and they just be doing gospel But the gospel would be like Reverend T. L. Barnett it'd be it ever hipness had a rhythm to it He got you moving You know in the Pentecost church,

as long as you weren't crossing your ankles and you weren't doing any dance of dances, you could dance all you wanted to. You could run up and down the aisles. And I got a chance to see how therapeutic music was for people, how people got a chance to smile and glory and have tears fall and not drown and fall out and be caught by someone and to trust that

no matter what happens it's gonna be okay. Now a lot of people pay thousands of dollars to have this view they have right now and go out and then and do that and call it song and they name it something else but it's just church. It's just church. It's the church just like I grew up in. It's the churches where music is used as a form of gospel to make people move. The vibrations put people on the same wavelength. It's what I try to emulate now in my shows. I want people to get on the same vibe

so we can have this euphoric experience together. So that church, Bishop Jean's church in particular, had great music. She was a great teacher, and then there was just a beautiful redhead girl with freckles there too that kept me coming back. And I ended up marrying a redhead with freckles. Do you think music in general is devotional?

I do. I think that from a very purest place, whether you're singing in the shower till the song touches you or you are trying to express your pain through some form of trap rap, I think it's devotional. I think that we have feelings that are beyond oratorical expression in the way that simply talking does and that it needs to be said over beat, over melody with harmony, or it

needs to have an 808 behind it, a synth, it needs that. Like Biggie and Scarface's and Ice Cube's and Slick Rick's ability to tell story with description and anecdote over beat is irreplaceable. Pac's passion and delivery, Pastor Troy's passion and delivery, you know, it's just irreplaceable. You know what I'm saying? You take stuff that isn't even mixed very well. I remember Master P's Ice Cream, man. Moby Dick wasn't the best singer, wasn't the best mix, but man, you felt it. You know what singer wasn't the best mix, but man you felt it You know, I mean you felt it it moved you to when I was 400 degrees

I'm hearing people talk about the album a lot lately man It gave you a look into New Orleans you had never you had seen DJ Jimmy You have seen just that party vibe in New Orleans But I remember he and Juvi like now this is this the dude standing in front of store This is the dude who wants you to see this is New Orleans from a street level. That was beautiful to me. And a gospel like way almost it was a like Michael's a testimonial. That's how I view Michael.

Michael is not just a rap album. It is a testimonial of a black American soul. It is comparable to anything that Zora Neale Hurston wrote in their eyes were watching God and of new amen. It is comparable to August Wilson's fences or two trains running. The stuff that I make, although not accredited as I feel it should be, it's high art.

And it's very high art at that. And I just happen to like muscle cars and strip clubs, but I would argue that Kanye West, Swiss Beats, Jay, any of these art collectors that we know and we celebrate are comparable to me, not me comparable to them, because I've loved this shit long before I got money. I loved this shit when I was sitting in Mr. Murray's class

in the ninth grade trying to figure out how to steal the wing victory of Sumulthris. I remember looking at that statue like, I got to figure out how to steal this motherfucker. And although I never figured out how to break into the Louvre and steal a statue worth tons, the first time I got thousands of dollars to get a piece made, I went and got the exact replica. To the point it was still fixing the wing. The replica still had the wood planking and stuff. They had to shave that off. Jimmy from Houston is the jeweler who done it. Just to get it right, because I had to wear the art that inspired me. When people see me wear that big one and a half

kilo Michael Slane Satan piece that sits in front of the College of Michael I think is in Berlin or Munich that sits in front of that. It was important to me, I think that's Hubert, Gerard Hubert I think did that one. It was important to me that I have an exact replica of that piece because I love art. And I wanted to make high art so Michael is a high art album. And it uses Church Organ. Yes. It uses gospel high art album. And it uses church organ. Yes. It uses gospel vocals. Yes.

It feels like it really does accomplish what you were aiming to do. Yes, that's right. Yep, yep. And now that I've accomplished it, and we've epilogued it with Michael in the Mighty Midnight Revival song for Sinners and Saints, that's not what I wanna do anymore.

So what's, people say, well, what's the next album Michael gonna sound like? I'm like, I don't know yet. But it's not gonna sound the same. But you probably didn't know what Michael was gonna be till you made it. No, I knew what I was aspiring toward. I didn't know what it was gonna be, you're right.

But I knew what I wanted to feel like when I played it. So when I sat back and played, I'm like, this is it. It's doing it. Yeah, I'm chasing it. And it ended up winning... Best rap album of the year, best rap song, best rap performance, and then BET album of the year. Amazing. Absolutely.

Congratulations. Thank you so much. You talked about loving Run DMC and Slick Rick and LL and all of the New York rappers where it was coming from first. Yep. When did you start feeling the music around you compete with what you were hearing from New York rappers, where it was coming from first. Yep. When did you start feeling the music around you compete with what you were hearing from New York? First of all, I'm gonna give props to Mojo,

who was the first Atlanta rapper, you know what I mean? And Mojo's probably 60 now, he still looks great, still running around, I think he works for the city and will still do his records for you. So he was the first one that I know was possible, but you know, you got New York We loved LA popped off our man NWA WC in a mad circle King T You know say you couldn't you could tell me LA what wasn't it then you get to look, you know What comes out of the Midwest was the dating family stuff like that?

Memphis play a fly Tommy Wright the third that type stuff DJ. I take squeakies from up there, too But man, Miami Miami was our big home Hell Fly, Tommy Wright III, that type stuff. DJ, I take Squeaky's from up there too. But man, Miami. Miami was our big homies. The Miami Hurricanes on top of the world, Luke and the 2 Live Crew on top of the world, Disco Rick, The Dogs, Poison Clan. All these groups had a profound effect on Atlanta,

saying we could do this. There's a guy named Shadi who had moved from New York had DJ Toomp who later went on to co-found trap music with Tia. DJ Toomp was like a DJ for Shadi. So this is, we're talking mid 80s. There's a group called Success and Effect. They have a song, Roll it up my nigga, roll it up. Before it was called trapping, it was called rolling. You were a roller, short for high roller. And those guys' songs let me know. Kilo Ali out of Born Home. Beyonce sampled his record,

America Has a Problem, Cocaine Kilo, wrote his album in juvenile. I remember everybody from Born Home, the projects that were in my school, telling me about him. And when he came out, his music didn't disappoint. So all these were points. I have to give a credit to Chris Cross and what Jermaine Dupree did, let me know what happened. But the absolute crown to me that we weren't Miami's little homies, that we weren't New York's

country cousins, that we weren't simply kids trying to emulate gang culture out of LA, simply kids trying to emulate gang culture out of LA was absolutely the Dungeon Family. And what Rico Ray, Ray Murray, and Sleepy Brown gave opportunity to by signing Outkast and Goodie Mob was they allowed Atlanta to craft their own sound in the moment that made us us versus the part two of something else. Atlanta does bass music, but it's not Miami-style bass.

It's not just shaking and chigging and fast. It has more of an R&B tinge to it. So our version of bass music was still primarily based off something else, but it was just our version. What Dungeon Family gave us, because Organized Noise had been mentored by Curtis Mayfield, was they gave us a soul that was ours,

that was our very own. That first outcast out and the first goodie mob having set a new standard, it turned the corner. He said, this is us, this is Atlanta. This is some player shit. Like we players in this city. We're about the action of being whatever players are. And we're about that.

So we're a city where you can get gangsters, hustlers, drug dealers. We also a city where you can get politicians, businessmen, successful people. It is a culmination of all this. It is a city where you have a thinking man's group like Goodie Mob that's received in rooms as gritty as the Wu-Tang Clan and as polished as any black homecoming at any HBCU, you know? I think that Atlanta is a complex city in that way.

That it is a city that encompasses all of blackness. And when people say, you know, black people are not just a monolith, Atlanta shows you that. Because when you start on Atlanta's west side, by the time you get to Atlanta's east side, you don't want a whole different type of black people, but it's all black.

And it's all celebratory in some way. So whether you're talking about the immigrant population of Stone Mountain that produces a 21 Savage, and even in his high school years of Swiss Beats, Stone Mountain gives you both of those artists. On the west side, you get Southwest Atlanta giving you the Dungeon Family. And the Dungeon Family gave us a firm cornerstone

to build the rest of Atlanta's legacy. So I gotta give all that credit to Rest In Peace, God bless, Dan Rico Way, Ray Murray, and Sleepy Brown. And what year did that really... It's 94. 94. It's 94. Chris Cross was 92 I believe, but 94. 94 outcasts because they dropped players ball on the arm. How did you connect with those guys? I went to Morehouse and I met Nisilo Reddick. Nisilo's mother was a teacher in Savannah, Georgia. His father, Bonzo Reddick, is an attorney. They are a brilliant, upstanding, decent people.

His dad's like known amongst the towns. Everything was civil rights, they're helping people. You know, when times are hard and he's from a great family. He and Big Boy grew up together and were best of friends. And Big Boy went to Tri-Cities High School, which was a school for performing arts that gave you outcasts, they gave you escape, they gave you members of the Dragon Edge. There's even a tape of Big Boy freestyling when he was a kid. But Big Boy and CeeLo were friends. And since I became great friends with CeeLo, I became friends with Lil Bruh, James, Big Boy's younger

brother, Rock D D my man Frank God blessed the dead was killed we were just a crew like the Boulevard Kings you know and um big boy heard me rapping and he was getting his hair braided at Cee-Lo's house because Cee-Lo's parents had gotten him a house well Cee-Lo had paid his house off his parents had made sure they could get in the house out of Lithonia Georgia big boys getting his hair braided out there I think by Princess at the time who has Princessonia, Georgia, big boys getting their hair braided out there. I think by Princess at the time, who has Princess palace, she braided big boys,

half Slim Calhoun, Ludacris, all the famous ones. And he heard me and he said, man, who's that? And he's like, that's Mike. And he said, we working on something. And what they were working on was the deal with Electra. He says, I'm gonna give you a shot. And I was just like, well, all right. You all about the same age?

Yeah. Everybody had just nine, was I think two to, well, all right. Are you all about the same age? Yeah. Everybody I just knew, it was two to four years of each other. So my association with C-Law really believing, with Big Boy hearing and really believing, and then him, their A&R at Equimini Records was Regina Davenport and Drake. They gave me an opportunity to change my life

by believing in me. And I just, I never let go of that opportunity and I never stopped being appreciative for it, you know, which is one of the reasons that to this day, I still call Big and Drake or text them together out of nowhere and just say, thank you for giving me an opportunity to change my life. Welcome to the house of macadamias.

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Coconut white chocolate and blueberry white chocolate. Visit houseofmacadamias.com slash tetra. Tell me about rap music up until trap versus trap. How is trap different than all the music that came before? I mean, the sound that Tump and Tip created made it bigger. So if you hear 8 Ball MJG and 3 6 Mafia, so you hear 3 6 Mafia, you hear them lean into a Willie Hutt sound and chop.

The way they chop soul music is different from the way Houston does it. So the way Houston does it is where A-Ball MJG pivoted to Houston, left Tennessee, their music was still soul based. Outcasts was soul based, but less samples and more like replays. But trap music introduced a fundamentally new sound

to Atlanta. What Tip & Toon did was take the culture of Atlanta, which had become trapping. So if you look at the late 80s, crap proliferates, dope is mainly sold, and car washes, like you can literally just open their market for drugs. And not even on the bass, you're just like the rollers.

The rollers are at the car wash, the dope is in the trunk, whether you buying a fucking ounce or a kilo, you can pull up on them at the car washes and do it. And then so all those little kids essentially became used as employees of some sort. Hey, if y'all see the police coming, yell 99.

Well, 99 got to be too long, so yell 12. Why you yell 12? 12 comes from the TV show, Adam 12. Adam 12 was a TV show, so when you hear somebody from Atlanta, they don't even know why sometimes they're younger, why they say that you say it 12 because that was the coded language you used to say if you walk, if you see the police coming down the street

the store, you're going to run up and make sure the older boys know 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12. This is short for Adam 12. 99 was just too loud. Sammy Sam said, somebody yelled 99. It had to be Susie because he ditched the cocaine and picked up a Uzi. 99 was just too long, it just got to be 12. cuz he ditched the cocaine and co picked up a uzi 99 just too long It just got to be 12 how did trap come along trap came along because

The older guys who knew what they were doing who were known and accredited were on Front Street selling dope and Which regulated us the little punk ass kids who were lookouts or not to the back of the apartments and what would happen is The apartments would start putting gates and stuff on the back of the apartments and what would happen is the apartments would start putting gates and stuff on the back of the apartments and you were trapped. I see. Hey man, those niggas back there in that goddamn dope trap, them little dumbass boys. I keep telling them red dogs gonna come in there and beat all their ass. They got trapped like rabbits in them. Like a possum, like a rabbit in a trap. So it came just out of this colloquial saying, you guys are trapped back there if the

police come there's nowhere to run you trapped so where you began to sell dope became the trap and the act of selling dope became trapping and if you were trapping out of someone's house you pay them so I need to use your apartment the police man I'm a fat I can't keep running from the police I just need to use your apartment so Janine I need to use your apartment what you gonna charge me? Just charge me what you your 100 hours a day? All right, cool, I'm trapped. I'm trap-bunking, I'm at your house.

So what you doing? I'm trapping at Janine's house. I just get 100 hours a day. See, that's how trapping really came along. How much of hip hop is political? Hip hop, by simply existing is political. It is a statement that art will prevail through all. It will prevail through poverty. It will prevail through lack of resources which are accidental and purposeful. It will

prevail against a government and administration and the Reagan administration that took arts and music education out of schools. It will prevail in the proliferation of a drug war that actually was used to finance an illegal war by the same administration. It will prevail over its own self-indulgence in the creation of conscious music, even in the most diabolical of rapper rappers catalog, there lies a bar or a lyric that alludes to a greater consciousness

and a greater thing being possible. Virtually every rapper. You're really describing an uplifting form of music. Because it is. Even in this most downtrodden. When Fuck the Police got written, Fuck the Police needed to be written. When Ladies First got written.

Ladies First. It's like when people ask me the question of women finally having voice at rap. And I say, shit. Part of the reason I'm sitting here is because of Roxanne Shantay. So I don't care if you're talking about Roxanne Shantay, real Roxanne, sugar tea, balls, salt and pepper. Fuck, you're talking about Roxanne, Shantay, real Roxanne, sugar tea, boss, salt and pepper. Fuck, you're talking about Trina, Foxy, Kim. Rap has been open for girls that fucking dominate. Shit, the girls finally got interested in getting off the fucking beat. They're saying, yo, fuck this listening.

We gonna rap now. They finally understood that girls can have different voices. They finally understood every girl doesn't have to take her clothes off. So Rhapsody can be just as relevant as any girl just brought. And Rhapsody still looks good as a motherfuckin'. My current favorite, one of my favorite rappers, female or not, is fuckin' Lato. This girl from Clayton County from a suburb of Atlanta, part of metro Atlanta. Mom's white, dad's black. This motherfucker's a hybrid of fuckin' T.I. Shawty Low, jeez and Gucci. She takes it seriously as fucking telling every bar and she sees a stunner to look at.

That's wrapped to me as man. It is such a beautiful opportunity that young people set up in the late seventies for other young people to thrive. And now as it has fit, it has grown to be 50 years old for people who not young to still be Expressing and listening to the expressions of young You know man look at the career that e40 is had the career that scarface is had the career That too short has had the career that big boy has had the career that Cee Lo Vane has had you know When you when I look at these rappers, when I look at Shontay

on a radio show, still rapping. When I look at Trina, still going to a coliseum and knock that motherfucker down, I know that all is right with rap and that we were right as kids. I remember telling my art teacher, Mr. Murray, people hear me reference him a lot, that NWA was gonna get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

And he told me I was fucking crazy. And he called me when they went in the stage. I gotta tell you, you were right, nigga. How crazy is it that rap is 50 years old and if you think about, so that means it started in the 70s, Rock and Roll, which we think of as ancient, started in the 50s. Rock and roll, which we think of as ancient. Yes. Started in the 50s. Absolutely, still very young.

Still very young. Only 20 years before rap. Yep, very young, very young, very young. But I remember hearing Chuck link all the black musics together, which is essentially American music, has been the music. Whether it was the wailing of the field, goes in the gospel, goes in the rock and roll,

divert some into country by way of the plucking of the banjo, goes into rhythm and blues, jazz, hip hop, all of this is tethered and united by the African American experience. Now it's taken other places by other people, and that's fine, that's what art does, art inspires others. But man, the voice

of America in a lot of ways has been the young black voice or musician giving an art form to this country to grow and proliferate. How has your relationship to hip hop changed over the course of your life? I just saw more love with them. I'm so blessed so blessed DJ Swift who's one of the best DJs in the world outcast DJ He doesn't go out of the way to self-promote push yourself but I've seen them man step up right with Jazzy Jeff and with Jam master Jay and plethora of others and just kill shit and then just go back and shake the hands like man He's my fucking hero. You know, it's Swift is like our older brother me a cast and um Come with me. It's just I just keep falling more in love with her. I think she's most beautiful thing on earth

I just love her like not to be cliche but like common. Yeah, I know I used to love her. I still love her How has Atlanta changed over the course of your life? Atlanta is changing but my grandfather prepped me for that. He told me it changes every 20 years. He said, don't get too comfortable. Atlanta is a place where black opportunity exists in a way like nowhere else on earth. I often tell people, I revere, and black people should revere Atlanta

like Muslims revere Mecca, because we genuinely have an opportunity there. And that opportunity comes with the expectation of you being great, not just good, but the opportunity is there. And it does not mean there's not hardships, does not mean everything is fair, does not mean white folks ain't involved,

because most likely like Def Jam, is black and white folks involved. And Maynard meant for that to happen 1973 I'm talking referencing a man named Maynard Jackson his grandfather was a man named John Wesley Dobbs John Wesley Dobbs was a black businessman who made sure there was a black business corridor on Auburn Avenue Where Dr. King's church was and on Edgewood Avenue where one of my barbershops currently is His grandson is 73 who went to Morehouse, becomes mayor of the city of Atlanta. He demands that 29% of business from the city be given to

black contractors, proper businesses that are ready to go. People don't know oftentimes too, he flipped it and also required that of the white businesses be included too. So what he really did was make black people and white people have to work together. So as much as I talk about the Herman Russell family, Herman Russell did hire and partnered with the white guy too and because of that cooperation, they made a very strong president in Atlanta

from BusinessWise, provided hundreds of jobs and still to this day do that. Maynard leads to Andy, you know, goes back to Maynard, goes to Bill Campbell, goes to Shirley Franklin, goes to Kaseem Reed, to Keisha Lance-Balms, and now Andre Dickens. If you don't have these people who understand the need not only for a symbolic paying attention to black people, but economic participation and development, you don't get the opportunity to the neighborhoods like mine or for people like me to be produced.

Fifty years later, after Maynard becomes mayor, not only does hip-hop soar and become something, you get two kids from the neighborhood who used to trap on Bankhead Highway. Now our black successful rappers, one tremendously more with TI in terms of having hit records, Laudette and Grammy applauded and Killer Mike, to partner together by 50 year old restaurant the oldest restaurant on Bankhead great Yeah that restaurant now they sit now proper family restaurant sky views and stuff like that And our goal is to grow it into something big enough to scale up should I want to be red lobster? You know and better yeah, so I don't know if that happens other places. Atlanta is a city full of black opportunity. I'm not just talking about reality TV show opportunities.

And that's no disrespect. But that means it happened. It didn't become that in the last 25 years. Hip hop and even, you know, shots out to the brothers of BML, the Miami boys back in the days and all the rollers before them. They did not make Atlanta that. Atlanta has been what it's been since the early 1900s, 19-old, with four or five or five or six, you have two conferences called the Atlanta Conference that are hosted by W.E.B. Du Bois, who essentially represents the Black bourgeoisie, and Booker D.

Washington, who simply represents the Black working class, Tuskegee University. If you don't have these Atlanta conferences, you don't have, in my opinion, the decision to make Atlanta a place where black opportunity exists. So you get Alonzo Herding. Who's Alonzo Herding? Well, Alonzo Herding is a man who owns, like, Killer Mike barbershops. Some of his barbershops only serviced white businessmen.

Even though all the barbers were black, these white businessmen were stocks and bonds and insurers and things of that nature. Alonzo saw an opportunity and he said, well, black people can't get life insurance from you guys. Why don't you guys allow me to buy smaller policies? I'll start the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. He goes from all the barbershops where he hears good business sound business advice. He starts the largest black insurance company in the world. That insurance company just got bought by magic Johnson. Why did magic Johnson buy that insurance company? When asked magic times to say,

because I seen an interview with killer Mike talking about it. Wow. So Atlanta produces a type of black person in my opinion, that expects to be able to succeed when given the opportunity, and that does not mind providing opportunities for others that look like him and partnering with those who don't

to expand opportunities for all. Is there any place else in the country that you would say is like that, or close to it, or second to it? We've had places like that. We had strong enclaves in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Birmingham, Alabama, Watts, Inglewood,

and some of the destruction has been purposeful. What the Dailies did in Chicago was purposeful. What's going on in Chicago now is not fair. I don't know what you do when you have a, there was a push movement in Philadelphia that got bombed by the police because these people essentially were going dreadlocks for all their own food.

So no one really wants to see it to the degree, but what's always amazed me, even in places I can argue with my good friends from DC, they remind me that one of the richest county, I think it's tied to fight in DC in terms of black wealth. I say yeah, but when you go to DC now It's not the same and when you go to DC now beyond and not being the same I say man a lot of y'all still we you know black folks talk shit and choke So a lot of y'all still work for white folk don't y'all work for the government

But DC is still a strong enclave Atlanta still a strong enclave. You have strong pockets in places like Chicago. I just believe that in Atlanta, the opportunity may be greater simply because Georgia has been number one for business in the last 10 years. Number one in business in the last 10 years. So if this is the table and it's been number one, if I got a third of this table,

a quarter of this table, 10% of this table, then my success may be magnified a little more. But when you look at Houston, tremendous opportunity for black people in Houston. Dallas Negroes are rich. South to Dallas, a lot of brothers and sisters down there. But I don't know if you get the triple play of economic impact, cultural impact,

and political impact that you get in Atlanta. You're a city like Atlanta, my mayor is black, I've never known anything about a black mayor. Economically, I know, I've proven, getting myself out the mud, after dropping out of the greatest black college in the world, Morales College, that you can do it, you can become a self-made guy.

And when you look at the arts, currently the big deal on the Haim Museum, which is a world-class museum, is Swiss Beats and Alicia Keys art collection is in that museum. I serve on the board of that museum. Fahamu Picouz, one of her most amazing living artists, serves on the board. Kenyon, who's a radio rep, serves on the board. All of us serve on the board of the High Museum of Art. Our mayor's a black kid from the exact same neighborhood, went to the rival high school,

my dad, and then you have true black money in economics and political power that can shift things. And again, we're not perfected by any means, but the opportunity is there. Atlanta's one of the only places you type in black restaurants and over 50 restaurants pop up. It's one of the only places where you have an alternative to say, well, I'm going to stay in my neighborhood, close to here and get what we're missing and what we got to get. But from what I'm reading is we're about to get some grocery stores

back in the city. A lot of our grocery stores left, a lot of our banking left, which is why I pivoted into a banking platform like Greenwood. But Atlanta's by no means perfect, but the opportunity exists. And that's all you can really ask for, just a shot. Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton? Counterculture? Tetragrammaton.

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Tetragrammaton. Ancient wisdom for a new age. Tetragrammatin, the canon of fine objects. Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars. Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn. Tetragrammar.com Tell me some of the things that you learned from your entrepreneurial endeavors. You're going to fail a lot more than you succeed.

So you've got to be comfortable with failing. You gotta learn to trust your gut because a lot of times you talk yourself out of good decisions. It's nothing wrong when your plan is as good as you can get it with partnering with other people or using other people's money. We have a habit sometimes in hip hop

of wanting to do it all ourselves and we burn ourselves out. It really does take teamwork to make a dream work. It really does take a committee of people to understand your goals and vision and it takes paying them a fair wage and You must learn to use without being a user Tell me about your process in writing. How does it happen? I sit in a room I smoke marijuana and I wait to the beat tell me what to do It's always based on the beat the beat always comes first. No, I have ideas in my head I have subjects I want to talk about but the beat is gonna tell me I'm for that subject

I see and sometimes I will just sit there and a beetle say this is what you need to say and now I'll say oh I know what I want to say about that. So the thinking lives here in terms of what I like to talk about or what I need, think needs to be talked about. But the beat, I used to try to fight the beat, make the beat, do what I wanted to do, be the calisthenic I wanted to be. That's for you, Kyle. Don't do that. Let the beat take you where you need to go. The best words you get here in the studio sometimes, I don't know. What are you gonna rap about? I don't know. What kind of drums you gonna do? I don't know because that leaves you a world to explore. Mm-hmm. So you hear a beat you like, what happens next? If I hear it I like it, I'll play it for a few seconds to see if

I got anything forward, if I can come up with something. Would the first thing that comes be a subject or a line or a phrasing? It worked two different ways. It can work as one bar, one line. It could work as a subject, or I know this is what I'm talking about. But what I found is that the older I get, just get up and get to work. Just get up and put one foot in front of the other. When I was making songs purely out of inspiration when I felt like it,

it was a more tedious process to me because I to wait but something can get you uninspired You can fucking have an argument with your old lady before you walk out of it all of a sudden I'm under spite But if I know every day of the week, I'm going to go in Monday through Friday or Tuesday through Friday I'm going to go in with a four-hour workday at minimum eight hours to ten if I'm really feeling good But I'm going to do something then every day something is going to be produced where if I'm not feeling good, but I'm going to do something, then every day something is going to be produced where if I'm not inspired to do it that day, it's going to inspire me tomorrow. And I'm going to go back and it's like,

oh shit, let me be on that, oh I got something for that. Or that's not it, but I know what I'm supposed to do now. So just show up and go to work every day. And would it be writing the words or would it be saying the words into a mic? I just say the words into a mic. I used to write and I do right now. I am constantly doodling, writing down thoughts,

writing down phrases, writing down bars. But what usually happens is I go in the booths and the pad that I was using is there. I heard Maya Angelou say one time when she writes, she puts crossword puzzles and stuff around her. Just to look at words. Yeah, and give her conscious mind something to do. Yeah.

So that her subconscious mind can then get to the writing. Let's get to it. So for me, sometimes the pad and the pen is simply to give my thoughts and my conscious mind something to do so it gets out of the way of the idea compartment, of the lines and phrases of saying shit I hadn't said before in a way I hadn't said it before.

And would you say sometimes the phrasing comes first or usually there are words right away? Usually it's words right away and then I figure out the phrasing. Usually it's a line or is that a line that kind of encompasses what I'm trying to get to. You have some lines in songs where you ask for people to be freed. Yeah, currently, as today is, Jamil Alameen. And he was a fierce fighter for all of our liberties.

I want when people to hear about Jamil Alameen or Fred Hampton or Malcolm St. Martin, they're not fighting just for Black people's liberation and freedom and solidarity with Black folks. They wanted all people to experience the freedom that we all deserve. So Jamil Al-Amin is in prison right now for allegedly killing two police officers. It has been reputed, said he did not do it. Former Mayor Andrew Young, who was also an assistant to Dr. or co-organizer with Dr. King, has called for his freedom. He's 81 years old. He can't get out and hurt nobody, which is asking him to be at least allowed to do it,

at the very least an interview, but beyond that, be allowed to come home. How long has he been in jail? Nearly, if not over a decade. So he should be home. Matulu Shakur was allowed to come home in his final few months and die. So he died in the company of his family

and not in a cold cell alone, thankfully. And I got a chance to talk to him FaceTime. I had a chance to attend his services. Leonard Peltier, Native American freedom fighter, should be allowed to come home. Asada Shakur should be taken off our most wanted list. She should be forgiven and absolved of any crimes she was accused of and allowed to come home.

Mumia Bouchermal should be allowed to come home. And many others should be allowed to come home. I even believe that at the age that Jeff Fort and Larry Hoover are now, and at the way that we've seen gang violence plummet into us, an endless spiral and abyss of death, that it'd be best if we did like when we go to other countries and gangs with different tribes are fighting, we sit them down and we try to broker a peace treaty.

I think that Jeff Fort should be able to come home and fire Hoover. But in this moment, right now, I'm actively in allegiance with organizations and with the son of Jamil al-Amin, saying, free Jamil al-Amin, bring him home. What do you believe today that you didn't believe when you were young? That there's a God.

Yeah. I know it absolutely to my core. I used to question it so much because I was raised in such a religious household, and I was raised in the middle of crack era. And two years, you could see people who you loved and revered and respected. You just saw addiction rob them of their dignity and their respect and self-respect. And you start to question God. Because you're a child, you're not even being arrogant. You just don't understand how this terrible thing is happening

And for a long time my question You know, I'm a white manager said to me. He's one of my best friends. I love that. He says bro after me He said for years. I just thought you were an atheist I was like, oh shit. I was probably a nasty, but I never thought there wasn't a God. But absolutely now, I know absolutely to my core. And how has that revelation been for you? It's made me better. Not that I was ever bad,

but I think good enough, depending on the situation, I was good. Shit went fucked up, fuck it, I could go. But now I just don't wanna go fucked up. I don't want situations to go fucked up and I don't want, I just, I want to leave people with a better presence and energy than I met them with. And I wanna leave with that myself.

So I'm constantly in a state of compliment and uplift, and search for the betterment in and of. leave with that myself. So I'm constantly in a state of compliment and uplift, search for the betterment in and of. Beautiful. How does place impact your love of a hip hop artist? So in other words, if someone comes from Atlanta, do they get extra points or can someone from Seattle be your favorite MC?

Yeah, I'm looking for it from wherever it comes, man. From wherever it comes. I think that the tragedy of Atlanta is for how diverse the black population is. Musically, we don't allow ourself to be bad. Why do you think that is? I don't know, because I think that popular music reigns, right, everywhere.

And I think that there's pop that popular music reigns right everywhere. And I think that there's pop popular music for all of America. There's pop popular music in Nashville, which is essentially country. And I think there's pop popular music in rap. And I think the greatest travesty of the last 25 years of rap as a nation, as this is one big group, we've become almost like political parties where I like this party, this is it, I don't see any value in anything else. And we don't allow ourselves to like more than one thing

or more than one style. And Atlanta has so many different styles. Atlanta can give you a Kenny Mason, who's a kid who can do a grunge record as easily as he can do a lyrical Southern record. It'll give you a Bags, who's an Eritrean kid, who's in Stone Mountain, one of the dopest most clever phrase rappers who died. It'll give you Ra-Ra who fell victim to schizophrenia but was one of, he was an

evolution of TI's trap music and he was a producer and MC also. It gives you this outcast of goody mobs, it gives you the troubles, God bless the dead, gives you the alley boys, gives you man the peshies, gives you the naros, the pills. It gives you this whole class of people that you may not even know exist and that they're there. I wish that Atlanta did a better job at allowing itself to be diverse. And what I mean by that is the fans just got to dig more shit. The same people at the high museum be at the Magic City and be at the State Farm Arena and

be at the Mercedes Benz Arena. We should do that musically as well. You know, we feel like you can single-handedly make that happen. When you got to help me, I got to figure that part out because I feel like you can do it. I've been trying to figure that out. I feel like you can do it. I want to do that. I want to do that.

That's a really good project. All right. I feel like you can do it. I want to do that. Mm-hmm. I want to do that That's a really good project. All right. I mean you guys did it if you look at death to him Public enemy was not LL was not the BC boys You know what I mean, and I know run them weren't on death jam, but still we look at you guys responsible up Yeah, yeah, what's what's not the same and I think that I honestly just rappers. That's what's gonna save us How is the world different today than the world you grew up in I honestly just rappers, that's what's gonna save us. How is the world different today than the world you grew up in? It's just as fucked up and evil. More.

More? More. Tell me why. I don't know why. Because human beings have a fascination with pain and suffering in a way that we allow it and watch it like voyeurs and we won't interrupt or stop it. Atlanta's a unique place to grow up in, not only because I grew up in this totally black

world, but I grew up with these amazing unique things blossoming and happening around me. There was this white man named Ted Turner. He's an amazing maverickick crazy motherfucker who starts this network called CNN. Ted Turner, the man who single-handedly brought bison back so we can now eat bison burgers in Ted's restaurant. Ted understands that the future, the world is going to be connected and that Americans live under a propaganda machine like every other country, but he gives us an opportunity

to see all over the world at the same time So the first images that I remember as a child that are television images that aren't wrestling and of course so like PBS mr. Rogers are the Ayatollah Khomeini and Are of us invading Lebanon and here it is 42 years later and what's happening? same thing the exact same thing and 42 years later and what's happening? Same thing. The exact same thing. And where is, I would hear criticism of that in the 80s, I don't hear the criticism anymore.

And that's what scares me. That somehow we have become not even evil in our intent, but in our complacent, We're just complacent. Apartheid was something that was rallied against by college students in terms of HBCUs. And I saw it change the world and make companies like Coca-Cola say, end apartheid or we're leaving South Africa.

I think now there's so many people on so many teams that wanna be right. There's no general outrage of the immoral things that states are doing globally. And that scares me that we value statehood over individual lives. We've become a less moral species. Animals eat because they're hungry. My grandfather taught me to hunt and fish as a resolution for hunger. He did not teach me to hunt and fish for sport.

And we are now warring and watching war and violence and pestilence as sport. important. Thank you.