For those of you who don’t know him, Killer Mike is an Atlanta-based hip-hop artist and one-half (with El P) of the hip-hop dynamic duo Run the Jewels. He’s one of my heroes: hilarious, angry, smart, talkative, and open to the entire world. This episode, from the NY Times‘ “Sway” with Kara Swisher, got me to thinking about the end of Invisible Man. I’ve always found it unsatisfying the way the novel sort of dispatches the Brotherhood and Ras and street-level anarchic struggle and leaves the narrator snoozing underground.
Mike is someone who has lived an above-ground life trying to think about how to pull people marginalized and oppressed by the hyperinequalities and white supremacy of our era into what Ellison calls the “groove of history.” And he sounds like the love child of Ras and Jack doing it, mixing elements of black nationalism and a highly conscious socialist reading of politics and economics. If you haven’t checked out this year’s RTJ 4 album, do so: I’ve linked to it below as well.
Opinion | Killer Mike Says He Has a Choice to Make (Published 2020)
The rapper and activist on transforming fear into power.
RTJ4 Full Album Stream
Listen to the full RTJ4 album here!
