The Corona Crates: How Killer Mike (Almost) Made Me Quit Rapping [February 2019]

Happy quarantine, y’all!

If your current situation is anything like mine, you’re missing a bag or two thanks to COVID-19. And if my situation is anything like yours, then I imagine I’m doing the right thing here. After spending far too many hours scoring over productivity mantras - instead of… I don’t know, learning Python or something - I decided to go back to writing the code I loved most: prose. Good, old fashioned, self-involved-but-presented-as-self-reflective prose.

I’ve been going over the dregs of my Google Drive folders, reengaging the mysteries of past ambitions through “Untitled Documents” galore. I’ve set new eyes on some of the best of them and decided to release this blog series titled, The Corona Crates. Every now and then I’ll drop a long-form draft from my vault and see how well these have aged. I’m currently building up to a much more timely and eventful piece for the OG canon of this blog. Stick around for the big reveal:

—

How Killer Mike (Almost) Made Me Quit Rapping | Feb. - June 2019

The Run the Jewels emcee is upholding his adage of ‘Kill Your Masters’. His blade now aims squarely at the industry that made him ‘Killer’ - with good reason.

Netflix Cover Art, Trigger Warning with Killer Mike



Michael “Killer Mike” Render deserves to be the most prominent centrist-presenting black personality across today’s political media landscape. That’s no disrespect to the day-job policymakers and political influencers out in the trenches. For better or worse, the Run the Jewels emcee’s current media circuit broadens his reach as a public intellectual far more efficiently than a published paper ever could for him. His keynote takes shape in the recent Netflix release Trigger Warning - an endearingly one-track minded docu-series that follows Mike as he slaps quick fix solutions to the post-segregation economic challenges still plaguing working class black communities. All of Mike’s tested hypotheses (literally every single one) do more to excoriate explanations of these problems rather than fix them, but the man does even his most contradictory ideals to an undeniably proper T. This includes his oft-repeated “Kill Your Masters'' maxim: Mike spends a good portion of the show’s sidebar conversations unflinchingly killing any and all dreams toward the rap superstardom that bankrolled him. Including mine.

Like many bright eyed and dark skinned boys before me, most of my middle school intellectual appetite was satiated through hip-hop. Being one of the first generations to come of age in the era of music streaming gave me the chance to backtrack through the catalogs of the 2pacs and Public Enemys who’d enable non-ATLien listeners like me to appreciate a Mike in the first place.

I also had bars. For days, yo.

From reading bars on the internet to writing them for my own vault of songs that will never (and should never) see the light of day, I’d almost inadvertently manifested my linguistic talents through my engagement with hip-hop. Maybe a few of the black boys in your high school’s AP language classes did too. Our turns in the cypher might have rammed a few too many syllables into a bar, but they always came with the shock value of the smart nigga holding their own in the circle. It was where most of us discovered we had sauce.

When your block boys don’t realize you “interpolated” an old Technique bar for the cypher…

Provided by GIPHY

Developing the social skills to want to rap in public was a net positive as well. The problem with this infatuation arrived most likely toward the end of high school, when tantalizing fantasies of “popping off” in the rap game seemed ever more tangible. Forasmuch as the value of artistic expression can be lauded, the thought of elbowing through thousands of barely-to-insanely talented microphone fiends to break a SoundCloud single should frighten any adult who cares about you. It may have frightened Mike too, who spends episode 2 groaning through the entertainment industry pursuits of nearly all of his “educational porn” focus group’s black members.

“I think I’ve found what’s wrong with black America here,” he utters to the omnipresent viewer.

That’s not to say he up and forgot where he came from. Hypocritical as it seems, he speaks positively of his experiences as both a solo rap act and one half of the rap duo Run the Jewels throughout the series. His aim just happened to be more securely fixed upon the intoxicating pursuit of celebrity involved in that instance. He would even reach his hand across the aisle and upside the sexier, more revered heads of socialites in that very same episode. Few scenes capture how seriously Trigger Warning took “keeping that same energy” as when Mike instructs a classroom of impressionable-looking grade school children to bin their lofty aspirations at a presidential campaign in favor of learning a trade. Statistically speaking, he’s probably dead on when telling one young’n that he straight up “probably won’t be President.” Still, it’s a jarring declaration to hear in a generation raised to believe that the guarantee of social mobility was practically a human right.

Thus the American attitude towards ‘work’ as a career path becomes evident. In this modern, social media fueled gig economy, the simplest and most efficient option for those who don’t already own commodities is to commodify themselves. Rappers exemplify this principle better than any Insta-model even could. The crux of the great American emcee has been the narrative of “rapping your way out” - out of the hood, out of depression… out of boredom, even. If enough fans were willing to bump to your Hustle and Flow then you suddenly had a job, a reason to travel the world, maybe even a sense of purpose. In other words: the contemporary rapper reinvigorated the societal role of the troubadour, for better or for worse, and turned it into a career that can revel in its own proliferation of jesters. Mock it if you will, but most of us would lose that bank account battle to Offset. 

All this being said, the field is not as prone to capitalist nihilism as I may have inadvertently painted it to be. Not everyone on the mic is chasing a bag. I can never discount the affirmation derived from knowing that one’s didacticism can be honored by a whole community of listeners. I’ve felt it myself. It’s been my motivating factor as someone who doesn’t “have” to rap. Whether it makes Irie Givens a “real one” or not, I’m blessed to say I am not counting on the rap game to pay my bills. In its most charitable interpretation, it makes me a human who wants to be loved and lauded for performing an art I’ve loved and lauded my whole life. At worst, it’s me trying to sell you a can of Crip-a-Cola. 

This should snap us back to Mike, who reminds us as he did his elementary students: “We don’t care what you can think, we care what you can build.” While I’m not sure I’d universalize that maxim, I’m still willing to reply: ‘Bet’. As most emerging artists would tell you, the promoters booking them out of their obscurity probably couldn’t care less how hard you go on beat so long as you can buck the club up and sell drinks. Episode 5’s supergroup of Umars & ideologues damn sure couldn’t. Run the Jewels, however, can. Mike’s amiability in discourse is really just the happenstance of an intersection once can only be grateful for rather than demand of today’s major label artists - lest you risk disappointment. 

Ultimately, Trigger Warning left a glint in my eye that was enlightening as it was disheartening. Watching Mike’s own trials and errors brought the message home clearly: having a point does not equal having the means to solve the problem, whatever that problem may be. For many in America’s most (in)famous hip-hop incubation communities, that point can be as profitable as it is self-destructive. Just ask 6ixnine, who’s currently living through the longest segment of “When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong” of all time with an ending that should have surprised few. His final Breakfast Club interview now seems like a final shot in the dark at backtracking, even if several of the YouTube comments on his first BC interview congratulate him for - once again - having a point against the older heads. The generational dissonance is clear. If the hip-hop fans of today are complicit in 6ixnine’s demise, then all of our uncles should have taken responsibility for DMX slippin’, no? It would be lovely to see how many artists, younger or older, could get to the point Mike records from today: where selling a record becomes secondary to making a point you’d stick with after the indictment. 

Nah, YOU hush…
Provided by WorldStarHipHop.com

It’s important for hip-hop to continue to exist in some of its incarnations around the globe as a vessel for community-centered art. I believe it’s equally as important for it to propel emcees with a ‘point’ into economic, ideological and even spiritual (shouts out to Sleep) leadership on the blocks they rep on record. Where I’m willing to contradict myself is in saying that I also see it as necessary to kill the master plan that dictates who gets theirs in the rap game. That little boy probably won’t be president, and lots of us probably - and hopefully - won’t find ourselves as lost in the sauce as 6ixnine, no matter how hypocritically we roast him for living what he rapped.

What Trigger Warning also left me with was the comfort of knowing that someone in the game is advocating for a new model. Rapping till the heritage act contracts come doesn’t appeal to me anymore. Rapping until you don’t have to rap anymore, however, will probably pave the way to the real gems of any artist’s catalog.    

If skills sold, truth be told

I’d probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense

But I did 5 mill’ - I ain’t been rhyming like Common since.

JAY-Z, Moment of Clarity (2003)

—

Update: I kept rapping. Almost done with an LP now actually. In an ideal world I’d be finishing that up instead of resurrecting an old blunt’s wisdom… but we’re keeping all markets feasible for this new economy amirite?

Provided by Run the Jewels

About the author

Miles Iton is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and arts administrator. He is the founder of Lo-Fi Language Learning as well as n.e.Bodied Entertainment, both outlets for his endeavors in hip-hop multimedia. He is currently a Fulbright MA grantee to National Cheng Kung University, where he studies at the Institute of Creative Industries Design. For more information, he can be contacted at mw.iton@nebodiedent.org

Check out his music here!