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The South Will Rise

The bulky and murderous Killer Mike chops it up with Loosie.

by Douglas Passion | 2002.12.09

He's the burly dude from Atlanta who rides beats with the best of them. You've heard Killer Mike on Outkast's "The Whole World" and Jay-Z's "Poppin' Tags". His debut album, Monster, is on the way from Aquemini/Columbia. Loosie chats with Killer Mike about lyricism, fur coats, politics and guns.

Talk about your music.

With my music, man, I just try my best to give the people what they want. You gotta give people something to move they ass to. But beyond that, I try to challenge my audience. I don’t like feeling as though I’m dummying down to people. I expect the best out of rap – and I expect the best out of rap fans. I think Eminem is the greatest thing that could happen for lyricists right now. Black and white kids live him. Black kids love him for his words – and I haven’t seen that in a very long time. The urban audience loves an MC again for his words – not what he’s wearing, not what he’s got, but by the way he manipulates words. Fuck what you heard. Eminem’s probably the best fucking thing for the urban audience right now. Now the urban audience has to be open to hear that Black kid that does the same thing, that Latin kid that does the same thing. That’s what the urban audience has to open up to. And the artist that’s doing it has to do it in a way that’s entertaining to that audience.

Can that type of music be successful?

It’s selling. Listen to Jay. Listen to Nas. Listen to Em. It’s selling – but it has to become a movement.

Besides better music, what would be the benefit of a rise in lyricism?

First of all, it would probably pick up fucking reading scores nationwide. And that’s the truth. Most people aren’t reading over a fucking 8th grade level now. It ain’t even about big words. It’s about falling in move with language. I love to rap, therefore I had to develop a love for reading. I had to become more observant. Even to do what Em does with pop culture, you have to be really observant and intuitive and think very deeply about some things that seem shallow. If nothing else, man, what is does is just turn wheels. ‘Cause rap ain’t about making nobody listen to a particular philosophy and follow it – it’s about introducing new ideas and challenging thought. Whether that thought be ‘all women is bitches’ from NWA or ‘black women are queens’ from dead prez, whichever one, it’s meant to stimulate thought. That’s what good lyricists do. You gotta come to people where they are. And I respect that. The kids that are listening to rap now, they haven’t gotten a chance to see the shit at its brilliance. And I don’t mean, ‘you didn’t get a chance to see it from ’88 to ’92.’ That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying they haven’t had a chance to hear Lil Wayne do what Lil Wayne can do best. That’s what I’m interested in seeing. They haven’t had a chance to see T.I. do what he does best. This album is a great album, I feel. But my next album is going to kill this fucking album. I want this album to be successful so my audience will be like ‘okay, Mike, we willing to take another journey with you.’ And I’m a really show you what to do with words then.

Outkast had a similar growth pattern to what you’re describing. Andre was wearing normal clothing – a Braves jersey – and now he’s wearing flamingo outfits.

Well actually, be observant. I’m not going to tell you the next move, but look at Andre in the last few performances.

Are we going to see you start wearing furs everywhere? Constant furs?

Nah, you’re not going to see the costume jewelry and furs with me, but I wear jerseys ‘cause I’m a sports fanatic. But at the end of the day I wear t-shirts and sneakers ‘cause I’m from the inner city.

I’ve caught a lot of sports references in your music -- Michael Vick, Allen Iverson, Randy Moss.

Santana Moss. [laughter] Hip-Hop, in terms of elements of it, like the dancing in the Erykah Badu video, they’re battling. This ain’t about ‘let me throw some break dancers in it ‘cause it’s cute’, this is about who want to win. That’s my attraction to sports and Hip-Hop. It’s really a battle of wills – who’s going to win that competition. It’s a discipline and we practice hard like athletes do. Yeah, at one point, I’m probably going to have on some jewelry. I’m going to do it in a way that’s tasteful to me. I got gold teeth in my pocket right now – I’m from the South. My grandmother has gold teeth. I can’t help it, I was influenced by it. I like looking fly, but at the end of the day, I walk in here, and this is what my audience wears, t-shirts and Timberlands, t-shirts and Nikes, t-shirts and Reeboks. Working class values, blue-collar values. I worked at UPS, I can’t tell you how much shit I stole out of there. That was when they were still doing guns [laughter].

Who is your audience?

Really, man, it’s time for some testosterone to come back in the game. I know women buy more of the music, but I’m a firm believer that women like testosterone. And they like boys – they like to see fucking beat-up, dirty boys that play, go get washed up later, and put on something nice. That’s my offering, man. Some testosterone. Some bravado. Some kick-ass and take names later. That’s what I want to see. I want that 15-year old boy to want to go and buy that album. I want his mother to be absolutely fucking horrified. This ain’t your mother’s music. Why is my fucking mother telling me how much she likes the latest song? You ain’t cool no more, you’re a fucking grandmother. I want to make music that takes her back – ‘cause that’s the moment I’m in right now. Raging hormones, testosterone, man.

The formula for commercial music seems pretty simple right now – make a song that will get played in the club and that girls will like. Testosterone and battling, how do they fit into the current climate?

I think it’s time for it. These kids, in t-shirts and sneakers, they want to move. These kids aren’t buying Eminem because he’s banging in the clubs. He’s not. They’re buying him because they’re feeling the words. They’re feeling the angst and the anger and the passion. People criticize Ja, but I didn’t buy “Holla” because of the girls on the beach. I liked they song ‘cause when I heard it, it made me want to move. DMX’s first two albums? Get the fuck out of here. Every time they played that shit in the South, niggas were like ‘hell fucking yeah’. That’s what I want to see continue. I really feel like we suffered a great loss went we lost Shyne [and when] Beans album didn’t do two or three million. When Shyne dropped “Bad Boys”, with just that raw beat and him bustin’, all these wild-looking Jamaicans…Beans, when he dropped “The Truth”, when he was in that fucking gritty-ass apartment, when he rolled over and was like “my wife’s like I gotta change my life/ motherfucker, I need to change my wife.” How real is that? That’s the subject matter – I’m saying, ‘let me take this shit and push it to 120 fucking miles per hour.’ Let me see what the fuck this car can do going 160 with no headlights.

Remember Hip-Hop during Bill Clinton’s campaign? Hip-Hop was challenging the media. People aren’t worried about Hip-Hop any more.

I know, man. It’s something comfortable. It’s a sad day when the only rapper Bill O’Reilly got to pick on is Ludacris. Come on, man, Luda ain’t going to hurt nobody.

At the same time, isn’t it a sad day when Pepsi feels comfortable with Ludacris?

Yeah, man. It is. It really is. And really, man, fuck Bill O’Reilly. Fuck Pepsi. I’m from Coca-Cola land anyway – I’m from Atlanta. What I hate though – and this is not a criticism of Luda – is that as rappers we don’t feel obligated to meet any motherfucking oppression with equal and opposite force. Imagine if St. Ide’s would have tried that shit with Ice Cube. Cube would’ve had the whole South Central throwing St. Ide’s bottles out of convenience stores and drinking 8-Ball again. Think about it, rappers really realized their power back then. And not we as rappers, but we as an urban market. The rep from Reebok told me one time ‘if we can convince urban youth, from 14 to 25 to buy it, we can sell the shit all over the world.’ What was Reebok doing before Cash Money came back out? Look at the numbers. Do you know 80% of Hennessey’s buyers are black? 80%. Have you looked at any Hennessey advertisements lately – outside of the ones in Vibe and these urban magazines? We don’t represent that. So my thing is ‘fuck that.’ If you not going to rep us, why should we rep you. That’s not just for Hennessey, that’s for all of them. Look what happened to Tommy when Puba said ‘no more, b.’ Trick Daddy’s not wearing Polo no more, man. The Lox brought Iceberg out. The fucking Lox. It’s cute that all these cute rappers wear Iceberg now, but when I saw the Lox – them fucking hard-ass niggas in Snoopy sweaters – I was like ‘oh, shit.’ Until we realize, as urban youth and as rappers, our control over the marketplace, we’re powerless. Fuck that. Turn it on ‘em. You come at me, I’m coming at you. I don’t want you as my fucking friend, you’re better as an enemy. I want to crush you. That’s why I respect ‘Pac doing what he did to C. Delores Tucker. Look at Dionne Warwick -- look at how she criticized Snoop, look at how she slandered his fucking name. Wouldn’t even pronounce his name right. And what was insulting to me when she was doing that name shit to Snoop was that she don’t realize that’s what white people used to do to Blacks. So sitting in front of that Congressional committee of all white men as a Black woman, fucking slandering his name – you gave them the permission to do the same thing to him. But who comes out against you when you get caught with weed? Man, we should’ve. Man, we should’ve, Auntie Dionne. Anybody that comes against us, we gonna get you.

Do you speak on these politics on your album?

Not politics in an overt way – like who to vote for. That’s not my job. My job is to say ‘if it ain’t good for poor and oppressed people, then it probably ain’t good for me.’ My job is to say ‘I feel that this is an injustice to me.’ And do it in a way so that it’s not preaching. I just want to help stimulate thought.

What do you say to criticism that some Hip-Hop glorifies, say, selling crack? It’s excused as ‘well, I’m just telling the reality.’ Street level dealers talking about ‘I’m cool because I moved bricks.’

I try very hard to keep shit on my albums as real as possible. And real, not in a cliché way…but like, man, my mother suffers from addiction. My mother. I don’t know crack because I met a fucking Columbian and he fronted me a hundred ki’s. I know crack because my mother smoked crack. And I lived for a short time in a house with her and said ‘whoa, I should maybe sell this to her fucking friends and get money.’ That’s how most street level dealers get introduced to crack. It ain’t through a connect. On “Monster”, when I say 'doped up on Ritalin by age ten, by sixteen a fiend with a bottle and a weed habit', I’m just letting you know, you set me up to be a junkie. You introduced me to drugs, putting me on Ritalin. You introduced me to drugs, smoking weed in front of me when I was five. I definitely don’t agree with glorifying everything, but, at the end of the day, it’s art – you going to put a little candy on it, you gonna make it look new and shiny. Look what’s glorified in the media. Look what’s glorified in movies. The way you win in America is ‘fight, fight, fight.’ Why wouldn't the most oppressed people take that and go all the way left?

We’re talking about this at a time when we’ve got war; we’ve got snipers. America has a culture of violence.

That’s what we know – especially in the South. Fuck all those clichés about ‘everybody’s cool, everybody knows everybody.’ Niggas in the South is cool because everybody know pretty much everybody else got guns. At the end of the day, I got guns. I don’t have a gun, I got guns. In my house. Guns. I got Macs, I got four-fifths – and they legal. I can just wake up and go buy a gun. So I don’t really want to go and get in a road-rage situation with anybody else in the South – ‘cause nine times out of ten, he’s got guns. That’s why it’s some cool shit.

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