Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music (2012) [Williams Street] // Grade: A+
This record was a long time in the making. Long before Killer Mike and El-P were connected via Williams Street (is it funny that cartoon network would have such an impact on hip hop that they’d become the impetus for this record?) there was a palpable void in the United States where hip hop had once held court. A music that had once been a potent outlet for dissent, had slowly become one mainly used to showcase wealth. But, the shift in hip hop wasn’t arbitrary. The creation of CDOs, and financial institutions’ subsequent efforts to exploit citizens through a combination of CDOs and unrealistic mortgages created a bubble of false wealth from the early 2000s through to 2008 or so.
Through CDOs financial institutions were able to manufacture false capital, and because they were abused to such an extreme extent the whole of the nation was affected by the flow of this false capital. It moved through the music industry with a particularly acute affect. If you look at rap music from 2000 through to 2008 you will no doubt find a growing legion of rappers defined by grotesque opulence, and grossly disproportionate amounts of money when compared those who came before them. This is the direct result of banks selling mortgages to citizens who could not afford them, then selling the risk on those loans to other banks at an exaggerated rate, squarely fucking the system out both ends.
The affect on hip hop was dramatic as the whole genre shifted to gradually become a giant advertisement for luxury brands, and the soundtrack for a lifestyle borne of the indulgences of false wealth. And when economic collapse ended the flow of this capital, and it all came crashing down it became painfully evident that we had gone quite some time without potent voices of dissent. Artists who in other times would have been a voice against the path our country took, were bought out with that very same false wealth that was destroying the nation. But, through all of that Killer Mike steadily built a reputation as someone who is dissenting—a real rapper who is a voice for, and in his community. During a time of struggle, Mike is offering the soundtrack to survival.
It’s almost odd that Mike’s career has run in tandem with this wave of economic fluctuation, but at the same time fitting. And so, when we need him most Mike has risen to the occasion and taken his art one step further. That’s not to say that previous efforts have been sub-par, but here we find Mike in the midst of music that is frankly indispensable. We needed this record as a nation. These are unsure times, and Mike is a very very certain voice. He is about survival, and that’s what this record is about. When we spoke earlier this year he stressed the title: “Rebellious African People’s Music”. He related the importance of many musical traditions (funk, gospel, spirituals, jazz, et cetera) to the survival of peoples of African descent. And while the obvious connection is the African part, I’m more interested in focusing on the surviving part.
Mike is a survivor for sure. You don’t last for 12 years as a rapper who never had a #1 single if you’re not a survivor. So who better than Killer Mike, who is clearly learned in survival, to guide us through the times when we have to accept that we must take our survival into our own hands? He’s a great example of that for sure. The country is burning, and Mike is one of a few people willing to talk about it, and looking to move people to prepare for how to survive after the burning embers of a decade of fiduciary pillaging and looting have cooled. And that is only the existential parts of the music. If you’ll remember from the Killer Mike and El-P interviews we published on the Bloglin earlier this year I talked to both Mike and El-P about the significance of this record in the history of rap music.
There was a time, a long time, when a record like this was not only impossible, but opposed. As the inner workings of the record industry were telling El-P that hip hop was dead, they were being financed by an institution that simply doesn’t exist any longer. And with the fall of that institution a great deal of artifice, and posturing has been removed from hip hop music. And, in this more candid state the meeting of El-P and Killer Mike comes together and rings truer than I could have ever imagined. It’s been a while since I listened to an El-P record, but just as he was there to define the beginning of a community running counter to the workings of a vapid institution, he is here again to define the ending of the same institution which ran counter to his earlier records as part of Company Flow, and later as Def Jux.
Yes, this is the meeting of two great minds, but it’s also the meeting of two distinct eras. There is so much more than just El-P making beats, and Killer Mike rapping. They essentially serve as avatars for two very distinct populations within this nation that have become increasingly indistinguishable over the course of the proliferation of the internet. There was a time when the overlap of El-P and Killer Mike’s audiences was slim to none. But not only that, the mentality behind the division was vehemently reinforced by the whole value system of hip hop. “Only this is real, and anything else that sounds like this, but isn’t this, isn’t real.” But we’ve seen hip hop turn from an incredibly reductive and emaciating means of defining itself, to this current renaissance in which all styles flourish welcomely and equally. This record is a clear indication that we are in the midst of the internet age. Without a doubt from the involvement of Williams Street, to the unlikely combination of artists, to the nature of the content, this is rap for today. Like, right now right now today. Amazing.
