By Odeisel

Humans evolve through trial and error. We make mistakes, we learn from them and we grow (hopefully) to better people. Killer Mike stands at a cross roads at his career. He’s a far cry from the rapper who appeared on Outkast’s “Whole World” and further still from the petulant rapper who broke a relationship with mentor Big Boi. Fully confident in his path of growth and development Mike readies himself and Grind Time for a new push into the shark infested waters of the music business. With a new album featuring instruments and a grown man mentality in sway, Planet Ill spoke with Killer Mike and tested his new millennium gangsta.

Planet Ill: Mike you’ve undergone a lot of musical evolution throughout your career. Musically, what have you learned in your time in the business?

Killer Mike: I think that a lot of people get stuck in what you’re known for. If Michael Jordan would have never came back from that knee injury, you would have only known him as a dunker. You would have never saw him develop a jump shot, or seen him become an incredible defensive guy. But he had all those skills early on. It’s just that we appreciated seeing a human being take flight.

I never forget, Rhymefest came to me and talked about how even though he liked that flow, he was like man you shouldn’t try to keep or build a whole style off that. You can’t do that. And I was like word. He said I want you to get on the beat and the beat that he gave me demanded the same flow. And another homie of mine out of Texas did the same thing with another couple artists and some would do and some I would resist but I could flow ten different wasy when I started rapping.

Like on Monster I used a few different styles and a lot of people walked away from Monster like, “Yo, you are a Southern Cube.” They could hear the energy already. But the evolution of me brought more of those comparisons. I don’t think that flow was my flow. I just think it was what was required for that song. I think that I have developed over the years a few different flows. I like to ride beats different ways. So I’m glad you appreciate that because I work hard to do it.

Planet Ill: How do you balance trying to be an artist that that would have a message, against being an artist that can entertain?

Killer Mike: I make gangsta rap. I’m a gangsta rapper. And I don’t mean the sucker shit that n***as do now. I mean like Chuck D, Like Ice Cube. Like Tupac. Like Paris. I’m a gangsta rapper so all that bullshit don’t even enter me. I can appreciate wanting Black people to be free and wanting poor people to be unoppressed and I can appreciate strippers in the Gold Club/ Magic City ‘cause I’m a man, in total.

Being free to me is being able to smoke weed unabated feed my children, get riches and not be oppressed. And don’t oppress nobody. My consciousness is based on the fact that y core values, is what’s right and wrong. It’s not an ideal or over romanticized or  a conscious rap label. Like I’m not accusing anyone else of doing that, but I don’t have that…I don’t sleep uncomfortable at night because  I don’t have that issue.

I will tell you on a record if your means to liberation, personal liberation not overall liberation has been crack cocaine, do more with it than buy a chian. Have a gas station and hire three people and legitimize yourself. And I say that with no guilt on my conscience. I’mma go to sleep just like Kennedy, whose grandfather started by running run would go to sleep. So my liberation and the way that I present what I present is from a much different perspective from a lot of dudes.  So I just don’t have that issue.

Planet Ill: How difficult is it to face, as a man, the issues that you used to embrace, but as you grow older you realize perhaps they weren’t the best things to embrace?

Killer Mike: You just call it for what it is. And you gotta call your own dumb shit. I can’t just call the Black community’s dumb shit or white people’s dumb shit or the government’s dumb shit, or whatever you perceive me to do. ‘Cause a lot of people have their own perception. So I drop a song called “Burn” about the social conditions of all Americans. Every now and then people think I’m only talking about Black Americans. I’m talking about ALL Americans. So  I can’t control the perceptions but all I do  just admit my dumb shit.

If you listen to my records, you hear the stories, the narratives. There’s a lot of good in the dumb shit I’ve done. And I try to put that out. When I talk about on a mixtape classic like “Dueces Wild” about just setting up; gratuitously getting robbed on Second Avenue. To me, that’s letting dudes know that I went through this. And at the point I was getting robbed, I did not try to be a hero and murder something.  I give up that shit, like Cee-lo told me ten years ago in his raps and told him, “You can take this lil car.” To me that’s conscious rap; to me that’s growth and development as an artist.

10 years ago in my rapping and real life I would have bucked him. And it would have been a shootout. And I might have died and not been here. My child would be a bastard. So I really try to put applicable messages in my shit. So as I have grown as a human being, I’ve tried to show that in my music and people seem to respond.

Like in “God In The Building” when I talk about literally being in the streets, and church women saying, “You’re obviously being called a preacher,” that’s because that’s a true story. It really happened and I’m going to put that in a rap. Based n scripture Jesus was in the streets with the people. So where else would I be but rapping and trying to do something. I just really try to say it for what it is. If I go and get on some dumb shit I just say it; that’s what it is.

Planet Ill: Looking back, do you think that you would have handled the situation with Big Boi differently, knowing now what you know?

Killer Mike: Yeah, entirely different. I’ve said that for a few years. You just have people that have their own agendas and filters and a lot of times when two people have differences of opinion or have what appears to be a fallout or something like that, people get in the ears of both people and something irrevocable happens. I’m glad in this one, it’s not the case. Big Boi reached out to me a couple months ago. He and I chopped it up a bit; we been hanging out, making music together. I just tell anybody that’s ever had a falling out with a homeboy, compadre or a partner; if you’ve ever loved anybody. Real shit, just on some country boy shit, I’m glad my partner reached back out. My partner been hollaring. And that just feels good. All that rap bullshit to the side.

Definitely as a man, I would have done things differently. I don’t get in the business of criticizing Big Boi as a boss or a label executive because since leaving and running Grind Time, I definitely got an experience firsthand of the trials and tribulations. I think just life lessons for all Black men in that, is we gotta learn to be more forgiving towards one another. We got to let friendship and comradeships, above all, just grow. And as you grow into manhood you learn in a lot of situations it wasn’t other people wanting to hold you down, it was your ambition, before you was fully prepared to be that ambitious.

It wasn’t aww man, I couldn’t go on MTV too, it really was you should have been in the studio working at that point. And I’m not saying those were my personal things, I’m just saying that if you look at situations from all different angles you would be a lot more temperate in your reactions. I’m a very fiery person I have tendencies to be fiery I’m just glad I went through the phase that I had to get out here and bust my ass and build something on my own and the greatest reward in building something on your own is having your friend hit you up like, “I been listening to everything you doing and I’m fucking with it.”

Planet Ill: is there anything that you would like to get off your chest?

Killer Mike: In terms of rap, in terms of rapping multiple styles, in terms of having endured and built his own, in terms of spitting flows and going  hard, in terms of that man I gotta start being talked about in the top five. I gotta be.

This album feels like an album. It’s not a record that I just put together with 10-12 multiple pieces. It is an album; an experience. In the same way that Aquemini was an experience, in the same way that Blueprint was an experience, in the same way that to me, Life After Death was an experience. The same was that 50’s first album was an experience. Game’s second record for me was an experience. In the same way that Efil4zaggin was an experience. This whole record for me, from start to finish, goes. I’ve never really sat down and said, “I’m going to make records with the purpose of making your ass jam.”  And I sat down and did that this time. I did a hell of a job.  But the instrumentation it just really added a new depth and layer to my music I had been looking forward to doing it for the last few years. It’s probably going to become the cornerstone of my sound for years to come.

Full Audio killer mike cut

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