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photo via Ben Roazen
Run The Jewels has an audience that defies demographics, and Killer Mike knows it.
A diverse crowd congregated in the basement auditorium of New York University’s Global Center for Academic 7 Spiritual Life building (GCASL, pronounced ‘G-Castle’) on a Monday night to hear the rapper speak. Notable items in the audience: an Invader Zim T-shirt, a Haruki Murakami novel, longboards, dreadlocks, seapunk blue hair, suits, and an indoor beanie. Throughout his nearly three-hour talk, Mr. Michael Render repeatedly mentioned the width (and depth, calling his crowds were “hyper-intelligent”) of RTJ’s core fanbase.
The event itself was marketed as “a lecture on Ferguson, Police Brutality, For Profit Prisons And More.” The “more” took on the most recent examples of race politics in America, from the video footage of SAE frat boys singing racist chants to Kendrick Lamar’s “Blacker The Berry.” Mike brought these current events back to the idea of poor black boys being “crabs in a barrel,” noting “crabs aren’t supposed to be in a barrel in the first place, so of course they’re gonna end up pulling each other down.”
Much of the burly MC’s TED Talk-esque lecture was a close reading of his classic “Reagan.” He unpacked the broader contemporary social implications of his raps rather than retreading the vile deeds of a dead white president. Mike acknowledged that no one in an NYU lecture hall needed Malcolm X’s “the ballot or the bullet” reference Rap Genius’d to them.
Instead, he had more pressing issues to discuss, namely: boycotting those who supported for-profit prisons, voting locally, and supporting local black-owned small businesses on some bona fide #RUNTHEJEWELS2016 type shit. When Mike asked who would stop buying Jordans if allegations of MJ’s investments in prisons turned out to be true, a forest of hands shot up.
Mike also expressed a general distaste for the media circus: he was tired of being played like “a professional wrestling heel” on media outlets like CNN and FOX.
Mike also expressed a general distaste for the media circus: he was tired of being played like “a professional wrestling heel” on media outlets like CNN and FOX, both of whom he described as “steaming shitbags of shit on a mountain of shit.” He acknowledged recent media fiascos like 2 Chainz’ appearance on Nancy Grace’s show (“I know Nancy Grace is putting on a show. 2 Chainz wore a nice sweater, Nancy Grace probably smokes weed.”) and Don Lemon’s general buffoonery. (“Please stop talking for black people, please…just…stop.”)
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Photo via Ben Roazen
I’m sure all of this sounds angry. And it most certainly is. But Killer Mike is also, like, ridiculously nice. The talk’s recurring focus was that Mike just wants us all to, “go make friends with someone who doesn’t look like you.” In order to do this, he encouraged, “Jews to go to another church, Muslims to go to another church” and for Bible-thumping Christians to “please get out of church!” More importantly, he encouraged all of us upstanding college students to mentor at least one public school kid (again, preferably one who didn’t look like us) to foster “a lineage of intelligence.”
Go make friends with someone who doesn’t look like you!
Mike is even gracious when he disagrees with people. When asked how he dealt with artists like A$AP Ferg, Common, and Pharrell who had spoken out about a post-racial “New Black,” Mike said his mentality was, “I love you but I disagree witchu,” and he encouraged people to engage in challenging dialogues and to separate the art from the artist.
Once he wrapped up, Mike then took as many questions as the event’s organizers would allow. Then he took pictures, signed T-shirts, CDs, hugged, thanked, and threw the RTJ hand-signs with with fans he never hesitated to call friends. He told me I looked “kinda like El, but with better hair.”
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Photo via Ben Roazen
Flex.
