In Sam Greenlee’s 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat By the Door, protagonist Dan Freeman is a Black revolutionary moonlighting as a CIA agent, hellbent on protecting himself and his people from a world on fire. The author described the book as part Civil Rights Era satire and part “training manual for guerrilla warfare,” and its portrayal of revolution as salvation is as relevant now as it was 54 years ago. With it, Greenlee aimed to inspire Black readers to take action, “rather than always reacting as victims of a racist society.”
These kinds of well-intentioned but flawed sentiments, which place more blame on the individual than the system built to keep them down, have been connecting deeply with Killer Mike these days. The Atlanta rapper’s resurgence as one-half of Run the Jewels alongside El-P in the early 2010s amplified his already potent sociopolitical consciousness to superhuman levels. Those records were equally fun and confrontational: loose but always focused on raging against the racial and economic injustices of the world and forging a path ahead.
During Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, Mike’s spirited battle cries captured so much of the country’s discontent. On “Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost),” from Run the Jewels 3, he rapped, “You can burn the system and start again.” A few songs later, he emphasized the importance of redistributing wealth to sex workers. At the same time, he was taking that radical spirit into the real world, building community-minded businesses and organizing food drives, among other initiatives. RTJ albums, especially the third and fourth ones, didn’t just foreground the kind of revolutionary anger and civil disobedience found in Spook—they gave it a modern urgency and a sense of direction.
But in the years since, Mike’s fiery raps have gradually taken a backseat to some less-than-ideal optics. He went from endorsing Bernie Sanders for president to taking an interview with NRA TV to having an inopportune meeting with Georgia’s Republican governor. Like the protagonist of Greenlee’s novel, Mike sees himself as a leader offering his people tools in a world stacked against them. But from another angle, it appears as though he’s doubling back, more content to work within the system than rail against it. It’s a familiar arc for so many who spend their lifetimes fighting for social change. When the landscape shifts and you start to lose touch, it’s easy to dig your heels in.
His latest album Michael—his first solo record since 2012’s R.A.P. Music—centers these conflicts and closes the gap between Killer Mike the rapper and Michael Render the husband, father, son, and born-again child of God. At its heart, Michael is an origin story that works best when it examines how worshiping at the altars of sex, money, and Jesus created the man we know today. But when he petulantly doubles down on critiques of his public persona and status as a Black multi-millionaire, the album is harder to stomach.