Killer Mike goes off: ‘Right now, in this country, your freedom of speech is at risk’

Rapper Killer Mike argued in a April keynote speech that when laws are enacted to use government as a force to quell dissent, “the first and worst cases are Black people.” Run the Jewels rapper Michael “Killer Mike” Render had a lot to say this week about free speech, and he did it in a keynote address during a gala in New York. New album “RTJ4” came out after Killer Mike’s viral speech on race and pain but before the police killing of Rayshard Brooks. Killer Mike, who wrote the foreword to “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America,” argued that when laws are enacted to use government as a political force to quell dissent, “the first and worst cases are Black people.” He called for the release of Atlanta rapper Young Thug and others whose music and lyrics have been used against them in court, notably describing how he saw a young lawyer “clumsily recite” Thug’s lyrics in court and then attempt to argue that lyrics the rapper “made up while stoned and high” should get him imprisoned for up to 40 years. And his grandfather explained that people whose speech was free to the point of overt racism let a person know “who your enemies are when you walk into a room.” Music Run the Jewels on making music that mixes the personal and the political In early December, while Killer Mike waited in a Hollywood rehearsal space for El-P, his musical partner in the acclaimed rap duo Run the Jewels, the subject of politics and movies came up.