On the way to our next stop, Mike explains to me how Mr. Murray taught high school art for decades despite owning a successful funeral home. Over the years he mentored Mike and scores of other students, teaching them painting, photography, history, and how to grow their own food.
He understands I have a podium. But he's also backed democratic socialist candidates like Bernie Sanders, who, Mike has said, operates in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. The most infamous example of Mike's mixed messaging came in , when he decided to sit down with NRATV, the former online broadcasting arm of the pro-gun organization. The conversation, which, he says, was supposed to be about Black gun ownership, devolved into an exchange about the National School Walkout and youth-led anti-gun protests following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
He didn't know it yet, but the NRA would use that short sound bite to blast protesters, posting it on Twitter a little past noon on March 24, , as the student-led March for Our Lives took place in D. Mike apologized soon after. I'm sorry that adults on the left and the right are choosing to use me as a lightning rod. Still, the damage was done. Mike doesn't apologize for sitting down with the NRA, however. He believes, at his core, that Black Americans should find allies wherever they can.
Mike repeats this a few times throughout the afternoon. He doesn't say it about the NRA directly, but it speaks to how he measures allies and enemies.
As we cruise around, I ask him if he plans on voting for Joe Biden in November. He demurs, asking me if Biden plans on signing H. I don't give a shit about liking you or you liking me. What I give a shit about is if your policies are going to benefit me and my community in a way that will help us get a leg up in America. That's it. Because we deserve a leg up, and I'm not ashamed to say it. My great-grandmother, who taught me how to sew a button, was taught how to sew a button because her grandmother was enslaved.
The daughter of a slave taught me and encouraged me to write, read, sew buttons, take care of myself. So why the fuck am I going to accept anything? I don't give a fuck if you kneel in kente cloth. Give a shit. What have you got for me? It speaks to the philosophy that undergirds all of Killer Mike's political ideas and positions.
Before anything, Mike is a Black man from the American South who is deeply skeptical of how much a white supremacist, heteropatriarchal power structure built on the evils of capitalism will do to ensure his freedom. So he's willing to embrace methodologies and tactics from across the political spectrum to see what works. That shit don't make no sense to me. It's not realistic. At the same time, he recognizes that he's not the last word on all of this.
And he's also not constrained by philosophical perspectives. This is a guy who's not frozen in ideology. It's mobile for him. Mike is for Black banks, Black businesses, Black guns, Black colleges, Black homeownership—all things Black Americans can do here and now without passing a law or asking for permission.
He's also for using Black voting power to wrest everything we're owed from the government. It's Black nationalism with a hint of socialism and armed to the teeth. Atlanta is no utopia, but it is perhaps the American city where this vision is best realized. Blacks make up more than half of its population, and that people power has led to the election of six Black mayors since Atlanta's leaders have worked closely with the business community since then—companies like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Delta, and UPS, all based in Atlanta—to create opportunity.
Despite that, there's still extreme inequity in the city. According to a report from the Brookings Institution, Atlanta's jobless rates in sat at It worked through Jim Crow. It worked for the last 50 years with Black leadership—controversial at times, other times as smooth as a sewing machine, but it has worked at every stage. At every stage, Blacks in Atlanta have found a way. In the s, Atlanta became a major hub for cocaine trafficking, a development that went hand in hand with the rise of its smokable derivative, crack.
It was cheap, easy to make, and lucrative to sell, and it took Atlanta by storm, especially throughout Mike's beloved Westside as boys his age seized an opportunity to make money.
What year-old ain't going to do that? Selling drugs gave him independence, a way to get the things he wanted without having to bother his grandparents, who were, by then, raising him and his two sisters. He hid the spoils of his work, new sneakers and clothes, at friends' houses so his grandparents wouldn't know what he was up to. His mother knew, though. She had become something of a queenpin herself, supplying cocaine to dealers in Decatur.
Take your own. Don't talk. Don't tell. If you know it's their day, give them their day. He carried those lessons with him throughout his teen years, especially when he'd get his ass kicked by Red Dog the brutal Atlanta police unit created to Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia.
He avoided major charges and got away with his life. Mike picked up wisdom along the way. He watched how hustlers, Westside legends like Fat Steve, moved. They flipped their money by reinvesting in the community. They started businesses and bought up abandoned properties, sometimes whole blocks, just to keep the neighborhood secure from outside influence. They got paid, drove dump trucks, they owned multiple homes.
They had rental properties. They knew how to do their own handyman work. This is what we do. By the time graduation approached, he was more interested in music and going to college. He got into Morehouse, Dr. King's alma mater, on a scholarship and attended for two semesters, but it wasn't for him.
He liked rapping too much and, seeing a music scene on the rise in Atlanta, wanted to find his way into the industry. So Mike did what he knew how to do and hustled. He linked up with some friends, bought recording equipment, and produced a mixtape. Mike gave CeeLo his demo, and the two quickly became friends, connecting on music and the social issues explored on Goodie Mob's first album, Soul Food. The two would go on to form a production duo called the Beat Bullies, and they helped introduce Mike to Big Boi of OutKast shortly after.
Mike is amazed when he considers his unlikely ascent. That's an Iceberg Slim book. That's a goddamn BET movie. But that's for real, you know, that's for real. So I got to believe everything is possible.
I've got to. His aspirations—whether they be in music, TV, politics—are all integrated into who he already is. There is no big plan. He sits on the board of Atlanta's High Museum of Art and drops in on classes at Morehouse not out of ambition but because, to him, it's the right thing to do. Killer Mike contains multitudes, but if you had to boil him down, you'd get a concerned citizen who just happens to be a rapper.
Mike and I end our tour of the Westside at Bankhead Seafood, the restaurant he bought in with T. It's a large brick structure on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway.
It's been given a fresh coat of paint and branded with a new logo, but it's still no-frills. It could be any fish spot in any Black neighborhood in America. I find myself inspired as Mike explains that the year-old business almost closed its doors for good before he and T.
They not only bought the restaurant but purchased the recipes from its original proprietor, Helen Brown Harden. That's how you honor those who came before you, Mike says, and maintain the integrity of the business.
I don't know if Mike's success story could happen anywhere but Atlanta. It seems impossible to replicate, let alone scale up, for all the little Black boys coming up on the Westside today. That won't stop Mike from trying, though, because—for all the theory he's read and plans he's heard—his way, the Atlanta Way, is the only way he's seen actually work.
A few days after we met, an Atlanta police officer killed a year-old Black man named Rayshard Brooks. According to video footage, Brooks was asleep in a Wendy's drive-through when he was approached by police responding to a complaint. A struggle ensued, and Brooks attempted to run away with an officer's Taser. It is unclear why the situation escalated so quickly after 41 minutes of peaceful interaction. What is indisputable, however, is that Brooks ended up dead, with two bullets in his back.
The officer who fired the shots was relieved of duty immediately, and he was later charged with felony murder and aggravated assault. The officer's lawyers have stated that his actions were justified. Atlanta police chief Erika Shields resigned from her post within hours of the incident. The rapid response didn't stop protesters from shutting down a nearby interstate, and the Wendy's where Brooks was killed was burned to the ground. I call Mike a few days after. Around The Web Provided by Taboola.
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