Killer Mike and the return of the politically engaged rapper.

Killer Mike is touted as proclaiming the return of politically engaged rap in another story by the New Republic that thinks back over his vocation and analyzes how he's come to ascend as a standout amongst the most unmistakable, frank rappers today.

“I just try my best, man, to say something about the shit I see,” he said. “Because I don’t want to go crazy. I don’t want to be walking around angry and feeling rage. You say something, and you organize what you can.” In Killer Mike’s case that means using his recently increased visibility to change people’s minds. “The way you start to break down systemic racism,” he said, “is to start building individual relationships with people who are not like you.” He pointed out that most of the people he meets when he gives university talks about race are white. “It’s a totally different spiel when I talk at Morehouse,” he said. “But when I’m talking at MIT? At the University of Cincinnati? I’m telling white people: In order to stop systemic racism, you must first befriend, become a colleague of, get to know intimately, put yourself culturally in the framework of someone who doesn’t look like you,” he said. “And it sounds so simple. But when you do it, it becomes such a feat. Because it forces you, on an individual level, to challenge every preconceived thing your team has ordained as OK.” Systemic racism, he told me, will never end in this country until “the supposed progressives, or the passively liberal whites that I speak to at these universities, get angry enough to join forces with the people who are also fighting the same systems.”

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