Killer Mike’s parallel career as a revered public speaker continues, as the Run the Jewels’ rapper has confirmed that he will appear as part of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Hip-Hop Speaker Series.
Following his recent lecture at NYU, he will lead a talk entitled Race Relations in the US, and joins Young Guru and Lil B as speakers at the institution. On 24 April, he will address how current and future technologies impact race relation issues, covering “topics such as Ferguson, to the SAE incident in Oklahoma, to white privilege and black empowerment”.
His recent endeavours follow a series of pivotal moments for the 40-year-old musician: video footage of the rap duo’s performance at St Louis’s Ready Room Club, hours after the announcement that police officer Darren Wilson would not face charges after shooting an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, went viral, as Killer Mike made a powerful speech to the audience, quoting Martin Luther King and expressing his fears for future generations.
Since then, Killer Mike has discussed Ferguson on news shows as well as co-authoring a piece for USA Today on the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials.
Run the Jewels’ recent video for Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) also focused on the culture of violence between police and public. It features a white police officer and a black youth locked in a strange, violent struggle which has no resolution or reason. “This video represents the futile and exhausting existence of a purgatory-like law enforcement system,” said El-P of Run the Jewels. “There is no neat solution at the end because there is no neat solution in the real world. However, there is an opportunity to dialogue and change the way communities are policed in this country.”
