Pump Those Breaks! Killer Mike Not Yet Ready For Political Office

On Monday Michael Render aka Killer Mike announced his candidacy in a special election for state house district 55 in Georgia.  He went on Instagram to ask everyone to write his name in at the polls. One problem however…

Mike cannot run as a write-in candidate without filling the paperwork that would be necessary. That did not kill his aspirations and excitement. He went back 5 hours later to post a video on Instagram to acknowledge he cannot run and was happy that he was able to draw attention to this race.

We have BIG Problems in education, schools and prison reform in Ga and I wanna see change. I wanna see Yall active in Local politics. The fact that ya’ll are willing to support me shows change is possible and while I run around rapping with @thereallyrealelp doing #RunTheJewels for the next few yrs I want ya’ll to get & stay active and Run for office! We need more New and fresh ideas & people!

Killer Mike also ended with the comment, “I will Run In the Future and We Will Win! Love and Respect Michael Render.” Special elections tend to always have very small voting turnout, so even if Killer Mike cannot run being able to see if he changed the outcome will be worth watching out for.

There seems to be a real change in consciousness in hip hop as of late. The success of J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar was a sign with their sales and corresponding content, but rappers wanting to actually run for office is another beast in itself. 2 Chainz and Waka Flocka have expressed their intentions and thoughts about running for public office.

If people will take Donald Trump for president seriously, that is all the more reason for rappers to organize and run for office of their own.

Killer Mike Says Bill ‘O Reilly Is ‘Full of Sh*t’ and ‘Stupid to Link Violence and Hip-Hop’

Never one to shy away from controversy, Killer Mike was on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. The political show delved into Bill O’ Reilly’s absurd claim that the decline of Christianity is due to hip hop. In response Mike said:

I like Bill O’Reilly the character but I hate how white people take him so seriously,” Killer Mike said to Maher. “He’s more full of shit than an outhouse. I’m gonna go in a black club and see Bill O’Reilly with a stripper on his lap, I guarantee you that. He’s as fictional as those books he writes.”

In a comedic moment Killer Mike pokes some holes in Bill O’ Reilly’s statement by saying how black women are some of the most devoted people to Jesus. Even going to compare Jesus to Tupac Shakur.

“He was arguably a black guy, or at least dark,” he said. “Hung with a posse of homies, one of them was strapped with a knife. Went to war with the government, lost, like a lot of black guys do. And everybody loved him more after he died, like Tupac.”

In the show’s overtime segment, Killer Mike explains how Hip-Hop began as an alternative for violence. Also admitting it has gone off the rails a bit, but breaks how stupid it is to link the two.

“All these kids that were kind of the fallout kids of the Black Nationalist movement, Civil Rights, poor white people’s movement, Puerto Rican Nationalism movement – they had street gangs in New York, in the Bronx, that were just essentially burned out. At some point in the very late ’60s, early ’70s, these kids were like ‘We’re going to come up with our own peace treaty.’ They came up with their own peace treaty, decided that, ‘We aren’t going to engage in violence.’”

Thankfully, he also reminded that rap music is not hip-hop but only a pillar to what the culture really is. In another part of information rarely put in perspective is how hip-hop artists stimulate the economies in the areas they come from that never would have been otherwise.

“At our core, hip-hop, every time you see a successful rapper, you’re seeing a job creator in the community. Jay Z has provided hundreds of jobs and created dozens of millionaires and it’s changed the economy in places it wouldn’t have. OutKast in Atlanta, personally changed the economy in the last twenty years.”

Of all the violent acts that are committed in this world and the reasoning behind them, hip-hop is one of the last things pundits like Bill O’ Reilly need to worry about. Of course he will likely spin this on his show sometime this week. As long as rappers like Killer Mike are around to articulate those that do not understand then hip-hop will be in a good place.

But in other news today, a shocking report was released by Gawker.com which reported that Fox’s big mouth also was accused of brutally beating his former wife back in 2010. According the reporter, Bill O’ Reilly dragged then wife MaureenMcPhilmy down a flight of steps by her neck and his young daughter was a witness to it. Good thing he is not trying to blame that too on hip hop.

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