I was in the building when Killer Mike got arrested at the Grammy Awards.
Well, sort of: I was in a darkened “war room” at Los Angeles’s Crypto.com Arena, exhaustedly working the show amid a sea of glowing screens, as their website’s Staff Writer. For many reasons, that was a rough night for me (to say nothing of Mike’s predicament). I can’t say I’ve delved too deeply into Run the Jewels, but I’ve always admired the man, in word and deed at the very least — so that certainly caught my attention.
Flash forward from February to sticky late July: after three and a half years at the Recording Academy, I’d been blindsided with a layoff days earlier, due to companywide budget cuts.
On that following Monday night — while licking my wounds, reconstituting my professional life and navigating this change — I decided to slip out from my sleepy Jersey neighborhood to Greenwich Village. And there I was, at the Blue Note, with a beaming Killer Mike, on the other end of that crisis — flanked by gospel singers, all clad in white, resurrection-style. Stuffed in a booth with perfect strangers, I was ready for direct communion.
On the drive, I checked out Mike’s latest single, “Humble Me,” in which he directly addresses the unfortunate Grammys incident. (He got in an altercation with who he characterized as an “over-zealous security guard”; he was booked and released, and will not face charges.)
“Humble Me” provides a startling view into Mike’s psyche: “I was sitting there in a room full of cops like Daniel was sitting with the lions/ I had to quiet my mind, I prayed and I prayed, and I prayed/ The liars were lyin’ their lies, I kept on just keepin’ my faith.”
And his new gospel-powered project, Michael and the Mighty Midnight Revival — who’ll drop their first project, Songs for Sinners and Saints, on August 2 — shows he’s kept it well. It’s billed as an epilogue to 2023’s hyper-personal Michael — that album that netted those wins for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance, the latter two for “Scientists & Engineers.”
On the podcast circuit in support of Michael, Killer Mike explained that the album opened a spiritual entryway to the rest of his life. “I want 10 more years. I want 15 more years,” he told Joe Budden. “This record starts that. It’s a reset. My wife woke up and said, ‘Happy resurrection day.’”
At the Blue Note — night one, set one of a three-night run — we felt that benediction. “I know there’s something divine in every human being sitting here!” Mike proclaimed amid a wave of organ trills. He was backed by the Songs of for Sinners and Saints vocalists: Jordan Alyssa, Adonica Nunn, Troy Durden, Jori, Alicia Peters-Jordan. (In an interlude, they introduced themselves with brief yet head-spinning vocal spots, on tunes like Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” and the “Cheers” theme song.)
Together, they launched into a set of tracks from said project — like the aforementioned “Humble Me” — but also those from Michael (like “Run” and “Talk’n that Shit!”) as well as his features on Big Boi’s “Kill Jill” and Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared.” (The magnitude of said Outkast legend in Killer Mike’s history cannot be overstated; it was he who asked the pivotal question, “You want to be a dope dealer, or you want to be a rapper?”)
Live rap can be a mixed bag, and sometimes a detached experience, but Killer Mike put his entire chest into the hour-and-change performance. This isn’t the province of mindless bluster and lame backing tracks — shout out to DJ Trackstar for fully circumventing those — but an artist at full bore, giving everything. (I found it endlessly endearing that he shed tears during the raw-nerved “Motherless,” just as he did on TV.)
Whether evoking the biblical Judgement of Solomon, shouting out his weed dealer, or criticizing abundant pandering in the 2024 U.S. election, it’s a treat to behold that mind, that Atlanta drawl, that moral compass and indomitable will. Resurrection day, indeed — and you have two more nights at the Blue Note to catch it.
