Killer Mike – “R.A.P. Music” – [Adult Swim]

mann   4/3/2013   CD, Hip Hop

A child of the 80s, Killer Mike is a ten year rap vet rising out of Atlanta’s Dungeon Family production house who spent the majority of his career as a protege for the collective’s top-billers like Outkast and Goodie Mob. This album is a vengeful southern sonic crack-baby coming of age in the new millennium to expose conspiracies that plagued its NY/LA rap parents who jammed Public Enemy and NWA in the warzone. Bare-knuckled, politicized dirty south trap-talk over Escape from New York-esque, sci-fi, dystopian, cokey synth and bass heavy production courtesy of Company Flow’s one-man-heavy-artillery-division, El-P, who also shares the mic with Mike on one track (#9 Butane). Nods to when rap was punk and crunk was pop, post-911 New York noise and country thug-ism, with occasional gospel, soul and rock, supporting Mike’s 20/20 hindsight social commentary concerning the crack epidemic and the now exposed covert Iran/Contra operations and how they debilitated the black population in AmeriKKKa throughout the 90s. This sedition is best displayed on track #9 where Mike professes, “I’m glad Reagan’s dead.” He also says on the opening track, Big Beast, “I don’t make dance music, this is R-A-P/opposite of that sucker shit they play on TV.” Even if R.A.P. Music [Rebellious African People] doesn’t break enough rules or have enough of a platform to reach the revolutionary levels of Fear of a Black Planet (Public Enemy) or Straight Outta Compton (NWA) or Death Certificate (Ice Cube) . . . maybe it is the powerful late-career album those acts should’ve made now that the history they wailed and suffered through, has fully unraveled and been exposed for what it really was: genocide and human warehousing. The entire CD is the “clean version” so have at it; the untitled track #2 is a fo sho favorite. Mann the General.