Killer Mike and El-P, who make up the group Run the Jewels, recently spoke about their theories regarding the government.
“I’m not saying every conspiracy is true,” Killer Mike said in a recent interview with Complex. “But just like a cop will tell you, ‘We follow stereotypes because 90 percent of the time, they’re true,’ if I’m living in a country [where] they’ve put smallpox in blankets, allowed Black men to carry syphilis through, purposely raped Black farmers of over 30 million acres of land, I kind of think that you’ll fuck over anybody.”
“When people say, ‘Well, the police and the government will never kill regular citizenry,’ well, what happened to all of those prisoners in New Orleans?” Killer Mike continued. “No one remembers watching the news in New Orleans, when the prisoners were just standing on the fucking expressway? No one ever realizes that they were never talked about again? No one ever realizes that cops were brought up and investigated for murdering them? No one realizes that people become expendable in those types of times.”
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After speaking about his distrust of the government, Mike also equated prison to slavery.
“Even Black men being jailed more,” Killer Mike said. “Why is 70-80% of the prison population Black and Latino men? Because it’s slavery. ‘Well, what do you mean?’ No, mothafucker. According to the 13th Amendment, slavery is illegal in these United States unless you are property of the state, meaning in prison. So, it would make sense to me, that there is a population of men who are doubly unemployed, who are non-violent drug offenders…Stop & frisk makes fuckin’ sense because I know that if I lock more of them up, then more free shit is happening.”
Section 1 of the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution states:
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“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
El-P Criticizes President Obama, Discusses “Drones Over BRKLYN”
El-P also addressed various topics in the interview, including details about his song “Drones Over BRKLYN.”
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“I don’t write science fiction,” El-P says in the article. “That’s one of the battles, intellectually, that I fought with people who think that I do. I don’t give a fuck about science fiction. To me, the idea of ‘Drones over BKLYN’ is simply the next logical step. I’m just watching what’s happening in the world. I’m saying two plus two is four. Isn’t it? If that’s the case, then four is, you’re flying robots to control a population there, you’re gonna fly robots to control a population here. It’s not magic. It’s not a fuckin’ magic trick. I’m not talking about science fiction. Fuckin’ drones aren’t science fiction. Drones are real.”
El-P also predicted what could happen in the future, based on what he has observed in the world.
“What’s next, if we’re not careful, what’s next is fascism,” El-P said. “The legal framework for fascism has been put into our government, woven into the fabric of our society for the last 10 years, starting with the potentially and probably false…attack of 9/11 and starting with The Patriot Act and Obama, everyone’s hope and savior, is continuing those policies. And they’re getting stronger and they’re getting tighter and they’re clamping down…We’re gonna be in a fascist police state. It’s happening. It’s there.”
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Recently, Killer Mike spoke with HipHopDX about various topics, including science fiction and racism.
“In terms of Strange Days, it’s probably like—I go sci-fi but not as gratuitously as my partner is credited for,” Mike said. “[El-P] is into books and shit, but my sci-fi is mainly from television and movies. I’m a big fan of Star Trek, Star Wars and Planet Of The Apes—the original two and three movies. I think that those movies—Lord Of The Flies, Animal Farm, the original Star Trek series and the Planet Of The Apes movies—deeply effected me. Reading Animal Farm as a child helped me be conscious of social classes, order and technology—you know—for the purposes of using things and people for slavery. So it just opened my ‘third eye,’ if you will…using a ‘90s term.”
Video of their interview can be viewed below.
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