R.A.P. Music
Year: 2012
Format: Spotify
Grade: B+
"I leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead," spits Michael "Killer Mike" Render on "Reagan," the savage climax of the Georgian rapper's sixth and most recent solo effort.
Mike's come a long way since his guest spots on OutKast tracks. Reagan receives most of the vitriol on the track bearing his name, although Mike's verbal assault includes "the Bushes, Clinton and Obama" as "another talking head tellin' lies on the teleprompters."
Mike teams with Brooklyn producer El-P to produce the entire record, an unusual move in hip hop, a genre in which it isn't uncommon to see nearly every track feature a different person behind the mixing boards.
Another thing that makes Mike's sixth LP unusual is that it is his sixth, showing that hip hop isn't strictly a young man's game. Mike mixes Southern and hardcore hip hop, moving fluidly to boom bap and conscious rap.
Mike's skills are from a different era, but bashing on Reagan feels current, shouting down what he sees as the Republican Party's revisionist history.
At any age when many rappers fade out, Killer Mike has made his finest effort to date.
Tomorrow's entry: Hawkind, Space Ritual
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