He’ll be talking about “Race Relations in the U.S.”
Photo by Flickr user Treefort Music Fest.
Listen, I learned more in college listening to the Kill the Jewels discography than I did pretending to read Moby Dick (which, by the way, was about 135 chapters too long for anyone to read). MIT students will have the honor this week of listening to Killer Mike himself deliver what we’re sure is going to be an insightful lecture on “Race Relations in the U.S.”
According to the press release:
“Topics such as Ferguson, to the SAE incident in Oklahoma, to white privilege and black empowerment will be included. As a social activist and hip hop artist, his music is full of socially conscious lyrics as heard in his album R.A.P. Music (R.A.P. stands for rebellious African people) to his duo Run the Jewels, who just released a new music video showing the futility of police brutality in Close Your Eyes.”
Killer Mike’s no stranger to university lecture halls. He recently gave a talk at NYU wherein he advised the students to “Go make friends with someone who doesn’t look like you!” which is pretty sage advice. But he doesn’t really need a lectern to preach. The hip hop artist is generous when imparting wisdom, and he frequently uses the music stage as his pulpit. Just last year, in the aftermath of the devastating Ferguson grand jury decision, Mike let loose with a powerful and passionate freestyle sermon on police violence that brought the crowd to uproarious applause.
His talk this week is part of MIT’s Hip Hop Speaker Series, which aims to bring hip hop leaders into the classroom—Lil B and Young Guru have also addressed the students as part of the series. Of course, the lecture is restricted to MIT students, so the rest of us plebs will have to wait until someone writes it up for Pitchfork.
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