**THIS STORY APPEARS IN THE JUNE 2012 ISSUE OF XXL.

WORDS DEMARCO WILLIAMS

The topic of the moment at Michael Render’s Southwest Atlanta barbershop, Graffiti Swag Shop, is the Hawks-Celtics NBA playoff series. One older cat says the Hawks will win. Another says they don’t have a chance. Render, 36, better known around these parts as Killer Mike, chimes in:

“I love the Hawks, but they don’t have a superstar to demand that they win.” The room falls silent.

Mike’s not hating on the Hawks’ Joe Johnson. The Atlanta native digs everything about his city—“I even painted my shop in Hawks colors,” he points out—but when it comes to spitting the truth, the man doesn’t have a filter. Never has. That’s why the three albums in his self-released I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind series are all considered hood essentials—because of the unflinching candor Mike rhymes with on tracks like “That’s Life,” “God in the Building” and “Ric Flair.”

Most of the time, though, the in-your-grill MC you hear on wax is hardly like the guy in real life. The true Mike Bigga apologizes for his tardiness. He gives firm handshakes. He addresses his employees by name. He’s courteous and considerate. However, when a corner hustler peddling DVDs walks out the shop, the no-nonsense Killer again rears his head: “Remind me to start charging him booth rent.”

***

“I’m just rapping to a group of people who don’t always take they life as seriously as they could or should,” Mike says. “In a few years, some will get it, as some have. But those that don’t, you know, God bless ’em.”

Some listeners, certainly, are moved to action by his words. Last October, in fact, Mike and some supporters participated in an Occupy Atlanta event. But he knows too many others might nod their heads and pump their fists but miss the message in his music. Or worse, some people might not even be listening.

Among Mike’s rap peers, however, it’s been a different story. He knows they’re feeling what he’s dealing. “When the greats hear my shit, they pay attention,” says Mike, who got his start with OutKast back in 2000. “Jay-Z called Big Boi and said, ‘I want him on “Poppin’ Tags”’ [from 2002’s The Blueprint 2: The Gift & the Curse]. Anybody can go do some hokey shit and try to figure out a spiel, but that’s not what I do. I make this shit you can play when you get up, through the day, when you go to bed. This shit lives and breathes, man, and I’m glad it’s in me.”

Mike’s first solo album, Monster, came out in 2003 on Columbia Records. In 2005, he connected with Big Boi’s Purple Ribbon label and stole the show on the flagship single “Kryptonite (I’m on It).” The potential for bigger things was there. But so too were solo album delays, and one very public beef with his boss. So, he decided to start his own record label, Grind Time Official. He’s since dropped four albums, a few mixtapes, signed a distribution deal with T.I.’s Grand Hustle Records and introduced the world to hungry upstarts like Pill.

The independent move has been a good one for Mike. It has offered him the creative freedom to define himself and allowed his contingent of followers to grow organically, almost like a grassroots movement. His 2011 release, PL3DGE, has sold 16,000 copies without so much as a mention from most mainstream media outlets.

Mike knows that some MTV-approved upstarts might snicker at such modest numbers. He doesn’t sweat it. “Y’all don’t rap as good as me,” he says, addressing a hypothetical hater. “Whatever you perceive as money I’m to have and not have, I own a business. I ain’t worried. I pick up money every week, so I’m cool. I just need you to know that, in the fraternity of rap, I’m in a room you can’t go. I’m in the room with all the guys you admire and you want to be. That’s where I am.”

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The Swag Shop is currently under renovation. Mike’s near the front door, talking the details over with roofers. He then digs into his pocket, pulls out an envelope full of cash. After he dishes out the last $100 bill, he looks over and asks, “Have you heard the album yet?”

R.A.P. Music is not a Grind Time Official release. Rather, it’s coming out on Williams Street Records—a subsidiary of the Cartoon Network, for whom Mike has done voice-over work on Adult Swim’s now defunct Frisky Dingo. The first couple of songs to hit the Web off the album announce a bold new sound for Mike. “Big Beast,” featuring Bun B, Trouble and T.I., and “Jojo’s Chillin’” rock to a fiery, golden-era-rap thump concocted by backpacker hero El-P. The former Company Flow MC-producer’s percussion, it turns out, is a perfect match for Mike’s volatile verses—so much so that he ended up producing the entire album.

“I wasn’t down to do the whole album,” says El-P. The Brooklyn native has his own solo album, Cancer 4 Cure, coming out this summer too. “I was making my record, and they wanted me to come down. I was like, ‘All right, look, I’ll come down. I like Mike’s shit. I’ll do some shit, but I can’t do the whole record. I’ll do like three or four cuts or something.’ I went down there, and honestly, man, after the first day, the shit that had popped off, just like the vibe between us, was just so amazing.”

It makes sense. The acronym in the title stands for “Rebellious African People,” and while El-P is White, the two artists share a dark, uncompromising musical vision. On tracks like “Untitled” and “Anywhere But Here,” Mike sounds like a mix between early Ice Cube and later Cornel West, while El-P fills the spaces with sinister loops and real, finger-on-the-vinyl scratches.

To illustrate, Mike puts on “Reagan,” a lyrical standout on the album. In the first verse, he spews, “We brag on having bread/But none of us are bakers/We all talk on having green/But none of us own acres/If none of us own acres, and none of us grow wheat/Then who will feed our people when our people need to eat?”

Ask anybody at the barbershop if Killer Mike purposely tries to be a shit starter and they’ll say no. What he is, though, is a truth-spitting MC who’ll let you know real quick if something doesn’t smell right.

“I give a fuck about people,” Mike says. “And I rap about it. So, I should wear this shit as big as y’all wear them lab diamonds y’all wear and the fake-ass sterling silver chains y’all got. If the fake niggas is loud, why not be loud with ’em?”

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